It’s Christmas time and there is much joyful larking about.

In Romania, it means your home gets a special visit from an honored guest.  Over three different Craciunuri, I’ve received such unexpected noctural knockings twice.  Here’s how it works:

You’re at home peacefully relaxing with the faint inklings of song in the far distant background noise, when the bothersome sounds of a barbarian at the gates disrupt you.

The urgent rapping at your uşa repeats frequently as you scurry to open the door fearing news that your elderly neighbor may have passed away.  Sliding to a stop before your socks carry you into the wall, you fumble with the keys to unlock the entrance.

Flinging open the portal: there he is!  A sparkly-eyed man with a broad grin across his face nods at you and sucks in a large volume of air.  And, so, the singing begins.

A Gregorian-style song erupts from the large cavern above his chin and the stranger thrusts a painted picture of baby Jesus into your face as though it were a sheild warding away any sinful reprisals.

With the force of God safely holding you at bay, the man begins stepping into your abode without so much as a welcome or a wink.  The bold maneuver secures his ability to take control of the situation.

Fait accompli.

The faux franciscan hymnal incantation spews forth a melodious mumbo jumbo, calling upon the Hindu-sized parthenon of Orthodox deities — most of whom are cleverly disguised as mere “saints” with demigodly powers of protection — to both bless your home and frighten away evil spirits.

The showmanship of a shaman.  The words of a witch.  Your misperception of a priest.

At the conclusion of the ceremony, a substantially bulkier man steps out of the shadows and imposes his figure across the threshold of your home with hairy palm outstretched to receive the expected offering.

You see, while the man who is pretending to be a priest may have sang the song to protect you from the Devil and help you win the lottery in the coming year, the ritual affords him a certain dignity of distance from gelt of the temporal world.  A man of God should not perform Acts for compensation, but because the Lord commands him so.

Like so much an emporer’s new clothes.

Thus, the thugly sidekick steps in to give baby Jesus a helping hand in collecting payment from the superstitious rabble as well as coerce the reluctant victim who will invariably buckle under one level of pressure or another.

Cough up the dough, Jack.  It’s all part of the magic trick.

Granted, I’m a fair bit recalcitrant, so my reaction is completely different.  And evolving toward a new purity.  For example, in Braşov, I simply closed the door in the face of the so-called priest in his 30s wearing the şmecherii uniform of blue jeans and black leather jacket.

Whereas tonight, here in the Decebal cartier of Bucureşti, just before closing the door, I shared the season’s newsflash with Popa: “Dumnezeu e mort.”

And already the laughs begin…

Sarbatori fericite, fraţi. This Craciun, what should you buy for the loved one who already has everything? Why, the implausible, of course.

Because everyone should want their, umm… piersica… to smell like peaches.

Parfum de piersici pentru piersica dumnevoastra.

Fabricat in Romania. Vă mulţumim mult, Comceh!

Persoanelor sub varsta de 18 ani le este strict interzis accesul in locuri unde se servesc bauturi alcoolice.

Adica, daca esti un criminal legal… deci…

Truth is, I think it’s great in the sense of freedom. Despite the ubiquituous signs indicating alcohol will not be sold to persons under 18, no one is really bothering to enforce it.

Seems that most Romanians are pleasantly self-regulating in this social context. You don’t see kids out drinking illegally, but parents and older siblings feel comfortable asking a teen to responsibly pick up adult products.

In the sense that people outside Bucureşti seem to tend to trust each other, it’s a healthy sign.

When will you change? When will you change your neighbors? When?

In the US, the traditional way to pay for metro bus fare is when you board the vehicle. You enter only from the front door near the driver, not the rear door. If you have a pre-paid monthly pass, you swipe it. Otherwise, you put cash into the collection device until it beeps happily. Exact change preferred.

Pretty simple, eh? Get on the bus. Pay.

The potential for any fiduciary shenanigans is severely curtailed by the absence of human exchange. Your bus pass was prepaid on the internet. If you’re paying cash, you toss coins into a machine that rapidly counts the total value. Ding!

