Alright, I have to turn out the lights for a short bit. If all goes well, things will be resettled today and then it’s simply a matter of waiting for Romtelecom to feel like it wants to go ahead and re-establish phone service and fire up the internet connection at some point in time. Ha!

In the previous post about moving, I forgot to mention her wonderful collection of garden gnomes. Here’s my favorite of her lawn decorations. Just look at the sick twisted joy on his face, carrying some sort of smoking pipe as the dog pokes around his crotch…

…what’s that all about!?

In the meantime, how about some interesting video clips from Romania? Enjoy the laughs and surprises in Ameroman’s collection.

Yes! Romania has its own version of that classic deliciousness of Kool-Aid we all know and love. It comes in familiarly-sized little packets at most magazines, alimentars, and grocery stores.

For today’s segue: You are not alone, my friends. I, too, once thought with amusement, “Why are these people calling that kiosk a magazine?” And for a short while I thought it was because the kiosk sold magazines. Eventually, I figured out that some magazines don’t sell magazines, but are still called magazines even if their sales focus is on soft drinks, beer, chips, candy, cookies, fruit, water, bread, and such.

Easy enough, eh? Well, then what’s an alimentara? Aham. Clearly you are a foreigner! The alimentars are distinguished from their magazine cousins because an alimentar sells food while a magazine does not.

Ce sa zici? Well, it’s true that I just told you above that magazines sell milk, fruit juice, and other food. But trust me, there’s a difference. The alimentar sells the same products plus eggs, powered soups, canned tomatoe paste, pasta, and so forth. Also, the alimentara is not usually in a kiosk, but an actual shop whereas a magazine is generally a kiosk, but sometimes a shop.

The alimentara may also sell cigarettes, beer, candy, cookies, and such, but generally doesn’t have magazines for sale. Magazines, the periodical in this case. Now some magazines (the store) sell magazines (the periodical), but usually do not. Except in the case of certain magazines (stores) which specialize in magazines (periodicals) and cigarettes, but then they don’t sell cookies, beer, or chips. Then there are other magazines that only sell ice cream and milk.

Are you confused yet? Good, I won’t bother will trying to help you understand how a magazin alimentar differs from a magazine and an alimentara. That’s a third thing altogether. And I won’t bother explaining why you cannot buy laundry soap, feminine products, or toothpaste outside of the pharmacy — except for certain “large” stores (like Hard Discount in Braşov) or megamarts like Carrefour, Selgros, and Metro.

Now, I know you’re confused. I’ve been working on understanding this for two years now. My suggestion is to call everything an alimentar and just let the natives smile at your status as nebun straine.

The “Kool-Aid of Romania” is actually Frutti made by a Bulgarian company called Kendy. Our neighbors in Bulgaria seem to be making progress in the regional export market just like our neighbors in Hungary. I think it’s great that some nations have the foresight to get out and start competing in foreign markets. In Romania, you can buy countless products manufacturered by companies in regional countries.

However, in those countries, you almost never find Romanian products because most companies in Romania seem very afraid to compete in international markets. Or certainly non-aggressive. For the most part, they seem quite content with competing for a small share of the local market instead of instigating extranational battles in the home countries of those who market here. Maybe their only strategy is an exit strategy: sell out to foreign investors. I see a lot of that happening here, too. More on this topic another time as we’re in danger of another long and lengthy segue.

Frutti is a flavored, powdered soft drink mix very much like Kool-Aid (tragically unavailable here) but not quite as perfect. Still, it’s pretty good. You tear off the top and add it to water. While the package looks the same size as our Kool-Aid No Sugar Added, with Frutti you don’t need to add sugar because it already has an artificial sweetner in it.

Here’s the secret, kids!

You can see on the package it says that one packet makes two liters of drink. Bzzzt, wrong! Granted, the mixing directions are adequate for what most Romanians seem to be used to. You can go to the magazines and buy bottles of “fruit drink” that don’t really taste like fruit, but more like a bottle of colored water that had fruit touching the outside of the packaging at some point in the last decade. Those drinks are not very good. And Frutti will be just as tasteless if you follow the directions.

