Here it is (lightly edited). Finally.

Fabulously well put, I should say!

Thank you, for writing! It’s good to know that u are not alone, and somebody else is experiencing the same sort of feeling as you.

After reading your posts I dare say you enjoyed your time in the States to the max. Even more than me, I should say for reasons it is not worth spending the time to explain right here. However, it’s interesting to see how you went ahead and bought home appliances. I did almost the same stuff. I bought bedroom furniture a week after my return to Bucharest, right before buying Christmas presents…

And this was out of a need to own something after switching apartments and houses (3 in 3 years), buying and discarding Goodwill furniture, let alone hand-me-down sort of type vacuum cleaners, irons and things of that sort… Basically, after almost 6 months since my return home, I cannot really define Bucharest as home, although it’s been my home since I was born. Funny huh, how 3 years of one’s life (spent in the States) can define you better than the many more years that basically represent your life…

What’s even funnier is that people are listening to your stories, and seem to understand, or at least they make efforts to relate. Only there is nothing to relate to for them. When you try to explain this to a co-national who’s never been away from home, or even worse to a friend who spent years abroad (be it in the States or Europe) but who never ceased to identify his home with Bucharest/Romania, it is like having a monologue. That is the sad, honest truth.

It’s sort of like the same thing of trying to explain to an American, that is making him/er understand why exactly “super” is “too pretentious a designation for the Romanian equivalent” to quote your exact words. For an American to understand the exact meaning of your statement, would be impossible unless he or she has lived or met or seen the Romanian super….

I am equally amazed and pleasantly surprised to see that you are going through the same process and experiencing your return home in the same way I am. Although you fit right in in the US, and you felt so at home and all, you are having a hard time thinking of your present home as “home”.

Keep up the good work though. Keep buying home appliances, furniture or whatever you might need. It works. With time your apt will definitely look like home and will give you that permanence feeling you long for…

I am still buying home appliances. My next target is a lamp to make reading in bed more plausible.

I’m not a sucker for sunsets and I’m not one to indulge much in star-gazing or in the occasional open-sky-as-a-parable-for-freedom banter. I once dumped a girl because she used to do too much of it.

“Oh, those stars clogging the sky, you should have seen them,” she could have said.

“Oh my God, please don’t go there,” I must have thought to myself.

But I do let the occasional imagery fool me, especially when accompanied by the sound of the train rocking the tracks (the draft of this post was written on the Bucharest-Sighisoara IC). I’m a train kind of guy—it has this romantic quality, a ‘loner on a mission’-allure that, while cheesy, I find attractive. It’s comforting to crash into your assigned spot, open your book and let go.

And the occasional gaze out the window just as you’ve escaped a tormenting passage describing stomach-removal followed by an orgy involving spray-painted pink bunnies (hypothetical reading material) is like the bite of chocolate you take at night after you brushed your teeth: clichéd but fantastically rewarding and awkwardly self-affirming.

But I’m afraid I’ve derailed the discussion from where I intended it to go. Wednesday night I saw Cristian Nemescu’s beautiful “California Dreamin’ (endless)” and one thing I can certainly say about it is that I wasn’t nearly as perky on the bus ride home as I am now (Lavi knows).

The movie is ruthless in its portrayal of an absurd situation that takes place at a desperate time for Eastern Europe and involves characters desperate to hang on to their personal quests.

In the movie, a train packing American NATO troops (led by Armand Assante) and military equipment bound for Kosovo is stopped by the station master (a devastating Razvan Vasilescu) of the small Romanian village of Capalnita. The train ends up sequestered there for five days because it lacks proper customs forms. The station master is a crook and the master of his fiefdom: he collects (or simply pockets) mountains of bribes from passing freight trains: everything from cigarettes to bags of cement. But he stops the NATO train under the legitimate pretense that it doesn’t have documentation.

As a recent returnee and a former Romanian exile, this is when my heart began racing. This was kafkian bureaucracy and clerk-bullying at its best: people at the mercy of a hypocritical scumbag who randomly decides to use the law today, while ignoring it on every other occasion.

Many of us who’ve left the country have left because they didn’t want to fight that. Many of us who returned still think we can change it. What hurt me most is that the man’s actions (the character is brilliantly written and is far from being one-sided although I know I make him as such) are often dismissed by people as being „the way things are.” He is a prime example of how things should not be and he illustrates the failure of an entire system, not just one station master. The fate of the NATO train was chosen randomly—little peons in the system often have that power—but its long-term stay was sealed by a lack of action at all the levels above. Nobody brought the customs papers from Bucharest and all the way up to the minister people tried the same approach of „fixing the problem” by throwing more bribes at it.

