Filed under: Peace Corps Romania | Tags: burger, Domn E, Guinness, Harlem, Irish Pub, McGowan's, Medias, Peace Corps, Romania, surprise
Harlem and I had planned to meet our students and Domn E in Medias, on Friday, April 9th. Thus would begin a three day trip with students and teachers from my general school, as well as from Harlem’s high school, in Petrosani.
Harlem and I rolled into the Medias train station a little while after noon. We sleepy-leg stepped out into some sunshine, and glanced about our surroundings.
We had a few hours to kill, and a couple empty stomachs to fill.
Instantly, our eyes fell on the same thing– directly across from the train station was a building with a large sign out front that read “McGowan’s Pub,” and an Irish flag swimming about the spring breeze. We both hooted and hollered, and gave each other those half ‘man-shoves,’ that symbolise mutual accord.
“We gotta!” Harlem laughed, and “we gotta!” he excitedly repeated.
Inside, we found a happy menu listing the long-lost beef-burger with fries. Happiest of all, were half pints of Guinness on tap.
As Harlem and I swigged contently, we looked about the place. The entire bar was filled with young hipsters smoking ciggarettes and downing espresso. Most of their eyes flicked across the flat-screen TVs with gold-leaf frames.
Like it'd all been transplated from a bar back home.
The waitresses were sweet and smiling, and the walls wore real-wood panelling, and all sorts of western-bar accoutrement. I saw the Beetles in one corner, flanked to a side by a print of Ali knocking out Foreman in Zaire. On the opposite end of the bar was Tyler Durden fully decked in his infamous red leather. Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe sat alongside him. Best of all was behind me– the duke and his dog, gazing off into some hazy blue sky in the American south-west.
All of these things were not so much authentic Irish as a strong testament to the cultures that flank either side of the north Atlantic. We, being good beggars, were able to forgive this mis-arranged hodgepodge of pop culture and focus instead on our burgers and beers.
A surprise of unimaginable proportions.
Filed under: EuroTrip | Tags: best cities, Cluj, home, Lupoiaca, Peace Corps, Romania, Timisoara, Transylvania
In the last four weeks, I’ve had the blessed opportunity to travel across an astoundingly large amount of this country– in 30 days I was away from my site for 22. I’ve rolled repeatedly on rails through the deep grooves in the Carpathian swoosh that huddles Transylvania into a tight corner on this wild edge of the world. I have seen :quick counts: about ten cities (and half that many Lupoiacas) in the last thirty days– some cities felt like old friends and some were brand-spanking new.
There aren’t many major cities left in this country that I haven’t experienced. Hence, I feel I can make this proclamation stating which of Romania’s metropolises are my absolute favorites. There are two that immediately hop to mind:
Timisoara is the second largest city in Romania, and a major cultural center. Unlike Romania’s capital city, Bucuresti (which has a negative reputation amongst Romanians and foreigners alike), Timisoara is an extremely attractive place to visit, and instils a certain sense of refined pride in its inhabitants. It has wide-open pedestrian places, cheap coffee cafes, preserved pre-war architecture, and pockets of quirky counter-culture. I once met a poet at a New Year’s Eve party, and he assured me (repeatedly) that Timisoara is the best city in Romania.
In Piata Unirii, I realized that I am a little bit in love with Timisoara.
However, for me, Timi is second to only one place in Romania, and that place is Cluj-Napoca. These are some of the things that I like most about Cluj:
- There are about 300,000 people in Cluj. I have heard that as many as one third of those people are students. The result is a city that feels young, fun, and extremely progressive.
- Cluj feels international– my first time there I sat on a bench in front of the student center down-town and in 15 minutes I heard handfuls of native English speakers wander by. This is typically a rare occurrence in the Ro, but Cluj has enough of international appeal that it collects wanderers from across the world.
- Cluj is green. It is set into the hills near a forest, and has massive parks and gardens spattered across it. Its botanic gardens are mind-blowing. Any city well connected to green blade and leaf makes me feel all sorts of alright.
I'd live here, and love it.
