Our last day of school was December 23 but the days leading up to vacay however were some of my most memorable in teaching here so far.
Each class, grades 1 – 5, prepares a small Christmas skit with poems, songs, dances, and costumes to perform for their parents and guests of honor, Santa and Mrs. Claus (12th grade boy and girl). Because I teach 2nd and 4th grade, I was invited to come watch, then the other teachers were jealous and invited me as well. So I attended all. You can imagine how adorable these skits were with kids dressed up as rabbits, foxes, a bear, various birds, in traditional Moldovan clothes, or in formal wear (we’re talk’n true suits here). The 1st grade dance was my favorite, the whole thing was done in pairs, and included spins, dips, and ended with a dip over the knee. Near the end of each skit after Santa had arrived, all the students and Santa danced the hora together around the Christmas tree. Being the token foreigner, I was pulled from my chair as the only adult dancing the hora with 12, 5 year olds, Santa, and Mrs. Claus. In all my time mentally preparing for life here in Moldova, never did I think I would be dancing the hora with Santa himself.
The next day my grand adventure ensued. I travelled to the capital to catch an overnight bus with my partners in crime to Bucharest, Romania (Capital).
Twelve hours later we arrive in Bucharest and meet up with our couchsurfing host, Dan or his nickname Creţu (Curly). Creţu turns out to be a hardcore anarchist punk, so it wasn’t a big deal we were there over Christmas. The first day we were there he his metal punk band had practice, so we tagged along. They had converted a cell in an old prison into true studio. It was pretty rad. The following three days we spent touring the city which was incredible – you could see the different influences literally stacked one on top of the other. In a single building the first three floors would be ancient Roman type, the next three Soviet cement, and finally the top three would be super modern architecture. All over the city were churches dating back to the 1500’s, statues of Vlad the Impaler (Dracula), and memorials/tributes to their revolution in 1989, where thousands died. Each night we met up with Creţu’s friends (groups of punks usually). A particulary hard-core looking man, with hair longer than mine, stopped me as we were all leaving and said, “I just have to tell you one thing, you are the flower of flowers.” Flattered for sure, but more stunned to hear such a thing come from this otherwise intimidating man.
Early Monday morning we hopped a bus to the border, flaged a taxi to cross, and finally took a train to a small town in northern Bulgaria called Veliko Tarnovo. Snow covered, sitting on a huge gorge, meandered by a river, and a castle towering over the the medieval period village. It was easy to get lost in the winding cobble stone streets. They use the Cyrillic alphabet and speak a language close to Russian, making it difficult to verbally, but it is amazing how much you can still understand. The part that threw us was that in Bulgaria they nod their head for “no” and shake it for “yes.” Many conversations I ended up just moving my head in a circle, not knowing to imitate or react as normal. We stayed in a hostel here, where they grew alpha sprouts in the small common room, and I could have lived because it was so comfortable. The next stop was a town called Plovdiv in the south. The train ride there was cramped, but entertaining as we shared beers with old Bulgarian men and had very animated conversation to enhance understanding as well as throwing out our random Russian words. Plovdiv was very cool too,as it is the cultural capital of Bulgaria, home to a gigantic soviet statue that sits on top of a mountain overlooking the whole city, and many ancient Roman ruins. One of the ruins is an amphitheatre was just discovered a few years ago during a landslide and sits right under the main pedestrian street down town. The other we visited was an almost entirely intact amphitheatre too looks over the whole city. In this town we befriended a waitress who told us of a local, hole-in the wall, heavy metal bar. So we went, and it was awesome. We appreciated a change of music, and met some amazing Bulgarians. By the time we left, we had made such good friends (without speaking Bulgarian) that two of them were crying during our good bye that lasted well over 15 minutes. We then went for dinner at a falafel place that we ate at almost every night because it was awesome, and cheap. As soon as we walked up the workers cheered at the sight of us and started yelling Falafel! Falafel! Falafel! I think they liked us. We then caught an overnight train to head to Istanbul, Turkey. The border crossing at 2am though was not so much fun, and we were erroneously told we needed to buy a visa. So I may be travelling back to Turkey for my 84 remaining days allowed.
