GOGOSARI

GOGOSARI


I can't find the English word for it but they're type of pepper - sometimes they are spicy - though (as Mark would say) if you ask the vendor "are they spicy?" They will look at you with pleading eyes and the sense of offensive words being said and reply "mine? no! never!" When you find a spicy one! They are spicy!! And of course, he sold you spicy gogosari...

In a 5 Liter jar (this was all we could find in Sighisoara- we went all over looking for jars) - this is probably about 2 kilos of gogosari. We had so much left over that we have to buy ANOTHER jar! AND YES! I will have yet another HUGE jar of pickles peppers. Actually my jar is small compared with most Romanians that make at least between 15-20 Liter jars - though most make even MORE! They have barrels of gogosari and pickles!

Mark and I stayed up until midnight making gogosari and pickles! I went to bed and could feel my hands were burning - I guess we have some spicy gogosari. In another 8 weeks, I'll let you know!

This is a picture of the gogosari before going into the jar when I cleaned them out - you have to get out all of the seeds and wash them.

Pickle Report!

The SECOND JAR of pickles was made last night!

I used 7 ardei iute (HOT PEPPERS!!!) in a 5 Liter jar!!! I probably used 3 kilos of cucumbers (that's about 6.5 lbs!).

THAT IS SOOO INSANE!

Will I ever eat this many pickles???

The garlic turned blue almost immediately! We don't know why the garlic turns blue- we are guessing from the heat.

The first jar seems to be doing fine but in an argument between Mark and Claudia's method- I have given over to making the cucumbers pickle for 8 weeks instead of just the 10 days that Mark thought was all they needed.

THAT'S A SPICY PICKLE!!!!

Mark Tudose

Meet Mark!

Mark is a wood carver extraordinaire! He learned this traditional Romanian trade from his grandfather. Mark's family are all wood carvers, including his mother and his sisters.

Mark is also an opera singer, like his father, but he decided to focus on wood carving.

Mark came to Sighisoara this year and discovered how much he liked the place and decided to stick around for a bit and hopes to develop a business and a school to train underprivledged kids in Sighisoara how to use a traditional craft to make a living.


Mark keeps telling me- you know- I don't just carve spoons! and I said - I know! But for him, it is "Spoon Season!"

Mark's spoons are representative of different styles from different regions in Romania:
Maramures-


















If you would like to contact Mark about his objects or order objects from him, you can send him an email!



Mark Tudose - "Mester Popular"
mark_tudose@yahoo.com

APPLE PIE!

APPLE PIE! MMMmmm!!!

I made my first apple pie for the season! Many more pies to come! Before I put it in the oven I showed it to Mark and he said "It's so, soooo, American!" He said it was just like on TV commericals! That means I have made it!!!

In addition - I worked on my apple peeling skills and and discovered that I could peel an apple and make a big long curly peel!

And unlike my pie cooking with Liz Toole, I did not add that hint of garlic to my apple pie. The first time I made an apple pie, I gave Liz my wood cutting board to peel and cut the apples. After finishing almost all the apples Liz commented that they had an unusal smell. Which we discovered was the smell of garlic from the cutting board! And thereafter, became my secret ingredient. Just a hint of garlic!

COOKIES!!!

COOKIES!!!!

I got a little crazy with baking and learning how to cook since I arrived in Romania. So here are some of my creations!!! Including Valentine's day surgar cookies and Christmas sugar cookies.

This is me icing the Christmas cookies last year. Liz Toole and I have spent many hours icing cookies. And making Liz's fameous brown icing! Yes, when you put all the colors together- you get brown!

Then Hoops & Yoyo were sneaking around my Valentine's day cookies!

PICKLES!!!!

PICKLES!!!!!

Mark and I made pickles! Actually it is Mark's receipe and he is the one that knows how to make pickles but I learned and now I can pickle like crazy!

So- this is a 4 liter jar with about 2 kilos of pickles in it.

We used a lot of things that I'm not sure I even know the name for but ingredients include: garlic, horse raddish root, some other kind of root, dill (the thing that looks like a weed floating around), mustard seeds, pepper, vinegar, a very special kind of salt.

Mark taught me the process and I might make another jar this weekend - it's pickling time! The second jar might have hot peppers!!!! And I might make some gogosari this weekend!

WAKE UP AND SMELL THE PICKLES- that is my plan tomorrow morning!