I am grateful to find cities here that have made my soul sing. They reaffirm what I might ultimately search for when I’m ready to settle down (whenever that may be) into a place called ‘home.’
Filed under: Peace Corps Romania | Tags: Close of Service, COS, European Capital of Culture, friends, friendship, fuck chuck or marry, Large Square, Old Friends, Peace Corps, Piata Mare, Romania, Sibiu, snow, snowball fight
Our Close of Service (COS) conference was two weeks ago. COS explicitly marks the ‘beginning of the end’ of the Peace Corps experience. At this moment, I have less than three months of teaching to complete, and fewer than six months in Romania, overall. Now, more so than ever, I am astonished by how quickly my service has passed. It has felt like a quick moving river of time, distinguishable only by the ‘before’ and ‘afters’ of big events, and the cyclical changes in the seasonal weather from hot to cold and hot again.
Despite suddenly finding myself on the home-stretch, I have noticed that my Peace Corps service can (and continually does) surprise me. Case in point, during COS I was fortunate enough to experience my loveliest memory of, not only my Romanian adventure, but of my life, in its entirety.
COS was in one of Romania’s most beautiful cities– Sibiu. Sibiu was a European capital of culture in 2007, and certainly smacks of some of the ‘big names,’ farther to the west– Prague most immediately comes to mind.
The major high-light of Sibiu is Piata Mare— or the “Large Square.” This square has existed since the beginning of the 15th century, and has always been the historical heart of the town. Late on Tuesday evening, March 14th, I found myself wandering through this square with four of my closest souls. We had just finished a slow dinner in a brick-lined basement, long and narrow with tables squeezed against one side. The waiters wore traditional Romanian outfits, and a flute and accordion player occasionally erupted into cheery song. My four friends and I drank a few tall carafes of warm wine and ate great food, but, most special of all, was the ease in which we interacted with one another. All of our little social barriers were down, and we were enjoying playing and embarrassing ourselves before one another. These are the sort of friends my life is blessed to be lined with.
Now, our appetites extinguished but our thirsts piqued, we climbed out of that basement into the deepening night and found ourselves washed over by the true last snow of the Romanian winter. Heavy, wet flakes blew about and stuck to every single surface, and feathered the tar of our dark jackets.
We came into Piata Mare, and, in a moment of pure genius and inspiration, I bent down and scraped together a snowball from the shivering bricks. I threw it– hard– into the shuffling mob of my four fellows, and PAF!– it erupted onto a shoulder, and suddenly ‘it’ was on.
We giggled and screamed and hucked snow at one another in zig-zags across the square. We all threw hard, and we all threw well. No one escaped untagged. I know that I clearly stopped at one point and thought to myself “how blessed I be,” to have experienced such a thing– and then my reflection was broken by a snowball to the gut and I was back into the fray.
When finally our little hands were too red and wet to go on, we found another basement to sit in– this one a bar called “Old Friends,” where we played turn after turn of “fuck, chuck, or marry,” over a round of coffee which led into a few rounds of beers.
Filed under: Peace Corps Romania | Tags: Directoara, memory loss, outside, Peace Corps, Pisto, Romania, simple, spring, violet aura
I woke up last week and couldn’t remember anything I did last Spring.
I closed my eyes and let my violet aura spiral around against the dim, and tried to think of distinct events that had occurred. Slowly, I recalled the big things– my week long “best vacation ever,” into Ukraine, and an extended weekend trip to Iasi with Directoara and Pisto. That was all– it was hardly enough to frame three months of activity. I didn’t feel like I was so busy/overwhelmed that time had ripped by (my most stress-filled time of my service was before Spring, in February).
I came here, to my blog, and glanced over my entries for March, April, and May of 2009. Nothing out of the ordinary happened– really, the entries are fairly banal. A funny misunderstanding in the teacher’s lounge, a beautiful afternoon hike to what eventually became my favorite place on the half-mountain behind my site, and lazy weekend afternoons focused on food and friends. There was nothing extraordinary, or life-rattling.
