Killing Batteries

That’s right, I mounted those word count demons, rode them like a drunken camel and prevailed! (With careful guidance from my editor, of course).

Thus concludes my duties with the Romania and Moldova chapters for Europe on a Shoestring 5 and Eastern Europe 9. Jesus does it feel good to have that off my plate. Of course there’s still the entire Romania and Moldova book, most of which is wildly over-length, but I’ve decided to let that simmer while I tackle a smaller LP assignment and take a week to do pretty much nothing but read, eat, sleep and drink.

Indeed, I have three fingers of Kvint brandy from Transdnistria sitting here that I plan to dispatch tonight just like I dispatched that Moldova chapter for EOAS that had to be cut by over 1,000 words from it’s previous incarnation, while paradoxically adding new material. That’s right people, read it and weep in January 2007. I know I did.

Moreover, I’m going to, gasp!, go for a walk to get some fresh air, sun and look at pretty girls before dinner. Can you believe it? A walk! It’s been so long… I wonder if it’s like riding a bike.

I still have one small project. I need to take a fetching picture of myself for the Author Bio section for these books. I fired off an email to see what kind of artistic license was allowed in these photos, thinking I’d don a Homer Simpson mask, a diaper and a giant lollipop, but the reply was longer than the written requirements for a passport photo, noting that ‘it’s best not to look completely exhausted’. Well, if I’d known that was part of the criteria, I would have taken this picture in January!

OK, screw you guys, I’m outta here.

P.S. – Bird flu, bird flu, bird flu.

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Very quickly…  I am in the last-ditch, “where the hell is it?” editing phase now.  If it weren’t for the one week deadline extension that I lobbied for and received back in March after suffering several delays due to bad weather and bureaucratic impasses, I’d be in the LP gallows right now, as my original deadline was last Friday. There’s just some pokey, tedious formatting stuff and notes to complete and I’m done.

If you haven’t read and memorized every word in this blog (and if so, why not?), you might not be aware of the strange editorial pinch I’m in.  I’m writing about Romania and Moldova for three books, ‘Europe on a Shoestring’, ‘Eastern Europe’ and ‘Romania and Moldova’, each one with more content than the last. The first two are due right now, the last one, the one requiring the most work, isn’t due until September.  However, in order to complete the first two, I kinda have to finish the last one, so I can copy all the updated and new material from it, abbreviate everything and paste it into the EOAS and EEU books.  Finely planned, eh? All part of the fun folks!

Not wanting to have even a minute to breath (or drink heavily), I’ve accepted a tiny additional assignment from LP, 750 words on the Danube Delta for yet another book, that’s due June 5th.  No problemo, as long as they’re not adverse to thinly veiled paraphrasing from the material in the Romania and Moldova book.

After that I have an assignment for two non-travel articles for a business traveller magazine that I’ll need to dive into almost right away, but not before I crack open that last bottle of Moldovan wine and drink it all in one sitting, because I deserve it.

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I normally spend a ludicrous amount of time in front of my laptop, but the past three weeks have been particularly intense. So much so that I think my eyeballs sinking into my skull, trying to retreat from the screen as a natural defence. Moreover, for the past week I’ve been sitting on the wrong side of the glass of the best weather I’ve seen since September.

I’ve decided to take a last minute, one night vacation, leaving tomorrow, to Bucovina, under the pretence of doing some clean-up research that couldn’t be done when I was there in February, but mostly just to get the cow out of here.

I’m not even driving. Too much stress. I’m taking the train and reading a book the whole damn way.

Of course, to make up for this, I’ll probably cave to self-inflicted pressure and work all weekend.

In other news, bird flu mania is sweeping the nation. Two sections of Bucharest have been quarantined for the past 24 hours. Word is they found, that’s right, a single dead bird – a nearby cat denied any responsibility. They’re spraying everything, which, combined with the first real heat of the year, will undoubtedly be a smell residents won’t soon forget.

If these panicky bird flu shenanigans and media over-reactions keep up, you can kiss this tourism season goodbye and all the people who are jumping on the tourism industry bandwagon this year for the build-up to EU membership are going to eat it. Of course by ‘eat it’, I mean starve to death.

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Well, I’m in the final stages of editing now. It’s been more of an emotional rollercoaster than I would have guessed, but that’s mostly my fault. I’ve been riding the highs and lows of the deadline boogie. My flagging organizational skills and my inability to see the big picture while agonizing over disconnected phone numbers and conflicting opening hours has exacerbated the problem.

