Tragedy most foul and wicked has befallen Casa Romer!can.

A terrible and grievous loss that clocked my bean sideways like a ten ton hammer yesterday. My first reaction was denial, followed by shock, and then plunged desperately into rabid panic. I couldn’t even bring myself to post about it because each time I reached for the keys, I began to choke up, losing focus on what the monitor was saying and threatening an electrical short from the torrent of tears. Even now, my normally nimble fingertips tremble and quiver as I relay to you this tale of woe.

Perched upon my uncomfortable chair, slavishly hunched over the laptop and further twisting my crooked spine, in an effort satisfy your undying hunger pangs for yet another impeccable masterpiece of contemporary literature, I rotely put myself through the familiar motions of inserting a USB cable into the port eagerly anticipating that golden moment when I could unleash a veritable treasure trove of carefully crafted pixel parcels.

“Hark, hark!,” harkened he, as me unto thee.

Forsooth, what praytell is this madness yonder? A strange and curious sight to see such an erratically pulsating beacon. A singular evil personified in the green eye of a demon! Heresy! Blasphemy! Oh, why, Lord, doth thou smite me as thine enemy?

Yes, my friends, gather round as I orate and cling to your lucky charms lest the beast slip through ethernet, catching you unaware with its virile infection. Are you sitting there, reading this, and wondering wtf? Then you begin to see the damage caused by this trauma. For it is not I am who am crazy: it is I who am mad! Oh, my beloved ice cream bar…

Alas, the operating system didn’t seem to indicate anything had been connected. So, I took a look down the lengths of the black wire to find my primary Nikon dSLR was flashing morse code through the green LED. S.O.S. Blink, blink. No wink. Lies, damn lies! There must be something wrong cu calculatoare mea. Cum sa nu? Nothing could possibly be wrong with my perfect baby and most loved material possession.

I disconnected and reconnected. There’s that hideous light again! How it mocks my sanity, vexing my inner peace. Ah, it must be the battery. It seems to me there was plenty of power on it, but let’s just change it really quick. Still blinking? Okay, let’s change out the CF card and try a different one. Huh? This can’t be happening.

Wait a minute, hold up a second. I think I remember reading about this like… what… three years ago? A certain number of unlucky souls had purchased the Nikon model when it was very first released, but found themselves the unwitting victims a cruel and unusual fate when they found their cameras suddenly frozen in a blinking green light hell.

OMG! NOT ME!! NoooOOOoooOooOOooooo!

Quick, quick, quick! Launch the web browser. Hurry up for Krishna’s sake! Google, you better not fail me this time. Okay, okay. Let’s see what do I search for? I don’t believe this. It’s still blinking. Ah, there’s the search results. Oh, just reading their stories gives me visions of the twisted faces of horrified ghosts of green blinking lights past. There’s gotta be a solution, right? I mean, it’s Nikon… not some flim-flam brand. I never had trouble way back then, why now? Unde este the answer?!

Anecdote after anecdote bore witness to a phenomena I’d long since ignored. Afterall, my black angel had been purring like a kitten since the day I very first took it out of its birthpackage and cradled it to my bosom in ecstacy. Ah, the memory of that moment remains burned into my consciousness as permanently as the tattoos on my skin.

Even though my particular bundle of joy has been performing flawlessly these past three years or so, there were others who were not so fortunate. But I had no idea. In the past, no matter what digital cameras I had owned, I regularly paid attention to the online communities of digital photography fanatics in a never ending game of keeping up with the joneses and participating in unhealthy binge consumerism. That all changed once I owned this glorious machine. I abandoned the technobabble of the geeky crowds of faux photographers. I was head over heels in love, needing only to get away from the computer and run off with my darling.

My precious.

Yet the time-bomb has detonated. In front of my very eyes, she died. A blinking green light of death.

Hastily, I pawed through the original packaging she originally arrived in all those years and miles ago. Everything was in perfect order. Original plastic wrappers, cardboard and foam molding bits, ancient advertisements and a warranty. Of course, the warranty is only valid in the United States, not in Romania. And I’m well past the 1 Year coverage offered.

Did I get my $1500 worth in the short time we had together? That and much more, from some points of view. But am I furious? To the point of collapse.

Perhaps now you can imagine why I didn’t write yesterday. I sat around, aimlessly trying new batteries, new cards, pressing reset buttons, plugging into different USB slots and then alternating by going back online to read the tortured cries of other victims from yesteryear, like some kind of manic depressive running a razor blade over my wrist just as a tease.

