It takes me about 20 minutes to really hate the place where I land. Aka Romania, home. It actually gets better when I realize I don't live here anymore and that I am here to visit my family, not to stay. I usually feel better after the soothing thoughts mentioned above and I take the time to admire everything from a tourist perspective. See admire with inverted commas, please.

The first thing that I notice is the stewardess not smiling on the plane. She's Italian but she's been doing Romania way too long. Learning too many of our habits or having to deal with too many Romanians I guess. The plane is very characteristically Romanian since it's full with bags, suitcases, panettoni and everything you could possibly imagine plus the Romanians themselves, quite a talkative bunch too. I must say I am no better myself. I am getting better though, only a backpack plus a red bag for food. That's progress compared to three years ago. I dream of the day when I go to Romania with just a tiny purse.

The moment we land we go cattle-like to the place where a couple of really bored Customs officers pretend to check our passports and I spend another 30 minutes waiting for luggage to show up. The trip by bus from the plane to the entrance of the airport was some sort of a joke, since the latter was only 300 metres away, but in the meantime they must have moved the plane to a different country because it takes ages for the actual luggage to arrive. Gathered around a place which in dwarf-landia might be called a 'place where you can collect your luggage' and in Romania: 'a place where 200 people try to see what's coming on a 5 metre surface, possibly killing each other while doing so'.

Just before going out with my suitcase after patiently waiting for the others to get theirs and checking that nobody else took mine, a very friendly police woman was telling everyone off, in as they should get out of the airport space as soon as possible. I stopped to arrange some of my stuff and I gave her the 'don't even try it, lady' look. She did not, and I left the airport without useful advice on the amount of time I can or cannot spend there.

The crossing of the street and getting of the tickets turned out to be one of those things that men love to watch on Tv: a mud bath. A group of men were working on the road (hence no road) and to get from airport to tickets then bus meant mud, mud, puddle, mud again. I felt good about having been too lazy and not cleaning my boots before leaving Trieste....

On the bus. Off the bus, one stop on foot to get to the place where I can take the Galati bus. Of course no bus connection between the Train station where the airport bus stopped and Gara Basarab for my Galati bus. Well, they say walking is good for you, and walking dragging 25 kilos of stuff even better, so I should not complain. However, then I noticed the mud on my Samsonite, which used to be black and it was brown now, and pain started sinking in.

When I did get to the bus the driver pointed to where I was supposed to put my luggage, somewhere on the side of the bus, where I had to pull a door and slip my Samsonite in, with muddy water dripping all over the place my head included while I was panting to put the darn thing in and the driver pretended not to notice that help might be required. The trip followed on the first motorway I have ever seen in Romania, on a route I've never taken before. Dream ended soon enough, and about half way we were on the usual Ro road bumbing away on hip-hop rhythms. And I was home...

Piran

Splendid November day. I had a quick trip to Piran, 40 or so km from Ts. Beautiful place, too small for too many churches and famous for little statues of angels everywhere. Little jewel. To breathe in and keep as a memory of summers to come...

My experiment started...

... as a way of teaching my students to use web resources.

Let's see if example works!

Dana