That sort of ‘ordinary stuff,’ seemed to be consistent throughout my first Romanian Spring. In addition, the only other pattern I perceive is that I spent a ton of time outside. I love the outdoors, and was eager to shed my winter layers of wool and explode out into the bloom of Romanian sunshine. Maybe it was that state of pastoral intoxication that helped blur the time.
More likely, however, life passed easily because of that mundaneness earlier mentioned. Come Spring, I had been in Romania for about a year. I had developed a stable comfort level, and my life had developed distinct patterns and frequencies. To that effect, not every moment felt completely novel and uncertain– rather, I was able to coast a little bit and focus on the simpler, smaller things– wind in leaves, exploding wild flowers, and embedding sun into my skin.
Last year I felt comfortable– this year I feel adored. Hence, I could presume that this second Spring will pass with even less tug than the first. The week that the weather warms into a stable state conducive to my being outdoors, then I’m sure away I (and these last 6 months) will go.
Filed under: Peace Corps Romania | Tags: ciorba, Dan, french press, Jiu Valley, Ledy, Loveland, Lupeni, Mamaliga, Olympics, Peace Corps, Romania, skiing, spring, Straja
Yesterday, I went “spring skiing,” at Straja with Dan (Leddy’s husband).
It’s technically still the end of Winter, but the conditions were kind of crazy– the likes of which I’ve never really seen in all my years of skiing/riding in my home-state of Colorado. The snow was milky, mashed potatoes. The morning began with dark clouds, which became swells of rain, which gave way to a fog creeping up through the Jiu Valley so thick you could taste it when you breathed.
Eventually, the cranky weather parted into a brilliant “sort-of spring” day. After a half dozen runs, my turns felt natural and controlled, and I was smile smile smiling– I could have been easy to pretend I was back home, cutting turns up at Loveland. That was until I would stop and gaze down the slope and see the stiff towers of the half dozen mines spaced throughout the valley, or I counted the grey blocs lining the road of the large town below.
Afterwards, I went back to Leddy and Dan’s to eat a huge meal of vegetable ciorbă, followed by one of my Romanian favorites: mamaligă with baked fish and tons of home-made garlic sauce. Then I showered, and took a nap on their pull-out couch.
Leddy woke me three hours later so we could watch the womens’ downhill Super G together. It reminded me of my first two months at site: Leddy and Dan had just adopted me, and we spent nights sitting around watching the Olympic games, in Beijing. Leddy started dozing off at the beginning of the Men’s Individual LH Ski Jump, so I excused myself to head home. Before I left, Leddy and Dan gave me a bag with the leftover fish, and a new french press– Leddy won it as a prize four years ago, but has never once used it. I happily accepted, as my own french press (a few years old old) has birthed a long, splintery crack from its lips to its legs.
That was the day I went skiing for the second time, in Romania, as my second winter in this country began to show strong signs of fading out. I watched my second set of Olympic games here, with my second family. This morning I made coffee with my second french press, and soberly considered how I will have no thirds.
Filed under: Peace Corps Romania | Tags: Coincidence, Craiova, Harlem, pallbearer, Peace Corps, poem, poet, Romania, story, Stănescu, Târgu Jiu, train, travel
I have recently been really digging a Romanian poet, Nichita Stănescu.
Stănescu was one of Romania’s most beloved contemporaries, and a lot of my Romanian friends (young and old, alike) can easily recall at least a few lines of their favorite Stănescu poem upon request. I’ve been strumming through some of Stănescu’s works online, and I still find the most exquisite to be “Poem” (curiously, the title is written in English):
POEM
Spune-mi, dacă te-aş prinde-ntr-o zi
şi ţi-aş săruta talpa piciorului,
nu-i aşa că ai şchiopăta puţin, după aceea,
de teamă să nu-mi striveşti sărutul?
As I was returning from Istanbul with Harlem, we sat in a hot train compartment, somewhere between the cities of Craiova and Târgu Jiu. With us were two young, beautiful, university students, and an old man. The man’s hair was frizzy and wild, and as he talked, a single tooth hooked out from the center of his upper gum into the air. The man happily drank from a two liter bottle of orange Fanta– but the soda had been poured away and replaced by a thick, crimson wine.
