Weekend

My neighbour had to cancel on me. I'm delighted.

I finally got in contact with Adrian, the Romanian Canadian whom I met on the plane to coming to Timisoara. He moved to Canada when he was nine and speaks perfect English and Romanian.

We tried to find a place to eat dinner. Of course, it was raining and every restaurant we found only served beer and pizza.

We eventually settled on a nice restaurant in the remains of the city's walls. It used to be a castle and everything is in its original 14th century glory.

We heard some girls speaking English behind us....while we were in a conversation criticising American foreign policy. We could tell they were listening in so we asked where they were from.

They were on an exchange from the University of Nebraska, doing "volunteer" work. Translation: they were missionaries.

Adrian and I both agreed that missionaries in Romania is pointless. The Orthodox church is dominant and expanding. The only reason most people "convert" for the missionaries is to get the food, clothing and supplies that they provide.

Adrian wanted me to taste some famous Romanian sweet wine. He described it like ice wine. Ok, I like ice wine. In very small quantities. He bought a bottle and poured me a huge glass. I could not bring myself to drink it all. Very sickly sweet. Afterwards, I mixed it with some seltzer and it was lovely.

We thought the bottle seemed a bit too expensive (by Romanian standards). We asked around and it turns out that we were overcharged by about 100,000 lei. Adrian figured the woman deliberately overcharged us and pocketed the rest. Or would go to buy a new bottle for the cheaper price and keep what we gave her.

He told me about how his uncle and aunt make wine. They have their own grape trees and cultivate their own grapes. They send them away to a nearby village where the village girls crush the fruit the old fashioned way: in a tub with their feet.

I was enchanted.

We both live in the same neighbourhood so we took a taxi home together. As a joke, he got me to give the directions to the cabbie. He wanted to see if the driver would rip us off. I only spoke Romanian and amazingly, the driver didn't try to con us. We had a good laugh about that, especially since Adrian wanted to smoke but didn't dare ask. In the end, he tried speaking French with the driver who got our point and opened a window for him.