The station master-type freaks people out because of the power he wields and I admit that this archetype scares me, too. That is why Nemescu’s movie is so good. Because it shows what journalism has taught me in recent years—even bad men sometimes have good (or at least understandable) reasons for their actions. In this case, the station master stopped the Americans because they never came to save him and his family after World War II. Blocking their passage to Kosovo, where they would aid the US army bombing the Serbs, was his revenge on what life had bestowed upon him. Not to mention that stopping the Americans somehow feeds his illusion that he can keep his daughter (Maria Dinulescu) from eloping into the world.

The Americans, though mostly a group character, are no caricatures either. They slowly give in to local temptations (yes, that means women), allowing some personality to shine through their soldiers’ uniforms. The captain though has his own obsession—he has to finish the mission and get the train to Kosovo no matter what.

It’s hard to believe that the American captain and the station master understand their mutual obsessions. Their devotion to their mission, which Nemescu conveyed so clinically to the viewer, is too blinding for them to open up to a stranger.

California Dreamin’ is a movie about the early times of when the West met East; about a clash and mesh of cultures in the unlikeliest of circumstances, where not even a translator can do much good. It pits American idealism and slight naiveté to Romanian laziness and slight cunningness and the result is epic chaos on a minimal scale. In such chaos, the only hope lies with the dream of escaping—whether it’s the train escaping its imprisonment or the station master’s daughter escaping his grip.

Nemescu and his co-writers penned one of the most touching tales of longing, obsession and cultural difference I’ve ever seen. The movie is sad, but hopeful in that things move on, which in itself is a metaphor for the backstory of the movie. Nemescu and his sound engineer died in a stupid car crash before the editing was finished, but this rough won the „Un certain regard” section at the 2007 Cannes film festival.

Romania has always dreamed of the Americans coming and whatever we feel about them today (be it hatred for how their late and often condescending arrival or appreciation for their long-expected and just as often enthusiastic arrival) is borne out of this sense of longing. And for some, like the station master, this longing was endless and overpowering.

Every once in a while (alright, every once in a very rare while) you get the chance to spend that perfect weekend peppered with just the right amount of food. Saturday was burger time and Sunday–following another lovely American tradition–was brunch time.

Just a few days ago I was chatting with Mirona over beers about how awesome American breakfast was: not just the variety of salty foods and omelets, but the myriads of soft textures and heavenly flavors that reside in pastries–everything from pancakes to scones to sweet breads. Couple with that, Lavi shared a personal fantasy of the “hangover party,” which involved getting together with people for coffee and such after one of those rougher nights on the town.

These conversations, along with my own personal longing for American breakfast and a new muffin pan purchased as a birthday present to myself, led me to the logical conclusion that Sunday should be brunch day.

And it was. The menu was simple but tasty:

- Pepper and onion omelet;
- Strawberry Banana muffins (we used this recipe as a guide);
- Mimosa cocktails (1/3 orange juice, 2/3 champagne).

I’ll take credit for chopping and cutting a bunch of the ingredients as well as finding recipes and offering the much needed cooking space and encouragement. As usual, most of the cooking credit goes to Jo and Lavi. We make a pretty good kitchen triad and we’re available for weddings, funerals and various spontaneous gatherings. All we ask for in return is a decent working soundtrack and the right to share your personal story with the world.

Are we worth it? Just check out our dream-like muffins below (and this was our first attempt, mind you!)

I’ve been tortured by concert speakers before, but the warm butter way in which the violin layered itself over the bass sent chills down my spine. People all around me were waving their arms in the air and jumping, their feet touching the pavement for just enough bounce to leap again. This muggy Bucharest May night was the perfect backdrop for Gogol Bordello to rip into “Immigrant punk“, their wonderful track about alienation.

Music has often been a solitary experience for me, a personal exile I craved to share with others, but rarely could. On that night, bobbing, bumping and bruising with my friends, it was no longer just mine. As the band sang “Immigrant punk,” I remember grabbing Tibi and Jo, who had suspended themselves on the guardrail, by the shoulders and kissing them on the head. (Luiza was next, and Lavi must have received similar treatment at some point during the show.)

On stage, Eugene Hutz sang:

Of course we immigrants wanna sing all night long
Don’t you know the singing saves the troubled soul?

Yes, Gogol Bordello is a fun band and their Bucharest gig was an awesome concert. But this post isn’t (just) about them.

A couple of weeks back I was rushing home from the neighborhood supermarket hauling a vacuum cleaner. I had just had an air conditioning unit installed and I had debris all over my rug. The men who installed it had a horrid fight with my super (too pretentious a designation for the Romanian equivalent but I’ll go with it) and the two parties even traded threats like “Go hang yourself,” “I’ll head-butt you in the mouth,” or “I’ll slap you with the back of my hand and you’ll go to sleep for five minutes.”