Under Da Sea, Under da sea!Darling it's better,
down were it's wetter,
take it from me!

I had a wonderful time in Baska on the island of Krk during my vacation to Croatia. I spent 4 days at the beach in Baska! I got bit by fish! They're vicious!

Here we are under the shade of our umbrella, sitting seaside, with nothing else to do!

Dalida & Zafir

10 September 2005

In September 2005, I travelled to Rijeka, Croatia to visit my friend from the Central European University in Budapest. I hadn't seen Dalida in over 5 years! We kept in contact about our lives through email and happily I was able to be at her wedding.

On September 10th, Dalida & Zafir Rittossa became husband and wife. They had a beautiful wedding with so many receptions and a house full of people each night leading up to the wedding. It was a wonderful experience for me and I was so glad to have shared those moments with them. Of course, it was a new and different experience for me in some ways!

Dalida wanted a small and relaxed wedding in which they could celebrate with their friends and enjoy the day to its fullest. While it was so elegant it was easy to feel like you knew everyone and were welcomed by everyone.

The wedding started around 5:00pm with a reception on the balcony of the Bonavia Hotel in the center of Rijeka. It was such an elegant setting... an outdoor terrace with cream color umbrellas shading the dark wood, lacquered surroundings panels of wood. In the far distance is the Adriatic Sea, the blue of the sea and sky set against the cream umbrellas.

First Zafir came to greet the guest, handsomely dressed in a three-piece suit with dark roses. His nervous anticipation, waiting for Dalida to appear revealed a sweet, tender romantic man waiting to be joined with the woman he'd been waiting forover 10 years.

Then, finally, the moment when Dalida appeared! She was stunning and radiated with such joy. She took everyone's breath away with how beautiful she looked. Joy spread over everyone when her eyes met with Zafir's.

Together they greeted their guests. This is traditional for Croatian weddings, unlike American weddings were the groom doesn't see the bride until she walks down the isle. Dalida choose to not have some traditions like the groom buying the bride or hiding the shoe. She said when Zafir saw her for the first time in her wedding dress it was such a special moment.

The wedding party made the way up the stairs to the City Hall where the ceremony was held. Again, the words beauty and elegance can only be used to discribe the setting of the City Hall. That and slippery floors with lots of rice!

The ceremony began about 7:00pm and was short, simple and sweet. Names were signed in books, rings were exchanged as well as a kiss.


Secretly! Zafir didn't know that Dalida had hatched a plan to have her friend Dejana softly play the guitar during the ceremony. Zafir had once expressed how nice it would be to have somone play guitar during their wedding. Dalida got Dejana - with all her stage fright- to not only play but to sneak herself and the guitar to the City Hall and completely surprise Zafir. It was a very sentimental and romantic touch.

Then they were married! For me, it was a special moment and it made me so happy to see Dalida and Zafir together. They greeted all their guests in a line, I was speechless.



While we waited for them to take about half a million photographs in the City Hall because it's such a georgous place - and who can blame them! I had the job to distribute rice - for throwing rice. I don't really know what the significance is of throwing rice, maybe it's just fun! Throwing stuff is fun! And man! Did we throw a lot of rice! The fun just didn't stop! Sonja took the 1/2 kilo of rice I had left over during the reception and got the key to the honeymoon sweet and showered their nuptual bed with rice! I'm sure that was fun to discover at 5:00am!

We danced! We ate! We ate so much! I couldn't believe that the food just kept coming. The Bonavia Hotel was exceptional - both staff and environment. It was elegant and well-thought-out. Dalida made beautiful decorations and center piece arrangements. Each table had a gold fish (that we all tortured) in a fresh, large bowl with a rose floating on top. The fish actually lived (no harm was done to the fish).

Congratulations Dalida and Zafir!
I wish you a life time of happiness together and that your love and happiness will grow and be contageous to everyone around you!

Wedding Preparations at Dalida's!

The few nights leading up to the wedding, the house was full every night with friends and stangers (like the building supervisor), everyone was celebrating!


Dalida's friends came from Rome, Budapest, Chicago (or Sighisoara to be fair), and all over Croatia. It was a very culture mix of people and very interesting group.

ROMANIAN TRAFFIC JAM - Michele lived with a host family that had a cabin called Diham in the Bucegi Mountains. One weekend in March, we stayed up there with Maria and Gigi, the grandparents of the family.

