OK.

But I have thought about it recently, since I’ve stumbled onto an intriguing offer to live there well below market rates. Yet another manifestation of Romanian resourcefulness, in fact.

Using a drill bit for a corkscrew is actually clever. I’ll have to remember this one…

The ingenuity was a sight to behold!

(I have always gone for the tried and true method of using a spoon handle to push the cork into the bottle when bereft of a corkscrew. It makes for a slightly unsatisfyingly stop-start pouring process, but nothing that can’t be dealt with)

A more physically involved method but I assure you it works fine:

Take a cotton towel and wrap it against the bottom of the bottle. Hold the bottle with your left hand at a 45 deg towards the ground to make gravity work for you. Hit the bottom of the bottle with your right hand palm. The cork should be half out after a few hits. You can then pry it out.

The downside is the wine gets shaken this way.

I suppose one can be nostalgic and hope it lasts forever. Yet, I prefer to realize I’m enriched to have experienced just a small part of it while applauding the transition to an era where these old ways are no longer required in the advanced world just as we no longer copy books by hand, ride horses from town to town, or gather berries from bushes en masse.

Hard to let go, but some natural progression should not be shunned.

Kim - Do tell! Got a story to share? Yours are usually good…

Mist - I’m sensing a pattern here. Next time you’re shopping at your equivalent of Spec’s, do be sure to forego the boxes and inquire as to whether your provider carries any Romanian bottles. Grape growers in Romania have had centuries of fame for their quality wares, which was only interrupted after WWII.

Andy - Forcing my hand, eh? It is possible to drive the drill bit into the cork to a sufficient depth that you can side-to-side wiggle the cork out of the bottle. I agree it would silly to merely drill a hole.

However, in this particular case, as gallant as the attempt was, it turns out the Fickle Finger of Fate was pointed elsewhere. It became entirely too difficult to apply enough torque to the bit sufficient to penetrate a certain depth. Progress became bogged and new plans were laid. We proceeded to Cristi’s method and from there it was the spoon which eventually prevailed.

Still, had we an actual drill (electric or manual) other than slippery plier stripping away the bit, then it could have worked. Alas, I’ve been forced to reveal the truth.

cristi - Your remarks are biased to a particular hand preference and you should be ashamed of…. oh, oh… yeah, well, we tried the ol’ “bang the bottle” method and managed to overly stir the wine to no avail. In fact, I learned of more than one account from those present of anecdotes whereby the bottle actually broke from the pressure of glass slapping. I gather one must be careful when engaging in this technique. Fortunately, all were sober enough to be cautious.

Alina - Seriously?!?! Hahahaha… that’s gotta be the most girlie story I’ve heard in years. Total classic. I’ve tended to agree, in all but legal terms, with friends who espoused notions that perhaps tests for a driver’s license should require at least one attempt at changing a flat tire, just because it remains common. Although, with the latest generation of run-flat tires, maybe I’ve finally crossed the threshold from young to old.

Still, what a gas. I suppose you felt like a ninny afterward. Ah, but where should one draw the line? I’ve called service before to unlock my doors after locking the keys inside while other people would have fished the lock with a wire hanger.

(Of course, I remind these rib-elbowing smugsters that I had electric locks. Not that it phased them.)

Anyway, a question — what’s with the funky dates on your blog (e.g., “Gerar 21st”)?

Are you telling me I have to learn Dacian now? >:-[ :-)

Fir-ar dracu sa fie…

They are Romanian language names, in so far as I can tell with my limited academic research, which are based on the Romanian/Balkan Latin which existed at the time of the modern calendar creation. My understanding is that these names were used for centuries.

Many people refer to these as now being “merely folknames” or some other hogwash. I’m a sucker for Romanian originality so I rail against the ignorant would-be authorities of language and insist on using the correct Romanian language names for months.

In fact, the “modern” names are not modern at all, but quite old. To boot, they are merely Slavicized terms introduced by an Orthodox Church (possibly owing ecclesiastical allegiance to Russia or some such logic) which effectively created a loss of Romanian language and, therefore, in my mind, some loss of cultural heritage.

I’d love to learn more, frankly, but resources are hard to come by. I doubt I have the big picture entirely backwards, although I am no doubt missing many interesting details.

Alina - So, I’ll take it upon myself to dispense advice you never asked for. Consider possibly picking a weekend day to just try it once, when you have some help around. Why? So, you’ve at least had one practice which you can remember in the event you really need to take care of business.