To start, I thought I’d barely make deadline. After a week of smoking editing, I thought I was on fire and that I would be done a week ahead of schedule or more. Then the word-count demons fell on me and I surmised that I’d make deadline only if I slept 17 minutes a night and lived in adult diapers. Now, having gotten a better grip on what exactly needs to be ready for the first deadline and what I can blow off and leisurely pick at for weeks until the second deadline, it appears I’ve found a happy medium, between working diligently, but not in full on panic mode.

The process of piecing everything together and checking facts would be a lot easier of the Romanians and Moldovans had the capacity to answer emails. Everyone even remotely involved with tourism has gotten online in recent years. Every pensioner with a spare room and shepherd with a donkey to rent has gotten themselves a swanky web site, with a domain name, Flash animation, background music, the works. So why is it, after all this work to promote themselves, when a guy sends them an email offering them exposure in the largest guidebook in the English speaking world, if only they would clarify one or two points, they never answer? I just don’t get it. And it’s not just Grandma Gabriela in Mud Hutville who’s blowing me off, large tour agencies and non-profits dying for exposure are snubbing me too. What the crap?

Seeing as how LP editors really, really like complete, detailed information, if I can’t make clear whether breakfast is included or if the donkey ride is wheelchair accessible, I’m put in a position of having to either put down an educated guess or just rub them out of the book. It’s driving me a little nutty.

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The latest flip-flop in the Romanian bird flu issue says that there is indeed bird flu here!  They found it in a factory in Brasov!  Swear to god this time!!! 

We are all being warned not to eat any chicken from this factory, but how are you supposed to know when you’re eating a pizza (my main staple) or a kebab (my secondary staple)?

Anyway, a quick search through the English speaking news world reveals nothing on this report, so I’m officially breaking the news!  That’s right folks, you read it here first on ‘Every Notable Patch of Grass in Romania’!  I feel like a real journalist! 

Unfortunately, I am too mired in frenzied LP editing to look for a TV and give you more details, just know this:  Romanian chicken = instant death. 

This week anyway.  Next week it’ll be Pork Constipation or something.

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I happened on a reality TV show a while back that redefined the phrase ‘fresh out of ideas’. The show focused on the lives of a bunch of Americans teaching English in Taiwan. Sweet Jesus…  I don’t think a more tiresome and monotonous group of people exists in nature, yet here they were making a TV show about them. It was so bad that I’m still pissed off about it. What’s next? ‘Cafeteria Busboys; The Untold Story’?

What irks me is that a lavishly paid group of people somehow convinced an even more lavishly paid group of people that this was a good idea and none of these dough heads have even an inkling of what makes good TV.

OK idiots, here’s your good idea, free of charge; ‘Follow a Lonely Planet Author’.  You want drama?  You want excitement?  You want exotic locales?  You want to see people come unwound from malnutrition, sickness and exhaustion while trying to fulfill Herculean tasks with nerve shattering deadlines?  It doesn’t get any more gripping than this, baby!

I travelled over 4,000 kilometres on some of the worst roads in Europe!  I got into three care accidents!  I drove through two end-of-the-world snow storms!  I negotiated precipitous mountain passes in life-threatening conditions!  I had repeated run-ins with police!  I got five flat tires in six weeks (stupid worst roads in Europe!) and was at the mechanic three times!  I was honked at, yelled at and threatened with violence by deranged countryside lunatics!  I picked up hitchhikers that were either too drunk or too Hungarian to communicate with!  And all of this happened in a tidy, production-friendly six weeks! You could have just strapped a camera to my chest and let it roll 24 X 7, even during my restless 6-7 hours of sleep each night, and it still would have been more absorbing than that freakin’ Taiwan show!!!

[Pant, pant, pant, pant.  Sigh]

So anyway, if you’ll be needing someone to star in that show, I’m available and cheap.

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Last fall I was a staunch supporter of Romania’s 2007 entry into the EU, mostly because they could clearly benefit from the resultant stability and I wanted my friends here who are sporting hard-won university degrees and toiling away at shit jobs for 170 euros a month to have the opportunity to go elsewhere for work.  Also, it would make the sales of my book skyrocket!  Admittedly, these are narrow-minded and selfish reason, but there you go.