We took a very perilous hike through the snowy mountians with our guide constantly telling us that our destination was "immediat!" Only to reach it about an hour and a half later! Michele kept imagining in her mind a medical rescue mission for me because we literally walked along a narrow path that was only a foot-step wide with at least a meter of snow under us. At one point I couldn't see the path anymore and I told Nicu it was gone. All there was just a tree and the edge of the mountian. He said- oh simple- you grab the tree and swing around it!

The next day, I was romanced by young guys that came down on their caruta! Maria saw one of the boys talking to me and she immediately grabbed him by the ear making his face turn bright red and started yelling (in Romanian) "MY GIRLS! THESE ARE MY GIRLS!!!!" They offered me a ride on their caruta back to the main trail - you have to hike about 30-40 minutes by foot to reach the cabin. But I declined since carutas don't have breaks and there was a lot of snow and ice.

At the end we got caught in a little Romanian traffic jam!

ROMANIAN TRADITIONS - CANDY
Everybody loves candy!!!!! These are traditional Romanian candies made by Jeno, who I think is a real-life version of Jepedo from Pinnicho.

With my wicker basket and a bunch of pastic bags, Wednesday and Saturday mornings I go to the piata to do my shopping. The piata is my favorite place here because it is so full of colors, varieties, oddities, people, chaos, opportunity, optimism....

So here are some things on my shopping list (and some NOT planned for things!).

Vinete - (or egg plant) Romanians use egg plant to make salate de vinete and zacuzca as well as other dishes. You can always smell when someone is roasting egg plant - it has an amazing deep, dark aroma like tabacco.

Ardei Iute - (or hot peppers!!!) YIKES! I'm addicted! You can buy them by the kilo- can you imagine eating a kilo (2.2 lbs) of hot peppers! I just buy the little bunches of 8-10 for for about $0.30. I like to spice up my tomato sauces, make salsa or throw them into beans!


Ardei - (peppers)- I buy them by the kilo! I love especially dark green peppers. I eat tons of them!










Paprika (paprikas) is a spice made from peppers- it can be both spicy (cayenne) or sweet (dulce)











Then I see my lady or rather she spots me out first! She is convinced I am from Odorhei... and probably half the market is convinced that I am also from Odorhei - which is a Hungarian town 40km from Sighisoara. I keep saying "sunt din Statele Unite." But she doesn't understand at all. Often, I come to the market and the vendors reading correctly that I'm not Romanian start speaking to me in Hungarian with a secret glint in their eye saying - it's okay to speak Hungarian, we're Hungarian too. So they speak to me in Hungarian and I speak to them in Romanian.

This is my lady who sees me every time I am in the piata and yells out to me - "Sera mana dominsoara!" Then we chat a little, she convinces me that there are "foarte bun morcovi" and I compulsorily buy a kilo of carrots - even if I don't want a kilo of carrots. It only costs me about $0.50 but I have to carry that kilo of carrots home! Still, I like that she remembers me and wants to say hello everytime I am there.

Some other things I also don't buy but just find them to be fascinating and odd include the dried herbs and flowers. People sell all kinds of homemade products like honey, jarred picked peppers, fruit syrups, etc...

At the end of my shopping, I usually stop by the flower sellers who have cheerful bouquets of assorted flowers from their gardens.

SIGHISOARA
Birthplace of Dracula or Vlad the Impaler (Vlad Tepes). Or so the legend goes...

What is best about Sighisoara is the diversity of the ethnic groups including Hungarian, Saxon/German and Romanian.

The city is also known for its medieval citadel (or cetate - castle), which is also a UNESCO World Hertiage site. The town originated in the 12th century by Saxons. Prior to 1989, there were about 3,000 Saxons mostly inhabiting the citadel. However, many left after the collapse of communism and choose the option to repatriate to Germany.

Sighisoara is surrounded by rolling hills and beautiful countrysides. To the north of Sighisoara is a magestic Oak Forest preserve with Oak trees dating between 300-800 years old. This was the location which was highly contested for building a Dracula Amusement park - thank God it was fought against by the people of Sighisoara and quashed.

Sighisoara has a population around 32,000 people - mostly elderly. While it is a proposerous town (mostly due to tourism), the town lacks a university, therefore, after high school most students leave Sighisoara for bigger cities and do not return because there are not as many job opportunities and there are few forms of entertainment in the town. The city has many elderly people.