It's been a long time

Hi Everyone,

Hope you are all well and had a good Easter break. I know Easter seems a long time ago now but this has been the first opportunity I had to catch up with you.

In fact I need to take you back to before Easter. Just before I left Bucharest for Spain on Easter Sunday I went to a jazz club. This place is around the corner from where I live under a restaurant called Mica Helvetia (little Switzerland). A lady called Todeo was playing there. So a group of us went and I immediately began to wonder if I was in some sort of play. The jazz club was exactly what you would expect such a place to be. It was in what must have been the old wine cellars with low vaulted ceilings. Of course it was incredibly smokey. Everyone sat around little tables, with everyone having long beards, wild hair, fat stomachs and loud offensive Hawaii style shirts - and that was just the women.

Then on came Todeo, a tall woman all dressed in black with a severe hair style and face to match. She was accompanied by two men - one on double bass who was already sweating even though all he had done was walk up onto the little stage and the guitarist who was straight out of Jazz Club from the Fast Show on UK TV. Todeo began singing but immediately went into a Cleo Laine "do diddy da da da lim ting bah bah reep ding arg ga ga ga ga doooooo bap bap" rubbish for about 10 minutes. She proceeded to do this for every song, many of which I recognised until she started massacering them with her vocal noises that always went on for mind numbingly long periods of time. Thankfully after 15 hours she decided to take a break at which point I realised that I had forgotten to switch off my gas oven and so had to rush home immediately. Apologies to those afficianados of jazz but as you may have gathered, that type just sends me up the wall!

So off I went to Spain to meet Tony and have a lovely relaxing few days in the sun. Actually it rained every day and was cold. The weather was really bad and the DJ on the radio said it was the worst run of bad weather he had experienced since coming to Spain. But we still managed to go to Valencia, Torreveija and Alicante. We also had some repairs to do on the house. A couple of weeks earlier there had been a bad storm and two of our roof tiles had been broken. A builder came to do the job but unfortunately that day was a "red day", that is a festa day so many of the local businesses were shut, including the builder's merchants. However opposite us is a house identical to ours that we have never seen anyone visit in the two years we have been there. And on their roof was a small stack of spare tiles. So with the help of the builder's ladder we nicked a couple of tiles and lo and behold our roof was repaired!

I still cannot work out if the neighbours in Spain are Romanian or not. They occasionally use Romanian words I recognise, but also talk to other friends in what sounds a bit like Russian. Apparently they may be from the Republic of Moldova (which is Romanian speaking) and if they are I am assured it is most likely they are in Spain on "Moldovan Mafia" business. Mmm, that's always good to know.

Back in Bucharest things are returning to the Spring/Summer normality. All the terraces and open air restaurants are opening up. No longer do I have to experience all my food being smoked - just bringing it from the kitchen to your table normally ensures it is cigarette smoked. But now we can sit in the fresh air (well as fresh as the huge traffic congestion in Bucharest allows). And of course the lovely ladies down my street are back again, not that they really went away, but they have discarded their winter coats now and "advertising themselves" more effectively.

Talking of that, last week Bucharest had an "Erotic Fair". Now you may think that in Romania such a fair may mainly consist of an apron some rubber gloves and three packets of lime jelly. But oh no - this is where they excel. I will not go into detail but nothing was left to the imagination, especially by the girls on the centre stage and the male volunteers they coaxed up there. And before you ask, I know this because I was assisting on the AIDS awareness stand. Due to my lack of proficiency in Romanian (and particularly not knowing the Romanian for bodily parts) I was restricted to helping to put up the stand and then take it down again. But that was enough.

Since you have just enjoyed a Bank Holiday in the UK, I will share with you the rather bizarre arrangements they have in the Civil Service in Romania. They get May 1st off, it is a national holiday. But if that day happens to fall on a Saturday or Sunday then the day is lost, you do not get it. This year it was on a Tuesday, so everyone had the holiday. But the government decided at the last minute to give the Civil Service Monday 30th April off too (it made sense and was extremely nice of them.) However that meant everyone had to work on Saturday to make up the lost day. For the Civil Service Saturday 5th May was a normal working day. Talk about giving with one hand and taking with the other.

Finally we have conclusive proof that I should not be left alone in my apartment in Bucharest and that I seem to have a vendetta against my oven. Those of you with good memories will recall that last summer when the girls (Lavi, Diana and Laura one of our substitute translators) were preparing a meal they managed to shatter the inside glass panel of the oven door. Incidentally I have still not been able to replace that glass because it seems the oven comes from Germany and was bought when Hitler was coming to power. Anyway I decided to cook myself a meal so I lit my gas oven and then proceeded to prepare the food. Half way through chopping the vegetables there was a loud bang from the oven and in true cartoon style smoke was curling around the door. When I opened the door I realised that when I had lit the oven I had left the box of matches in it! Not a good idea really!!

So I hoped you enjoyed your Bank Holiday in the UK. Take care of yourselves.

Andrew