A long and stuffy 13 hours later we arrived in Istanbul, it was New Years Eve. Before the actual events of this portion of the trip I’ll explain the city, because it was one the coolest places I have ever seen and highly, highly recommend it to anybody. All the roads are cobble stone, it sits on the black sea and on every block there is some kind of historical building ranging from 300 A.D to 1700 AD. Two of the largest Mosques in the world sit across the street from each other and breathtaking. On almost every corner there is a mosque, totaling 2,000 in the city alone. There are over 100 churches, and over 50 synagogues. Half of the city sits on the European continent and the other half on the Asian continent, and just by crossing a bridge you can tell by the food, architecture, and people. Because of how many tourists come each year and how many restaurants and stores there are to choose from each has a worker standing outside saying funny things to try to get you to come in. Normally it would get old after a while, but things they said were so clever you couldn’t help but laugh. Their traditional drink is a clear liquor that tastes like black licorice, it is served with water that you are to pour in, and by doing so the liquor turns a milky white and actually tastes pretty good. Kebab madness is the best way I can think to describe it, then throw in some tasty seafood, and yoghurt. The Grand Bazaar alone was bigger than my entire village, and we promptly got lost. The spice bazaar tested my will power, knowing my host family here probably wouldn’t go for the hot curry, but I definitely picked up a few things to curb my Mexican food withdrawal. I could go on for hours, but won’t.
Our hostel threw a party on New Years, all you can eat “sultan feast” with all the traditional foods, unlimited Turkish wine, and belly dancer – which I think my dance moves were a bit better…. All on a roof top where you could see the whole city’s parties and a view of the black sea for all the fireworks. I also brought my own sparklers, thank you Moldova for them only lasting 6 seconds. Afterwards we were shuttled to the “times square” of Istanbul for some live music. Then we taxi’d it home around 5:30, where the after party included me earning a free beer for fixing sandwiches for people until about 730 am. Only two people in the room spoke the same language which made our late night conversations that much more interesting.
The following days included lots of sight-seeing, and staying up way too late each night. I even went for a Turkish bath. It was one of the oldest in Istanbul and had a dome ceiling with stars to let light in. You lay on a giant circular stone that is hot, hot hot, and wait for a, uh…we’ll say extremely voluptuous Turkish woman to come wash you. She uses a brillo style scrub to rub down your naked body and gives you a little spank when she’s ready for you to turn over. I was amazed how apparently little my bucket bathing has cleansed me as I watched dirt stream off… Then comes a giant pillow thing of soap, she give a relatively rough massage and scrub, then throws buckets of cold water on you. Followed by a hair washing, and soak in the actual “bath,” kinda like a hot tub. My friend I went with, a fellow volunteer, gave her Turkish woman a hug at the end of her scrub down, but I wasn’t quite so ready to have that kind of close contact. We got down with kareokee while there as well which was awesome.