I softly spoke to Harlem in English– I have grown accustomed to casting out a bit of my English in trains. I am no longer deathly afraid of revealing my foreignness, and I’ve found that it’s a great way to meet people and have itsy-bitsy adventures that help pass the lethargy of ‘train-time.’ The old man took the bait, and asked where we were from.
As we conversed in one part English and two parts Romanian, somehow we came to that ubiquitous poet, Stănescu. The old man and I recited “Poem,” together. He chuckled happily, and then cocked his head and quickly fixed one of his squinting, wild eyes into mine.
“You know that I was a close friend of Stănescu,” the man asked, as if I was already well aware.
“Seriously?” I gasped. “Are you being sincere?”
“Yes,” the man said. “In fact, I helped to bury him, at the funeral.”
Some conversation continued on, but, as often happens to me, my mind overwhelmed my five senses. If I have ever asked you a simple question, and then forgot to listen to your answer (as I often do), this is what has occurred: a curtain of thought has been pulled down over the world in front of me. In that moment, I was contemplating this chance meeting with a man that had buried one of Romania’s greatest artists (and my favorite Romanian poet). I snapped back to attention as best I could, but I was still astonished at this coincidence. A buzzing smile soon fixed itself onto my head, and drowned out everything else occurring inside of me.
At the man’s station, he casually finished his two liter bottle of wine, and pulled an old baseball cap onto his head. He stood over Harlem and I, and put on his most serious of expressions. “We go different ways now,” the man said, “but our souls will know each other forever.” He then gave me his warmest smile, and was gone. Some slight doubt lingered in the compartment– were his words honest, or were they just the drunk ramblings of some (clearly adept) storyteller? To be honest, I harmlessly believed every single word that man said.
And now, for me, these words carry more powerful meaning than ever before:
POEM
Tell me, if one day I would catch you
and would kiss the sole of your foot,
is it not so, that you would limp a little, after that,
from apprehension so as not to crush my kiss?
Filed under: EuroTrip | Tags: America, culture, dolma, exception, family, food, friends, Istanbul, joy, Peace Corps, Raki, restaurant, Roma, Romania, Turkey
“Food is a central activity of mankind and one of the single most significant trademarks of a culture.”
Mark Kurlansky
In Kurlanksy’s sense, what does our American food attitude say about our culture? In the USA, we happily crowd around full tables for common feasts but a few days per year. My favorite holidays were always Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Independence Day, not necessarily because of their historical significance, but rather because they were food-days spent with family and friends. We sat around, enjoyed casual conversation, and immersed ourselves into multiple courses of amazing, home-cooked meals.There was music and cheer, and little pretension.
As an American, somehow a few sparse days per year of this seemed to suffice. It wasn’t until I moved to Europe and experienced its ubiquitous table culture and hospitality that I realized that, we as Americans, are the world-wide exception of gastronomic norms. In other countries throughout our Earth, food culture is a daily event that stimulates the senses and emotions. Scent and taste flex their little, sensory muscles, and the presiding sentiment is one of contentment– like the world couldn’t possibly become any righter.
In America, we are satisfied with our meager helpings of this soul goodness because we are unaware that it could exist in greater quantity. Despite our abundance as one of the most advanced nations in the world, this simple and fruitful culture of joy has been thrown to the wayside. It is sad and unfortunate, and I would be happy to make my life’s work one of re-sowing it into American culture– if only because it can make you feel so damn good.
Imagine for a moment, that you have traveled to a foreign city— one of the largest and most significant in the memory of mankind. In a place teeming with over ten million lives, you are literally a tiny, foreign speck drifting through the cityscape. In this place, you constantly meet locals who are kind, and even excited, that you have come to their home. At the request of a few of these new friends, you accept a dinner invitation.
I did such a thing– while in Istanbul, Harlem and I went to dinner with two Turkish girls, and in a way that was completely novel (as I am still unaccustomed to it by my American upbringing) it became my best memory of the trip.