Who wants to be stuck in the middle of nowhere as things grow cold and dark? Practicing once on a weekend could take 5 to 15 minutes and you’d be better prepared.

Of course, being a hideous behemoth such as you are, I bet you could lift up the car with just one monsterous pinky and forcibly eject the wheel with just a single menacing glare accompanied by your beastly snarl.

Croatians do something similar, I think. At least, some use Slavic root words for the months instead of the usual cognate Latin roots.

See? And you were pooh-poohing your Romanian skills… :D Băăăă, o să înveţi limba asta mai bine decât 99% străinilor, cât mai timp stai acolo in tara-mumă… :-)

Oare Alina e aşa gigantică? Iiip… Ei bine, acum noi americanii aşteptăm să vină românii. :-)

Mi-e foame. E prânz. Mănânc înainte să vină tavalugul românesc. Pa!

But I hope our Romanians here can shed light on where it comes from?

Alina - Do as I say or I”ll put “the gypsy’s curse” on you… heheh.

I actually did that as a child to cure some bad dreams and fears (I think, I don’t really remember the reason) :P

Thank you for the good laugh mate. You have been forever linked on my blog just for this post.

… if they, or their parent/grandparent would have believed the ship ticket to US was too expensive, they might have become Rumanians … those parts of Rumania South and East of the Carpathians and are not steep mountains were colonized during the XIXth century … then the second generation colonists put in the 1866 constitution, in the first article, that “no foreign populations should be allowed to settle” … no use, it seems, since during a 1899 census it was showed that more than half of the Bucharest inhabitants (about 800,000) were foreign born (Italians, Germans, Jews, Poles, Hungarians, Bulgarians: the Italians had the majority, then the Jews and the Germans). Bucharest is still the second biggest Hungarian city in the world (about 200,000).

The famous Doina of Eminescu (himself the son of a second generation Rumanian father of Serbian origin and of a Ruthenian mother) was accurate. Even now, it’s hard to find a Rumanian that does not remember a grandparent or grand-grandparent that … was not of pure Roman/Dacian stock.

Of course, this is not spoken much now, since in theory “ne tragem din Daci si din Romani”. Still, it would be interesting to see some fellows dig out the papers of their grandparents, and ask for “repatriation” :D … my guess, based on … guesswork backed by suppositions about the degree of inbreeding the immigrants tolerated, is that about half of Rumanians could claim citizenship some place else.

Regarding the Palinca argument, however, I have to agree with the people you quoted : the ”corporate” one is complete rubbish while the home-made one is 100% natural (if you’re not naive enough to buy it from some countryside folk that actually turned the whole thing into a business).

My husband and I have been following your site for the past year. We just moved to Brasov from the states back in September. We loved your story about the palinca. We had an experience our first weekend here when we took the microbus over to Iasi to visit with some friends. On the way back we sat next to a Romanian couple that talked with us the whole way back to Brasov- with them knowing no English and us knowing small amounts of Romanian. They shared their homemade wine with us-from an Dorna apa minerala bottle.

Multumesc!

Dylana and Michael

Seems pritty gloomy, doesn’t it?
Oh, but when you think about the Americans who won’t ever bother growing anything themselves, instead they’ll buy their vegetables from Australia, will have them washed in Norway, packed in India, an imported from Tansania…..hat is to cut it short…..still think that the ones grown in Romanian balconies are fresher….

The thing about plastic bags: it’s caled recycling an is the very thing you keep preaching about to everyone - but you won’t hear anything about it - remember Kyoto Protocol….???

The thing about water being cut …well it’s surely not too bad if people are still prepared from last time when it happened…several years ago, as you say…still…it never happened this to me, and surprisingly enough I have ben living in a large city for over 30 years no…well… I am yet to learn about it…from an American!

And stop complaining about people’s ingeniosity you so sarcasticly illustrate…did you enjoy the wine?

However, I’m annoyed by “Emil”’s intervention who came up with fictional arguments taken from some hungarian or jewish pulp literature book about the history of …well..the first people of Europe (us). “Chiar eu” is probably very accurate regarding “Emil”’s backroud, but Emil can as well be half vulgarian and half hungarian from his father’s side. Such blockheads like “Emil” and the insanities that they cast should not be taken seriously.

Danno, what corruption are you talking about? Any fields in particular? I can provide you with such a thing, but you have to get in touch with me. It’s quite riscky, though… But why do you need one in the 1st place? Wanna steal ya’ daddy’s car and take ya’ gal on a ride?