Social hysteria aside, as I started sucking up the dust I realized that the AC unit, along with the new fridge and stove that I had bought a few days before, was more than just a shiny addition to my Bucharest apartment. It was one of those pathetic cries for permanence that some people—me for instance—answer by buying domestic appliances.

I say this because everything is still about being ‘here’ as opposed to ‘there.’ Everything is still about no longer being a visitor. Everything is still about re-claiming the idea of home. Everything is still about being in control of a new, yet familiar, reality.

One of the saddest things I have come to realize is that all of the above are my responsibility and I have to do all this (largely) by myself.

You see, I blush when people mention the United States because I perk up no matter how disconnected from the conversation I might have been. And it’s not because I’m one of those “America is the land of honey and milk” preachers; it’s because for a long time America was home. So when people want to talk about the reality I’m familiar with, I start buzzing. “Yes, please please please please. Let’s talk about America. What can I tell you? Is there anything you want to know? Can I tell you something even though you might not care?”

I told Lavi I’m still largely a visitor being shown around the streets on Bucharest. Sure, I know those streets like my back pockets, but they are not my streets (yet). They are their streets and I follow their lead. And what’s most irritating is that I can’t show them MY streets, can’t have them drink in my bars, sleep in my bed, use my toothpaste (or even my toothbrush), or go to my concerts.

I will soon own these streets myself and I will become one of them. But they will never become one of me because they never experienced my reality with me. I know it’s childish (and corny) to think I’m losing something of my American experience by not being able to convey it to others, but I feel this deeply.

The childish kisses I gave my friends Friday were both an acceptance of this natural process of loss and a small thank you note for the work they do as guides.

There is a Bright Eyes song (music talks about a lot of things) that says:

All your friends and sedatives mean well, but make it worse
Every reassurance just magnifies the doubt
Better find yourself a place to level out

I think I know what that means, or at least I know what it means to me. I “leveled out” as Eugene Hutz and Gogol Bordello crashed on the heads of a couple of thousand screaming Romanians at Arenele Romane.

I might not be “home” yet, but I don’t feel like a transient gypsy anymore.

Somehow, on a muggy night, at an outdoor rock show in Bucharest, I have traded transience for permanence.

And such.

Can you see us? Sure you can–we’re on the bottom left of the screen, where the yellow shirt becomes illuminated about 11 seconds in. Yes, I’m the one wearing yellow.

===

The Intercontinental Divide

I had not seen my mother in 314 days since we parted outside her apartment in Targu-Mures, Romania. But on the night of June 4, when she burst through the door of a New Orleans hotel room for our reunion, it seemed as though we had parted at lunch.

“Don’t you dare come home,” she said, dropping to the floor her blue plastic shoulder bag with the name of a drug company written on it. “I paid $40 on a cab to get me here from the airport. That’s a third of my monthly salary! You should stay in this country, where they will respect you and your work!”

Smiling, I replied, “Hi, Mom.”

My mother came to New Orleans for a medical conference. She is an oncologist, a medical specialist who deals with cancer and death. When my parents got divorced after 18 years of marriage, my mother reinvented herself by devoting her waking hours to my younger brother and me and her dying cancer patients. Our cat, Bubu, came third.

She makes peanuts in American dollars, the equivalent of a couple of grocery shopping sprees, but it’s enough in Romanian Lei to keep a third-floor, two-bedroom apartment on a street named after a Transylvanian poet, George Cosbuc.

She is alone there. My brother moved two hours away last September when he started college, and I had been away from home for five years, four of those in Bucharest. I would visit every three weeks, but these greet and eat sessions stopped two summers ago when I came to Columbia to earn a graduate degree in journalism.

Back in our bland Holiday Inn room off the highway, the scent of domestic familiarity lingered in the thick air. Especially because most of my mom’s luggage got lost in Atlanta. I was sharing the outrage and postponing the joy of our reunion. We had five days to get to that. We were busy being angry at Delta Airlines, the Romanian government and all institutions that give employees miserable rewards for their efforts. That night the list included the medical school where my mom teaches and the oncology clinic where she works.

This was the same energetic, strong, redheaded mom I had left behind, the same mom who thought I would have a brighter and lighter future in America because I wouldn’t worry about having money or being kicked around by an incompetent budding democracy.

While she smoked her last menthol cigarette in the lobby, I lay on my bed to draft a list of reasons for returning home to help a limp, Romanian journalism walk a straight line.

I knew my list of reasons could not include family, friends or the elusive idea of home. My mom’s family consists of two sons, and she would let both of us go if she thought we would be better off. She knows my Romanian friends are as practical as she is in matters of living without worries. And that night my mom was about to sleep in the clothes she had been wearing for 20 hours. She could spot cheap nostalgia and idealism the way I could spot potential party animals on Bourbon Street.