As the night set in, we held an Irish wake wherein beer was consumed as I stared as her lifeless body somberly. Once my head hit something soft, I floated into a magic world where a gorgeous fairy came to heal me with her soft touch and make it all not true. Peeling crusties off my eyes the next morning, I leapt out of bed and raced back into the other room like a child on Christmas hoping to find the camera bursting into laughter, slapping its knee and saying, “Duuuude! You should have seen the look on your face! Hahaha, I got you so good!”

What is it that gives me the strength to write today? It might be the fact that I later found out Nikon (after much pressure from a substantial number of disappointed owners of failed units) has issued a service advisory stating that they will repair the D70 Blinking Green Light of Death problem at no charge even after the warranty has expired, if you’ll simply make the arrangements for them to operate on your love.

At least, I’ve still got another Nikon dSLR as a backup camera. She’s a smokin’ beauty! Talk about trading your wife in for a younger model; whoo-boy, lemme tell ya. I feel energized every time I touch it, even if I am sentimental for the broken one. Plus, there’s always the two other film-based cameras gathering dust on the shelf over there…

Once in a while, though not frequently, a new player comes on the Braşov scene who really does merit some attention. A piece of snail mail spam lands in your bloc mailbox announcing the latest thing. You start out a little skeptical about the new kid on the block, but at some point curiosity gets the best of you. Fingering the paper gently, you’re tempted to throw it out. It’s kept — nay, discarded — until an intoxicating evening of Mondial Bere weakens your resolve.

Now, it’s well-known that Blue Viking is the king of pizza delivery in Braşov. They’re famous from Poiana to Saturn, from Schei to the gara. With non-stop delivery, tasty ingredients, and reasonable prices, Blue Viking is the choice of locals all across Braşov. Pork loving tourists should try the vulcano pizza.

A select few competitors offer delivery during the day and evening. One or two tried non-stop, but failed. BV in BV is pretty much the only game in town for your late night laziness. Until now.

I’m not sure what a “Swedish kebab” might be, but free delivery and free salad can sound pretty hard to pass up depending the time of day and your particular state of mind! Clearly, when Alexander Graham Bell invented of the telephone he was thinking of pizza livrare.

Since I wasn’t alone, a single pizza couldn’t possibly be enough food. The fata working the phone at Swedish House seemed to have some grasp as to what her job might entail, unlike the horribly inconsistent employees of Blue Viking who may or may not have any clue what in the world you’re talking about depending on whether or not they’ve managed to get any sleep during their 48 shift.

Delivery went fairly smooth. The very young man (“Excuse me, but does your mother know you’re out tonight? And whose driving license did you steal?”) managed to find his way upstairs with a complete order intact, unlike the often-forgetful employees of Blue Viking. Three pizzas with correct ingredients, including the sauce packaged on the side as requested, plus the three free salads. Nice start.

The salads were well-received. They were actually fresh! (Non-locals take note: your salads here will not always be fresh.) A bit of varza with thyme, perhaps dill, and some other unidentified ingredients. Crunchy and rather tasty, albeit small.

Shall we move on to pizza? Check out the standard-fare, middle-of-the-road margarita.

Meh. Pretty basic vittles, nothing fantastic. It was the exact typical size of nearly all Romanian pizzas. It had marinara sauce and cheese (sporadically strewn about). The dough was probably the thinnest I’ve had in Romania. Given how little pizza dough comes on the average pizza, I’ll leave to imagine exactly how paper thin this particular variety was. Yet… the taste of the crust was quite okay.

Quick segue, since I know you’re all wondering, to figure out exactly what is a Swedish kebab. It looks to come in four different varieties, including chifla (my American friend: think of a large fluffy hamburger bun) and lipie (my American friend: lebanese flatbread). Frankly, the prices were very decent considering the free delivery. Too bad I don’t eat carne de porc.

Now that I have you distracted, perhaps you’d care to see the rest of the menu? It’s got really great selection, y’all. A far superior range of choice for you to mull over while judging a round of beerbased competive drinking.

I’m confident my family would attest to my long-standing proclivity toward ordering from the exotic end of the menu, with rare exception. I may not be Alton Brown, but I can usually spot what might be good and what might be bad for many palattes tempted to try the unfamiliar.

Take, for example, this other concoction made by Swedish House. I mean these guys call themselves a pizza and kebab joint, right? What could be better, then, than combining the two into one? You betcha! Order yourself the “Swedish House” pizza. It’s more or less a margarita with a kebab on top. Pizza with pork kebab meat, red onions, fresh lettuce, black pepper, a kebab sauce, and cartofi prajiţi, of course.