The girls, Zeynep and Duygu, took us to a small fish restaurant in Taksim, the ‘new district,’ of Istanbul. Inside, tables were grouped together in family-style fashion, so that the only thing separating us and the guests next to us were a few inches of white table cloth and salt and pepper shakers. Every table in the place was packed with young Turks, and almost all were in groups of four or more. Alongside our table, there was a group of 12 Turkish women our age (with a few, fortunate men scattered throughout). Zeynep and Duygu ordered for us, selecting a few appetizers from a massive tray of small sample bowls brought by a waiter. We were also able to select our fish in the same fashion– fresh, gutted specimens were brought out on a wooden block to help us m
ake our choices.
Zeynep ordered Raki, the national Turkish spirit, and taught us how to drink it– first by pouring a clear shot into a high-ball glass, which becomes a cloudy white (due to the Ouzo Effect) when water is added. Turks sip a little Raki, and then immediately cleanse the palate with a drink from an accompanying glass of water. This smooths the edges of its intense, anise flavor, and you’re left with a full lingering echo of its sweetness. Raki is sipped often, and usually with an accompanying “şerefe!” (cheers).
It was in this scene that I enjoyed the most amazing dish of my trip: grape-stuffed dolmas. Stuffed grape leaves are common in this part of the world– in Romania, sarmale (as they’re called) are stuffed with pork and rice and savory spices. They are usually topped with sour-cream, and they are heavy and the true epitome of ‘comfort food.’ In this restaurant, the leaves were stuffed with wild rice, some long-grained grass, and tiny shriveled grapes. The result was something amazing– crisp and sweet. Duygu offered me hers, and I resisted for only a half second and only out of knee-jerk politeness.
But, good food is not enough to constitute culture. I think that, perhaps, this is where we Americans error. Our restaurants are sterile, and the timing and efficiency of a meal matter more than the pleasure derived from it. Excellent food and exquisite atmosphere alone can not substitute the authenticity of what it is that makes us human– that sort of airy ineffable is the glue that holds the physical of these senses and places together. Hence, what came next was what made the night my most salient.
As we sat and ate and squeezed through the gaps in our language barrier, a trio of Roma musicians entered the restaurant. They had four instruments between them, and fox-stepped to a spot between the tables. Suddenly, one of them whistled loudly and the trio exploded into song. Crashing rapids of Turkish verse accompanied by tangerine, fiddle, and a sort of slide guitar washed across the dining room.
Every single Turk in the restaurant, paused, bloomed into a slow smile, and then began to sing.
This little band blared over a half dozen traditional Turkish songs– songs embedded into the memory and common culture of the people surrounding us. The young dozen women next to us were swaying and calling out words in chorus. Zeynep stood up at our table and let her hands flutter about while her hips sparked to the beat. I had forgotten we were in the land of belly-dancing until that moment. I glanced around the room and saw many of the other young women doing the same.
Harlem and I were dumbfounded. We both had gooey grins smeared across our faces. In that most beautiful of moments, our ability to be profound– even articulate– had been stripped away. “This is awesome,” we mouthed to each other, over and over– and, more apporpriately, we were even able to muster an occasional “oh, my Gd.”
That moment was one of the most crystalline visions I have ever had of the way that life should be. It was a spontaneous combination of the culture of food and song, peaking in a beautiful little crescendo of sensations, and overall ‘good’ feelings. The greatest thing was how fully the people around me embraced the moment– there was a common connectedness in it that sweetened the air and made the walls bleed a violet light.
A culture of joy exists so effortlessly and free in the world. I am grateful that I have come into contact with it, for it has made me a happier human being.
Filed under: EuroTrip, Peace Corps Romania | Tags: expression, heart, Istanbul, Peace Corps, pilgrimage, Romania, soul, tourism, tourist
From January 3oth until February 5th, I spent a week in the city of Istanbul.