Nossir, if you want to approximate that gloriously divine palate-dance of Kool-Aid brand Kool-Aid then you must listen to your Romerican. Deviously and surreptitiously disregard the packet instructions. Blaze a new trail, pioneer. Cut the water in half. That’s right! One packet per liter. So, you’re two liter bottle gets double the powder. Only then, will you have a kick in the tastebuds reminiscent of Kool-Aid. It’s delicious.

Warning: Frutti is not sweetened with sugar, but with some kind of chemically derived rat poison based sweetner substance. It tastes good, but you might notice that diety phenylalanine-like twinge in case that bothers some drinkers.

In Romania, I’ve seen Frutti available in Orange, Tropic, Cola, Kiwi, Lemon and Peach. And blueberry. I love the blueberry. What’s your favorite flavor?

The Constitution of Romania provides for freedom of religion by stating (in Title II, Chapter 2, Article 29, Section 1): “Freedom of thought, opinion, and religious beliefs may not be restricted in any form whatsoever. No one may be compelled to embrace an opinion or religion contrary to his own convictions.”

In the 2002 census, 86.8% of the population declared they were members of the Romanian Orthodox Church. In the same year, the Romanian government gave $2,750,000 to the Romanian Orthodox Church (in addition to the untold amounts collected from parishoners) and approved construction permits for 128 new places of worship. And they draw the biggest crowds on Paşte (Easter).

Who runs the show?

Pimp Daddy Toader Arapaşu. Y’all bettah recognize! He’s got more bling bling than Snoop Dogg and Nicolae Guţa combined. He be straight reprezentin’ that eastside communism. Word is bond, playa.

Toady, as his friends call him, was born a poor black child in a village somewhat near the Ukrainian and Moldova borders. As the tenth of 11 children, he was attention starved and irritable for most of his formative years. At the ripe age of 13, he shipped off to a hermitage where may have gotten his first taste of pedophilia.

In 1945, at the age of 30, he graduated from university and got himself a paying gig as night shift lead for a church in Iaşi. The next year he was promoted to assistant manager in Iaşi and started going to university again. During this period, he got a little uppity with his superiors and let his true colors show when be started opening his big yap in support of communism.

Was it philosophy? No, ol’ Toady was merely a scumsucking opportunist who saw the writing on the wall. The Russians were already in control of Romania and he could see that wasn’t going to change, so why not sell out the nation and start saying nice things about Central Committee? True dat, dawg.

So, the church leadership laid the smack down on Toady for licking the boots of the Soviet puppetmasters and justifying the murder of Romanians. They busted his rank back down to night shift lead and Toady was all kinds of pissed of about that. He found some other red-star gangbangers and joined their little posse being run by pro-communist Justinian Marina.

They openly attacked the leadership of the Romanian Orthodox Church in the press, grabbing headlines and getting themselves noticed by the Soviets. It paid off big time, too.

Within a year, the communist party was firmly in control of Romania and the Orthodox Church got an extra large enema. Thousands of priests opposed to communism were imprisoned in labor camps, shipped off to Siberia, or just plain shot. The commies immediately replaced them with the pro-communist shills that had anticipated this political maneuver all along.

Dats right, homies. Our boy Toady was tapped by the communist dictators in 1948 to rise up from rags to riches when Justinian Marina was named the new Patriarch by the new communist government. And just like that, Justinian rewards his communist ally Toady by making him an assistant bishop. Straight up!

See, now, that’s what I’m talkin’ about y’all. If you wanna be a baller, you gotsta learn the fly moves from the bruthas that done come before you. This is how you get power, baby. WWJD? Selling out the nation and start preachin’ slavery. Sho u right, sho u right.