Now, having lived here for cumulative year, traipsed through the majority of the country, seen the sorry state of the infrastructure, gotten first-hand experience at how widespread corruption is and suffered through such bureaucratic traumas as buying a used car and picking up a package at the post office, it’s pretty clear that Romania is not ready.  Not even close.

I’ve lost all faith. And it appears that I’m in good company.  When President Traian Basescu herniated a disc and needed a minor operation to repair it, not a particularly life-threatening procedure, did he demonstrate national confidence and seek treatment here?  No, he went to Vienna.  Why?  Well, maybe it has something to do with the fact that doctors here are paid less than waiters in Rome and most of the ones with any talent jump at the first opportunity to work in a country that pays a respectable wage.  Or perhaps he was trying to set an example for his anti-corruption platform; the few doctors that do remain in Romania often refuse to provide treatment until the patient has given some kind of ‘gift’ – sadly, it is often the people that already have a higher than average base income that succumb to greed and demand bribes. 

The official reason given is that, while Romania has the necessary tools to perform this operation at Bagdasar Hospital, the country doesn’t have a qualified surgeon.  But wait, isn’t this a minor procedure?  And didn’t the director of the Bagdasar Hospital say it was indeed possible? 

Which brings us to the suspected reason for the president’s duplicity, that being the director of Bagdasar Hospital is part of an opposing political party.  Oh, well then, that’s OK!  But President, doesn’t political pettiness like this demonstrate that the administration here isn’t stable and diplomatic enough to play with the big boys?

On a completely separate note, entry into the EU historically coincides with a jump in the economy for the country in question, with a years long lag in salary adjustment.  Sure, opportunities for people wanting to leave will mushroom, but EU membership is going to hammer the people who remain in Romania, at least in the beginning.

I’m open to input here, is Romania really ready?

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I know all you winos have been on the edge of your desk chairs waiting for this one, breathless with anticipation to hear a first hand account about the famed Moldovan wine by an impartial, articulate wine aficionado.  Well I have some good news and some bad news.  The wine is indeed magnificent, but regrettably I know about as much about wine as a dead armadillo.  In fact, I have the exacting palette of a rock.  I’m nearly useless.  But I saw ‘Sideways’ three times, so I’m going to try my best to describe the experience using phrases more evocative than ‘yummy’ and ‘tastes like red’.

Moreover, today, articulate I am not.  I only just finished sampling most of the wine I brought home from Moldova last night, during a gruelling six hours of food and drink that has left me profoundly fuzzy-headed.  So what you’re really going to get is some semi-lucid vagaries by a guy who, on an average day, can’t pass a blind taste-test between orange juice and coffee.

Ready?  Let’s begin.

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Transdnistria (A.K.A. ‘Transdniestr’, A.K.A. TransD, A.K.A. ‘Cyrillicgobbltigook-cyrillicgobbltigook’) was a memorably surreal experience.  I’m not gonna lie to you, it was by far the dodgiest trip I have ever taken.  In forty countries I have never felt so watched and on the brink of being in irreparable trouble during every waking moment.

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With the notable exception of Monaco, I have never seen a higher concentration of luxury cars than in Chisinau, Moldova.  BMWs reign supreme, followed closely by Mercedes with American SUVs making a strong showing.  The Russian Lada, formerly the unofficial national car of Moldova, is a distant fourth or fifth (all numbers are by my observation and by no means scientific).

So how is it, you may ask, that the poorest country in Europe has so much four wheeled flash?  Well, that’s a touchy subject.  The “shadow economy” phenomenon has allowed certain businesses to prosper in a tax-free orgy of profit, allowing their owners for such excesses.  Arms dealing, human and organ trafficking and other organized criminal ugliness is surely a factor.  But with the staggering number of luxury vehicles on the street, it’s difficult to imagine, even in Moldova, that all these people are somehow associated with dark dealings.  Another aspect is foreign money filtered back into Moldova.  About 1/3 of Moldova’s economy is driven by money sent home by Moldovans working abroad and wiring the money home to their families.  In some cases the understandable aim of seeking a better life has lost all grip with reality.  College students take money meant for tuition and buy clothes and the aforementioned slick rides.  Then of course there are government officials, bureaucratic heavies and the ubiquitous money-hungry police all collecting second and third unreported salaries that double or triple their pay checks.

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