It is the unhesitating “you must go there,” place that volunteers talk about, as we serve in Peace Corps Romania. So, because we were obliged, six other volunteers and I took a twelve hour bus ride into Turkey to fulfill a sort of unofficial pilgrimage for PCVs living and working in this part of the world.
Istanbul’s grandeur is undeniable as you read guide books, or browse albums on Flickr, or listen to the excited, breathless stories of friends who have recently returned from its heart. But, as is always true in the matters of human expression, the feeling the city shares with you trumps any 3rd party description. Photos now feel emotionless, and blogs & stories fumble awkwardly around the simple truth of what Istanbul really “is.” Obviously, that will not deter me here from making a doomed attempt at describing what it is that makes Istanbul so special.
I remember standing in a small park overlooking the Blue Mosque in the early morning hours. In my feet, I could feel a pulsing bass from somewhere. In my ears, I could sense the gentle thud of a city gently stirring its life-force through every street, past each shop window, and over all the people happily breathing in that place. I was hearing Istanbul’s heart, and I realized I had heard that same sort of sound in other places.
Imagine for a moment, the greatest cities on Earth. They are the places that create an overwhelming sense of loyalty within their inhabitants. A sort of “metropol-ism” (drawn from ‘nationalism’) is made in which a human being becomes hopelessly enamoured of their city. Words are even created in our language to group such people: New Yorkers, Parisiennes, Londoners. Visiting these cities implies a certain risk– at any moment you could fall hopelessly in love with, not a person, but a place, and you would abandon your past life to transplant yourself into the city folds. That would be the story of you, and it is one I have heard many times before.
It is the “what,” and the “why,” of these places that I am most interested in. What gives these cities their souls, and why do such feelings of affection and belonging bloom from them? As near as I can gather, it is quite a complicated mix of things:
- First, a city needs a history that is self-pertinent, but also significant to the beat and hum of humanity as a whole. A city with soul has been a place of significant human affairs. This makes it important to the history of our species, and it also adds to the city’s sense of identity. The city and its inhabitants are proud that they are a cornerstone of civilization. I think it’s important to note that, while a soul-city must have had a tumultuous history, its tribulations needs to have a little age to them, so that its identity can become internalized. This is why I hesitate to group places like Berlin or Prague into this list–I get the sense that they are still defining the fringes of themselves.
- These cities also have sights– massive, monumental, heart-stopping places that can’t help but be plastered on post-cards, refrigerator magnets, and t-shirts. These objects (think the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, Big Ben, the Blue Mosque), are iconic, and suffer a little bit of commercialism, as a result. But all the ceramic ash-trays and key-rings in the world could never take away from the sacred holy you feel when you round a corner and unexpectedly see one of these places for the first time. You stop and utter, “oh my Gd,” because they are beautiful, and because they are ours, and because their shape and significance is branded into the common culture of what we are.
- History and sights draw tourists, and the cities of soul understand this, and even embrace it. In fact, in these places, tourism has shaped the way the cities operate, and even adds to their identities. Istanbul has some of the friendliest people I have ever met, and, despite clearly being a tourist, I was never once approached with resentment. Part of the heart beat comes from locals not wanting to cloister the city and its grandeur away from the non-natives– in these places, the city aches to share itself with everyone that it possibly can.
- However, a city with soul will not compromise its spirit for commerce. There is a endless amount of distance between a place like Las Vegas (which, in my opinion, is a city built first and foremost to harbour tourists) and the holy ones. Despite embracing the presence of visiting masses, the best cities on Earth are filled with their own residents, who maintain their traditional identities while simultaneously being flexible to the rush of foreigners from across the globe. In Istanbul, you can survive a sales pitch filled with television spawned buzz-lines to be rewarded with a cup of hot apple tea and a forty minute conversation about the humblest and most honest of things. These cities smile to the outside, but are committed internally in a way that would wither and murder them were they to sacrifice it.
- Therefore, all of these things: pertinence, sights, hospitality, and conviction come together and the effect is, quite simply, joy. To be in these places creates a sense of rightness, and utter exuberance. In Istanbul, you can watch children happily smother themselves with well-fed stray cats, or you might take cover from a snowball fight between a gang of well-dressed, business professionals. It’s hard to walk down a street in a soul-city and not burst into smile, laughter, dance, or song.