During this time, the new leaders like Justinian Marina and Toader Arapasu persuaded the communist government to dismantle its biggest rival - the Greek Catholic Church. Seeking to consolidate their control over the people via religion, the communist government approved the Romanian Orthodox Church’s absorption of the Greek Catholic Church by law and seized over 2,600 churches from the Greek Catholic Church.

A couple years of show-and-prove, then Toady got promoted again. This time he was responsible for a theological university, so he could indoctrinate all the young christians as to why the communist dictators were good for the people and how christianly the murderous purges were. By 1962, he was promoted to Bishop of Arad.

Now, in 1963, the Cuban Missle Crisis had just been defused, the Vietnam war was going on and Kennedy was about to be shot. The ruskies were looking for new ways to get loyal communist agitators into the United States to help organize people against freedom. They saw a good opportunity in Toady and the communists tried to ship off to America so he could become the leader of the Romanian Orthodox Church over there. They tried to make it look like a legit church leadership appointment and kept his espionage mission on the downlow, but those capitalist pigs in America didn’t buy it. They already knew Toady was an opportunistic creep bent on global communist domination and rejected his visa application.

Some years later, he rose to the ranks of Archibishop a short while before Comrade Marina kicked the bucket. That put Iustin Moisescu in charge of the Romanian Orthodox for about 9 years. After that? Yup, Ceauşescu decided to reward Toady for his effectiveness in helping the persecuting Romanians and ensconcing the dictatorship.

In 1986, village idiot Toader Arapaşu was appointed by the secular communist government to be a religious leader called a Patriarch who wears fancy gold crowns and misleads the faithful masses into believing the communist oppression was actually a good thing.

He got to have a lot of fun, too. Working closely with Ceausescu, the Patriarch got a first hand chance to help destroy many of the churches of Romania, while cheerfully punishing any priest who spoke out in favor of preserving the buildings. In Bucureşti, twenty six wonderful historical buildings with interesting architecture were blown to bits as a result of this willing cooperation. Scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. Weeeeeeeeeeeee, how fun!

Sadly, it all came to a tragic end in 1989 when revolution broke out. Knowing the angry mobs of Romanians would surely lynch him, he dropped everything, resigned from his government appointed position as Patriarch and fled to Sinaia to save his own hide. That’s some mighty powerful guilt, y’all.

Not that he suffered much. In Sinaia, he stayed at the church’s castle where the King or Romania once lived and surrounded himself by a boatload of expensive jewels originally belonging to the Cantacuzino family. He stayed there hiding out until the smoke of 1989 cleared.

Once he realized the revolution was a fake conducted by his buddies in Securitate, he was happy to find out the new dictator Iliescu wanted to keep some continuity for appearances sake. A little backroom bargaining went on and, in 1990, Toady the Patriarch was reappointed by the government again despite criticism of his homosexuality (the result of being manhandled by priests at the age of 13) as hypocritical for a leader of the Romanian Orthodox Church. But money and power count for more, so he kept on wearing the fancy dresses, Liberace jewelry, and funny hats.

How much do you figure that dress cost? Looks like Versace to me.

Eight of the over 2,600 Greek Catholic Churches have been returned. Of the approximately 1,500 Hungarian churches appropriated, less than 100 have been returned. That’s some nice jing jing for Toady and his post-communist communist friends in the Iliescu PSD mafia.

The Patriarch’s website still glorifies the “militant” efforts of Nicolae Balan and others working with the communists to force other churches to “reunify” with the Romanians Orthodox Church. Additionally, it openly laments the events of 1989 which allowed other churches to come back to Romania and decries the right of these churches to spread the word. You can truely see that Toady is a loyal communist even today.

A small group of nuns have been protesting against Arapasu’s past corroboration with Securitate during the communist times. In retaliation, the nuns have been beaten. And that, my American friends, is who was leading most of the Easter ceremonies here in Romania.

When you have freedom of religion, being informed is always nice. Paşte Fericit, Teoctist!