Now, I walked you through that for the sake of contrast.

In Romania, the foreigner is often puzzled by the rituals of public transportation.

Tiny, non-descript signs indicate bus stops, though non-locals will never see such signs. The best bet for a traveler is to locate any large collection of loitering citizens. They’re either hitchhiking or waiting for a bus. Either way, it involves wheels.

If it does turn out to be a bus stop, the ride protocol initiates with jostling in close proximity. Children will rush between your legs. Grown men will shove you from behind. Old women will step on your feet as they slip past you in the shuffle. It’s all out combat as the bus rolls to a stop.

Tourists may note, between pinballesque shovings, there are multiple fronts in the war. Any place which might conceivably be a door is bumrushed by the crowds. Front, back, even center if the bus has 3 doors. Any port is fair game.

The primary objective of those outside the bus is to block any passengers from exiting the vehicle. By not letting any people get off the bus, entrants hope to claim a free seat.

Sound backwards? Not really. There is a tactical imperative to the strategy of obstruction. The bunicas, who prove Darwin’s theories by standing point guard on the surging would-be riders, communicate telepathically in order to coordinate a simultaneous backward lean.

Having been given 4 to 6 mm of leeway, the outbound passengers stampede ashore with the force of their exist knocking back the throngs of boarding people. A mosh pit breaks out as the two sides seasaw back and forth.

When the majority of debarked (that’s right! not everyone makes it off successfully), then the chaos flops forward precariously. They key is to leap in the air about a half meter from the bus, just in time for the people behind you to give you a good thrust. The resulting trajectory should arc you more or less inside the autobus.

Don’t bother looking for seats. There’s no way you had the experience or stamina to manhandle the cattle necessary to claim victory. They’re all taken. Age and gender and civility have no place here. First come, first serve. We have communism to thank for this equality.

Of course, you won’t be quite the last to board. When the driver grinds the transmission into a crunchy first gear, the ancient beast belches its’ displeasure and lurches forward under the strain of being overburdened.

You’ll notice the doors don’t necessarily close prior to motion as it makes good sport for passengers to bet on which of the persons running down the block in your general direction might have the athletic ability to fling themselves at the moving target and find some edge to dig their fingers nails into to keep from falling out to their death.

Alas, the show comes to an end. Collect your winnings or pay your debts, accordingly. We move onto the next stage: the realization you’ve been outfoxed by the clever folks on the side of the bus who do not have 4000 degrees of solar heat magnified by window glass. You’ll learn to appreciate the scientific process of maximum cloth saturation as you sweat like şaorma on the spit.

Click, click. Turn and notice most of the adults (not teens) are sliding ribbons of paper into a mechanical hole punch. Ah, self validation of their tickets. The honesty system, in effect. Afterall, the odds of being caught by the wily and elusive ticket inspector on one of his/her rare trips aboard the bus are slim to none. Next to impossible.

Panic! You didn’t buy a ticket, did you, foreigner?

“Ticket?”

Oh, yeah… no one told you how that works. See, in random locations scattered throughout the city (but never where you happen to be) are invisible salespersons selling tickets through portals from the 5th Dimension. Your challenge is sense the magnetic disturbance in the air caused by the presence of undetectable bus ticket kiosks, then take the inverse derivative of the cosign value of relative variance from the mean which will give you the WGS84 latitude…

Right. So teens sneak on the bus knowing they’re unlikely to get into trouble. Adults tend to pay for tickets out of some sense of civic duty. No order is really enforced or promoted. Your crime of being born elsewhere will result in your being a public transportation scofflaw in a foreign land.

What a jerk, you’ve become. You and all the rest of the disrespectiful tourists from just about any other part of the world. Worthless as a dog’s fleas leeching off the rest of society.

Travel tip: Wanna get around town easily and cheaply? Look for any dark box bearing an unspectacular sign with the word RAT in blue. Find that RAT and you’ve found the magical happyland where tickets are sold. Now, if you don’t speak Romaneste at all, buying said tickets will be the most entertaining aspect of your bus experience…