I went to Istanbul and found myself counting its heartbeats. If you have not been to Istanbul, I recommend that you place it as high on your “to-see” list as is possible. I can’t imagine someone going to Istanbul and not enjoying it (unless some sort of unhappy, vacation bad-luck occurred). Believe me when I say that I would be sad for you if you never saw this city before the day that you stopped breathing.
| Answer. That you are here—that life exists, and identity; |
|
| That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse. |
Filed under: Peace Corps Romania | Tags: cabin, Directoara, Jiu Valley, Miner, New Year's Eve, Peace Corps, Pisto, Rascoala, Romania, Tanya
I’ve written before that Romania’s dark, fog-covered forests seem to me the birth-place of fairy tales. I celebrated New Year’s Eve at a small cabin in a place called Răscoală, which means uprising. Răscoală is a shepherds’ community settled onto a set of small hills underneath some of the biggest peaks in the Carpathians. Miner, Tanya, Directoara, and Pisto were all present. It was cozy and extremely pleasant.
Tanya took hundreds of pictures. I’ve ripped the best ones, and posted them to my flickr account in an album which can be accessed here: Revelion 2009-10
Enjoy.
Filed under: Peace Corps Romania | Tags: cold, country side, death, Finu, Harlem, Peace Corps, pig slaughter, Pisto, Romania, tuica, village
*Warning: Graphic details.
On Thursday, December 17th, Harlem and I took part in a pig slaughter. I woke up at 7:30 in the morning, and reached over my head to touch the slick, ceramic tiles of the ‘soba’ behind me. It’s warmth was passing away– the coal and splintered stumps of wood just memories of heat ground down into ash during the night. The sky was grey outside, empty of light and full of cloud and cold.
Harlem and I rose slowly and drank a few glasses of water from our nearby jug, then layered ourselves liberally in warm clothes. A cold snap had come in the day before, and all of southern Romania had been pressed down by snow and hard wind. In this little village, about 20km north of the Danube river in the South Western corner of the country, the temperatures fell under -15C whenever the sun went away.
I smothered my feet in two sets of thick, hand-made wool socks, and shoved them into a pair of rubber work boots. My toes hugged themselves together in a tangled mess. Harlem and I left the main house and walked through the courtyard to the kitchen to drink coffee.
In Romania, a farm house typically has a kitchen that is ‘outside’ of the main structure. The kitchen is enclosed, but usually uninsulated. This is helpful during the summer when cooking in the stale heat is unbearable. To compensate during the winter months, these small enclaves are warmed by their ceramic ovens, which have metal surfaces to boil water and heat food.
Harlem and I squatted on tiny benches, barely big enough for a single adult to rest on. We contemplated our coffees, and I chewed on the eternal grinds floating in the bottom of my cup. Finu, a neighbor, was already there. None of us said anything– Finu is silent by nature, and this day was nothing extraordinary to him. It merited no extra words. Conversely, Harlem and I prepared ourselves in quiet for an event that we had never seen before.
Pisto came to us, and said “it’s time, boys.” He had his lamb leather hat cocked onto his head, and the hilt of a long knife snug alongside his calf in his right rubber boot. We followed him to the small, chain-link yard where the pig shed was propped into one corner. Finu took a section of rope and disappeared inside.
I glanced at Harlem, but his eyes were on the walls of the shed. So were Pisto’s. Time stepped up its pace, grabbing against the rough edges of this morning moment. It was like when river current suddenly catches upon the rocks in a steppe. Everything moved together, tightened, quickened, blurred. The sow began to scream.
There were no words of preparation, or orders from Pisto. The moment had come unannounced. Finu came out of the pig shed, with the line tied to one of the sow’s back legs, and we all rushed to it. We pulled her backwards along the snow, about 20 feet, to a vertical wooden support holding a piece of metal siding over a corn storage container. Finu wrapped the cord around the beam, and Pisto told us to let go. Harlem and I obeyed, and Finu tied a quick knot.