Gather round, my furry friends and let us bask in the glorious day which is Easter. Because Romania is just exiting the Dark Ages and still trying to catch up to the modern world of Western standards, there Easter is predictably late. Last year, it was a few weeks late. This year, it was only one week late. As you can see, Romania is truly making progress raising it’s social standards. Why, if they can just somehow manage to get the date right in 2007, they may qualify for EU ascension.

And what constitutes Easter in Romania?

I’m glad you asked, Timmy. Like an aging man in pre-viagra days, it might build up a little excitement and mystery, but when the actual act happens there’s no much action to speak of and the Big Bang is over pretty quickly. Know what I mean, Timmy? Oh, I guess you’re too young.

On Saturday night, there was a crisp buzz in the air. Lights were on in most all the homes and people were up making noise, which is highly unusual past 9 or 10 in Braşov. It really is a fairly sleepy little town, so you can imagine the electrical pulses vibrating through out the city as people were awake past 10… past 11… What in tarnation?

And then it started.

The cars, cars, cars. Big cars, little cars, quiet cars, loud cars, black cars and white cars. The cars were driving, ever driving, driving onward, driving around, and generally looking for a place to park. Not two or three or ten cars. No! Cars by the hundreds encircling my block near the Saint Nicholas Church.

Althought, it was actually about 11:40pm, so the lighting was a little dark. Here’s what the church must have looked like according to a conceptual sketch.

But then, there lights and such… well, I figure you probably get the basic idea here.

Right. The flood of cars filled all the little side streets, sidewalks, parks,alleys, driveways, fire zones, unimproved lots, and all parked within 1/2 an inch of each other so the occupants had to crawl out through their sunroofs or hatchbacks.

You could hear the murmur and general hubbub of what must have been a couple thousand people, milling around anxiously outside the church spilling into Piaţa Unirii. Soon the church elders came out to greet their gathered fans. In true communist dictator style, they climbed up onto a makeshift stage and spoke out over one of those tinny public announcement systems from the 1940s.

The searching headlights of latecomers passing by and reflecting on the walls gave you an eerie feeling like you were a prison in a concentration camp as you could heard the nazi party leaders not far from you on a stage whipping up the SS troops in a fury just before unleashing them to destroy your ghetto.

It was, my American friends, unreal. Literally, like a uniformed guest of the gulag in Soviet times. Or possibly Saddam Hussein addressing a paid crowd of quivering listeners. A very strange display.

“Christ is arisen!”, shouts the priest. And the crowd yells some memorized line back as part of the dramatic ceremony. Of course, whether or not Jesus Christ was physically ressurected is a matter of some debate among Christian scholars because there are many authentic Christian gospels about Jesus, all of which are equally relevant to the handful approved by early church politicians.

Sorry to be the one to tell you, kids, but before the Romans institutionalized Christianity into a rigid set of money-making rituals involving buying candles and praying to false idols like saints, the original (or gnostic) christians believed in reincarnation, spirtual ressurection, and some other interesting things. It was the Romanization that threw away a fair portion of christian teaching and instead opted for incomplete thoughts combined with a lot of pagan rituals.

But why let honest evaluation of your faith stop you? Afterall, church has never been about truthful examination of life of Christ. It’s been far more profitable to tell people “Believe X” and the mass of zombies nod slowly, regurgitating: “Yes, X must be true.” Clink, clink.

Anyway. So the men in fancy costumes are on stage, talking into microphones, and performing various carnival acts to entertain the adult children. At some point, they declare it safe to eat and the pot luck begins. Oh, yes, some people really were fasting. Many bring food. So, when the man wearing the crown says you can start nibbling, the folks start chowing down. Some places hand out wine, too. I’m telling you, it’s a real party!

And, then… atat. It’s over. Go home.

No one works that Sunday. Stores are all closed, even the convenience stores. Restaurants do not serve food to any one. Even the police seem to have disappeared. The entire place just shuts down.

That’s the end of Easter in Romania. An hour or less in the middle of the night, where the priests put on a show, there’s a brief pot luck, maybe a little merlot (depending on your local priests’ personal drinking habits) and the whole thing is finished.