Apparently, the amazing-looking pizza was quite okay. The kebab sauce didn’t work too well for the particular consumer, in this case. Nonetheless, it seemed a successful amalgamation of two fastfoods. Ah, but I don’t eat pigs, so I couldn’t be 100% sure. No, my adventurous notions took me in an entirely different direction.

Oh, yeah, baby! The “Amore” pizza from Swedish house was an absolutely brilliant combination of chicken, peanuts, bananas and curry sauce. Hoooo, boy, I tell you whut! It’s gotta be, without a doubt, one of the best pizzas ideas I’ve ever had the pleasure of handling. In fact, it may be the best. I certainly plan to try re-creating it at home.

I can still taste it. Fantastic.

Tourists to Braşov should definitely weigh carefully between choosing to order between local hero Blue Viking and the creative geniuses at Swedish House (who, if you noticed, use blue viking imagery in their print collateral, har har). If you have the time and inclination, do both. We’ll cover the goodness of Blue Viking another time, here at Romerican, but one should keep in mind that Swedish House if very price-competitive, offers free salads, better employees, and more exciting choices.

Did I mention the curry sauce was divine? You better believe I can get excited about curry when it’s done perfectly. Some kind of curry masala-esque type thing. Mmmm. Gorgeous. Authentic. Surprising!

So, the next day, when I remembered there was some sos leftover, I quickly figured out a way to enjoy it.

My Bulgarian cat statue overlooked a scrumptuous meal comprised of scrambled eggs in sos curry. Fab! Some lovely whole wheat toast slathered in homemade currant jam. Due to a shortage of proper orange juice, I substituted a tall, cold glass of Mirinda (Americans, think: orange creamsicle). Obviously, curry eggs was the highlight. A nice reminder of the brilliance I’d tasted just the night before.

Did I mention how a few weeks back, I heard an extremely loud explosion?

Like any rumormongering nosey neighbor, I immediately bolted for the window in a panic like any overly paranoid terrorist-fearing American would do on a Yellow day. Opening the big glass, thrusting my head out, and looking down to the left. Jumping junipers, Batmanlikenoncopyrightviolatingperson! Fire and brimstone, smoke and mirrors!

Yes, my friends, some poor guy’s old car had literally erupted into an engine fire almost directly below my apartment. While many of us merely gaggled from afar, a couple folks in close proximity leapt into action, fetching buckets and hoses. The driver was safely out of the vehicle and the blaze was extinguished.

Two minutes of yammering with strangers while wiping profuse sweat from his brow, then the 60-plus year old driver pushed the car, by himself, down the alley and into an adjacent cul-de-sac nub. After another five minutes, the police and firemen began to show up whereupon they began their task of writing up an official report, lecturing the hapless and disheveled driver, and trying to get girls’ phone numbers.

Weeks later, I snagged this for y’all due to the kindness of cineva for not removing the defunct scrapmetal.

Dan the Man asks:

Anyway, i haven been paying attention so could u tell me what brought u here?

The mystery surrounding my ascension over the Romanian landscape has not yet been revealed! In the meantime, you can visit any one of the 9 billion ubiquitous “sports bets” shops within 3 meters of your current location in order to place your wager on the popular speculation of your choice.

Leading theories include:

• I’m on the run from the law
• Women here are a rare mix of beautiful, kind, and intelligent
• Beer is very cheap
• The CIA needs a strategic toehold in Transylvania
• I threw a dart at a map and it landed here
• Ba’al commands me to establish a gnostic cabal near the Black Sea
• A roaming band of gypsies kidnapped me
• My marijuana monopoly makes mad mountains of money
• I just need a little help finding my keys, so I can drive home
• I’m not really in Romania, but only pretend to be
• I’m not really Romerican, but just picked up a Texan accent from John Wayne movies
• It gives me a chance to experience life without water
• Bulgaria wouldn’t take me
• With a modest nestegg, I’ve retired early in an environment where my finances stretch far
• I’m a talent scout for Google’s new offices in Romania
• Insanity
• As a devout Christian, I am here in the service of the Lord through an outreach ministry helping underprivilged children find salvation and dignity despite their orphanage or street urchin origins because we’re all equally loved under the watchful eyes of Jesus Christ the Saviour, amen.

What are the other theories running rampant around rumormills? You tell me!