“Grab the legs!” Pisto yelled, “and turn her over.” The four of us heaved and puffed, and rocked the sow back and forth, trying to get her off balance onto her side. She kicked and screamed until Pisto yanked her front legs sideways and she toppled over. Harlem and I grabbed her back legs by the ankles–they were slippery with brown slime and snow. We both used one hand on each leg to restrain her, while Finu held her front legs. Pisto pulled the knife from his boot and put his weight onto her shoulder. I braced myself against the wooden beam and held hard. I watched the tip of the knife steady itself along the sow’s throat.
A voice somewhere deep inside of me muttered a soft “goodbye.” The tip of the blade pushed into the throat and the skin held for a moment, resisting in a flash of shallow dimple before the pressure succeeded and the hilt followed the blade to the skin. Pisto flicked his wrist left and right, slicing the jugular without at all increasing the size of the wound. The wind pipe was severed, and the screaming stopped.
Time slowed again. I became aware of the tension in my arms holding the kicking legs against the warm, soft belly. Their floorless dance slowed and rippled into stillness. After 30 seconds, Pisto told us to let go. The four of us stepped away and rubbed snow onto our hands to wash them. The sow held on, resisting whatever it was that she was experiencing. Pisto put his weight on her throat, forcibly pumping more of her blood onto the ground. She kept on, like she was finishing some pig-like prayer, and needed just a little more time.
A neighbor’s cat slunk over the fence. It dodged the sow’s twitching front legs and came to nip at the large, congealing bits of blood on the ground. Pisto wiped his blade on the side of his pants. The sow finally said ‘amen.’
We moved her onto a sled, and dragged her to the courtyard outside of the kitchen enclave. The rest of this was all pig preparation. We took a short break to drink hot, plum moonshine spiced with pepper, cloves, and sugar. It got me a little drunk, and I snuck inside to sit a while, and warm my aching feet. Those rubber boots couldn’t hold away the cold.
Finu went home, and Pisto went to work. Harlem and I helped Pisto with what we could, which wasn’t much. He burned and scraped the pig’s skin. He sliced away the head, and opened it’s belly. He divided the organs apart, one by one by one by one. We made a half dozen different dishes over the course of the day–things boiled, things sauteed, things to be smoked. The entire pig was used, except for a few pieces passed to the dogs, chained to their small houses by the front gates. They danced and yipped happily when I approached with my red-stained, cupped palm. They knew exactly what I was carrying–they had been waiting for this the entire year.
I am relentlessly intense, did you know? The entire day, I tried to draw significance from this moment. I had a subconscious recording inside of me that said “what have I learned here?” on a loop sewn onto itself and that never slowed. In American culture, I feel like we try to hide from the reality of death. We resist our knowledge that it exists, brush away it’s presence, or forget it entirely. When this inquisitive American boy touched death for one of the first times in his life, an answer to his “what have I learned here?” question had to be found.
I think it was something to the effect of, “A: my death will be insignificant.” In Hollywood, a hero’s passing is grandiose, with the fate of an entire world perched on the outcome. Did our sow dream of being a superhero, selflessly giving herself to a greater cause? Did she fantasize that she would be remembered forever and have her image blazed into copper statues? “Where are my hymns of praise and thanks?” she must have thought, “and where are the teary eyes sewn into the hem of my forever memory?”
I think that most of our deaths, mine included, will pass quietly. There will not be a “this is it–ready yourself” moment. Will I be in any position to compose and deliver a set of “last words,” so extraordinary that they’ll rock human souls and alter the fate of the world? I doubt it.
Instead, when whatever death feels like passes over me (I imagine it’s a druggy, warm docility), I would count myself lucky to be alongside at least one loved one. In that moment I might wish for one thing only: to turn in their direction, and for a voice deep inside of me to mutter a soft ‘goodbye.’
Harlem posted pictures from the pig slaughter (and the rest of our week in the country). They can be accessed here.
The Transylvania Joem: A Young Peace Corps Volunteer in Romania 