In America, my memory is quite a bit different. There’s no midnight mass that I recall. No, Easter is a full day event on Sunday. You get a good night’s sleep on Saturday (unless you’re in college, of course) and then wake up at a decent hour on Sunday. Parents either get up before the kids or just distract them, so that someone can go around hiding brightly colored eggs both indoors and outdoors.

The kids are handed a basket and the hunt begins. The younger toddlers stumble along slowly (don’t hide the eggs too hard for these tots) and are genuinely intrigued to be out finding colored eggs behind the bed or next to the flowers. Some of them hold up the eggs triumphantly, proud of themselves, excited to have found the egg that quivers precariously in their trembling hand, enthralled by its bright colors and seeking parental approval. It’s fairly cute to see their reaction.

Older kids tend to be much faster about it, running around and searching all over. You can hide eggs in really creative places for these quick witted youngsters. Normally, you arrange Easter so that these older kids are in small groups. Because they’re sibilings or cousins or neighbor friends, whatever. This creates a sense of competition among them and, boy, do they get all worked up. Everyone trying to collect the largest number of eggs the fastest, so they can be the best egg hunter around, basically to seek parental approval.

Once the eggs are all located, then it’s time for the candy. Kids get presented with another basket but this one isn’t empty. Inside are all manner of chocolate bunnies, marshmallow peeps, and a wide variety of jelly beans. Parents try in vain to prevent their children from overdosing on sugar, but the tykes just go hog wild and scarf down insane amounts of sweets. It’s great!

After that? Well, some folks hop into their cars and head to church for the second time (you know, the people who show up at church on Christmas and Easter for reasons they don’t really know except that their own parents used to do the same thing). The pastor puts on a nice little surmon about the wonders and joys of Jesus and everyone goes home again.

Most folks don’t bother with religious entertainment, but just get right on into brunch so they can beat the church-goers to the restaurants. Thus, the great and magical Easter Brunch begins. (You see, prieteni, Americans eat also, but not because they were artificially starving themselves.) Have some orange juice or champagne. Scarf down some tasty muffins, pastries, or toast with jam. Then it’s on to the eggs, french toast, pancakes, potatoes, or even sandwiches, pot roast, and burritos. Anything goes at Easter Brunch. You can have breakfast, lunch or both. Brunch.

Everyone heads home after that. The kids are near exhaustion from too much sugar. The adults are stuffed from brunch. It’s either time to sit around idly visiting with family or, if you’re not with a large family, then just take a nap. You while away the rest of the day visiting and trying to have a pleasant time.

Children tend to eat more candy every time they wake up from the sugar crash. Rednecks drink beer and have a barbeque. Restaurant workers count their tip money and clean up the dining area so they can go home. Recent immigrants talk to one another trying to figure out why the neighbor ended up with eggs in his yard and pondering how they got to be pink and purple. Chocolatiers roll in mountains of cash. Churches roll in mountains of cash. Politicians try to earn a view votes by appearing on TV with smiling children.

Everyone seems to love Easter. It’s all about chocolate rabbits and colored eggs. Jesus Christ? Yeah, for a select few. But even most church-goers focus on the pagan origins of the spring celebration, because deep down they know that Easter has little to do with Christian dogma.

But you know what they don’t have in America?

They don’t have the famous Romanian Paşte Tree.

Or the lesser known Paşte Bush.

I’m no longer sure how much more I can suffer for you, my dear readers. The burden of sampling local chocolate candy bars and other sweets and treats is starting to have its effect on my psyche. Ever stoic, I pressed onwards.

The Ülker Luna is an interesting Turkish delight available at convenience stores all over Romania. Dare we unwrap its contents?!

It’s got a dark chocolate outer shell which surrounds an adequate layer of rice crispies (crispy puffed rice crisps for all you trademark enforcers) that together make a blanket around some yummilicious wafer cookies filled with a vanilla creme.

Honestly, folks… I’m starting to think that most of the best treats in Romania are products of Turkish invention.