The best and worst events happened on the same day in Turkey. We took a big day trip to the west central Turkey to a place calledEphesus (you should google it) right on the Aegean sea. We flew out early in the morning and rented a car for the day. In Ephesus is one of the largest ancient Roman cities, kept incredibly intact, 6 km worth of city built 3000 years ago. So pull into the lower section of the ruins and park expecting to walk up, and then back down to our car. We go to look for a map at the little stores and a worker tells us there is a free shuttle to the top, we say awesome and hop in the shuttle. As we are driving he tells us that we just need to take a quick look in his store and then we’ll go to the top, its kind of the toll for the shuttle but don’t have to buy anything. So we’re reluctant say no, but he is driving so about 7 km from our car he pulls into a store without much surrounding it. Immediately as we get out of the car, 5 large Turkish men come out from next to the store. As we walk into the store, the only girl working immediately walks outside. We immediately sense this is very, very wrong. It is a leather store, which the area is known for, but it doesn’t have any windows. Nick, a friend we’re travelling with is led downstairs to look at the coats, the two other start to wander, and I notice a few of the men lingering near the only door, and then see one of the men go to the electronic locking system. I immediately dart to the door and just catch it before it latches. The men try to convince me to come back in, the other two volunteers see me leave and quickly follow. We wait for Nick to come out as the men are trying to get us to come back in. What seems much longer than it was, Nick comes out. They say ok, they will take us to the top now, and try to get us to get into a different, for lack of vocabulary, sketchy looking car (my guess are no handles on the inside). We say no, and start walking down the somewhat desolate road. The man that originally took us there drives down the wrong side of the road to convince us to get in to go to the top. We don’t, and walk a good 3 km before hopping a bus, and then walking the rest of the way back to our car, the whole time looking over our shoulder for a car full of Turkish men to come abduct us. End of the story is we make it back to our car, try to explain what happened to the entrance guy, he doesn’t speak English, and high tail it out of there as we see the original guy sitting out the back of his store again.
It is hard to know exactly what was going to happen had I not caught the door, but we’re fairly confident it would not have been good. In the hostel there was a warning that said tourists are tricked into going into stores where they are forced to buy expensive things, or just plain robbed. I believe one or both was about to happen, and I hate to think of what kind of forcing is used. No mater, we were relieved to be in our car with the doors locked, and very reluctant to leave it again. After a while though we found the correct, more populated spot to begin the tour from, and then walked one of the most amazing places I have been to, rivaling Machu Pichu status. After exploring for majority of the day, we drove down the coast Aegean Coast line to a little town where a castle sits way out on the picturesque white rocks. Explored for a while, then ate fish sandwiches and calamari at a little bar that sat directly on the beach. Drove back to the airport, and flew back to Istanbul, had another full day of exploring the city the next day and flew back to Moldova.
We were too late arriving though to travel back to our villages, so we stayed the night in the capital where other volunteers met us. When there we rent from the same apartment building each time, as it is cheaper than a hotel and can fit more people. These are straight from older soviet times though and do not have fire escape stairs, just two real nerve racking elevators, one not big enough for more than a three person squeeze. Heading out to the bars, just between the 11th and 12thfloors, as luck would have it, our elevator abruptly stopped, as the clock struck midnight. There is no emergency phone, and it’s a weeknight so everyone is asleep to hear us. We call the landlord and try to explain in our best moldoveneasca our predicament. Half an hour passes, then 45 minutes, and finally we hear someone seemingly searching for us. After about an hour of being stuck finally with help from both sides we pry the doors open and each of us are lifted up out of the elevator. Needless to say, we did not try the super scary little elevator and stayed in the rest of the night.
The next day we all travel back to our respective villages, I make it about an hour from my village to the town I change buses in (well oversized vans) to find out because it is Christmas eve (orthodox celebrate the 7th of Jan.) my route isn’t running. I was forced to hop a different bus, get off about 10 km from my village and walk, trying to hitch-hike with my big backpack, in the dark, in negative 15 degrees weather, along the highway, in the snow, on Christmas eve. You can imagine how many cars there were out driving, let alone willing to stop. As luck had it after a little more than 4 km a car stopped for me, and it happened to the our village bread guy who has picked me up on more than one occasion (although never in the dark!), he laughingly shaked his head at the idiotic American girl and drove me right up to my house. I don’t think I have ever been so thankful in my entire life. I didn’t have any bani (Moldovan money) so I offered him the dollar bill I have been carrying since arriving in Moldova and he was over-joyed with that prospect and kissed my hand in gratitude.
I ate dinner with my host family, and fell asleep by 7pm, not waking until 10:30am for my first Moldovan Christmas. That however, is an entirely different post.
Merry Christmas everybody and Happy New Year! Welcome to 2011, and I can’t wait to see you in 2012! SAFE travels, and I love and miss you all!
Crăciun fericit!