The conversation about my staying in America came up daily. We talked about it during breakfast as we enjoyed American free-coffee refills and scrambled eggs. We talked again when her luggage, wrapped in plastic because it had broken during transport, finally made it to New Orleans.

She tried to persuade me to stay using Maslow’s five-level pyramid of need, which argues that basic needs such as food, water or shelter are sometimes hard to satisfy. Even our visit to the National D-Day museum in New Orleans had a feeling of persuasion to it.

And of course, I heard the speech about her having to drive a Dacia, the stupid Romanian-made car, even though all the gangsters and post-communism profiteers cruised around in steel-gray BMWs.

I responded by pointing out that what she liked in America were things I couldn’t stand. I kept a small journal for the duration of the trip, in which I wrote at one point: “I just have to get her crazy, stupid tourist ideas out of her head. No bus tours, no organized $20-walking-tour rip-offs, no random things that looked colored enough for a picture.”

I even got her to agree on some things. America had too much political correctness, too much junk food and awful public transportation. America was also ignorant about the world. Then I tried to educate my mom in the things worth appreciating about America: not the malls, not the blow-out sales, not the $10 glittery sandals, but academic freedom, Whatchamacallit bars, increased personal safety and fascinating presidential politics. I even tried a lesson in American history.

“Hey, Reagan died,” I told her while we dined in a bar and watched TV.

“Hmmmm,” she replied.

To her, America wasn’t cool because of the media frenzy around Reagan’s death. It was cool because of voodoo dolls and soft beef steaks. The haziness and sugarcoated decadence of New Orleans didn’t do much to change our perennial dynamic.

But I had more fun observing our interaction than I ever had questioning it in the past. We parted at the airport over chicken salad after another expensive cab ride and my mom saying, “Think about staying,” and me replying with a smile, “Yes, Mom, I will.”

When I go home for Christmas, I’ll find the same mom who shops for ugly earrings for her sisters. I’ll be the same idealistic son who believes in a future at home. The New Orleans blues will be a Danube sad song, the alcohol-laden hurricane a cup of warm wine, the gumbo my mom’s eggplant salad. The background will change, but my mom and I will probably be the same.

The arrival of Starbucks signals that the coffee wars of Eastern and Central Europe are about to begin in earnest.

But that’s not what this post is about. Jo was there, tested the goods and liked it. While in the US, I spent countless hours and dollars there. I hate their regular brew (hate might not be strong enough a word to describe my feelings toward their bitter regular blend), but I loved getting a skim caramel macchiato or a skim latte. Not to mention the seasonal (and awesome) pumpkin spice and eggnog lattes.

Yes, I bought the skim versions because Starbucks fancy drinks also pack a mighty calorie punch. I hope Romanians don’t dive head-first into the frappuccinos; better count those calories first.

Although I miss having easy access to caramel macchiatos, I probably won’t be a regular at the Bucharest location even thought it’s five minutes from my apartment there. Why? Because in America, the amount I paid for one couldn’t get me much else. The amount I have to pay for one in Romania though, can get me a whole lot.

Here’s a quick table I put together. Take a sip.

I am boarding my flight to Romania in a matter of hours.

Below are a few of the things I will miss about America (43 is also the number of months I’ve been away from home). Although this is a numbered list, it is not a ranking. I hope that one day I will return to add to this list. Until then, goodbye.

1. Being here.
2. Being Bufnita to the Huhurez.
3. My friends.
4. American breakfast, complete with pancakes, big omelets, bacon, waffles, grits and coffee refills.
5. The rooftop of my Washington, DC apartment.
6. The “thump” sound the Sunday NY Times made when it dropped outside my door.
7. My other magazine subscriptions: The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Esquire and Wired among them.
8. Thursday Night Fights in Boston (Bang the nut, bitch!).
9. Tuesday Night Margaritas in Columbia, Mo.
10. The American dinner and a movie date.
11. Biking the trails of Missouri in the summer.
12. This American Life.
13. The “light as a feather” bureaucracy.
14. Being responsible for little else but myself (aka “Having a savings account”).
15. Spending hours in coffee shops with wireless fired up to the max.
16. The smell of New York City.
17. Thanksgiving dinners (more mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce, please).
18. Going to shows of bands large and small (I heart The Decemberists).
19. Feeling safe on the streets.
20. Talking about American politics (especially presidential contests) and the culture (wars).
21. A functioning media landscape.
22. Small art-house theaters (big up to the Ragtag).
23. My soccer teams: The Church of Soccer (in CoMo) and Powder House (in Boston)
24. Everyone who put up with my pestering self and was there for me regardless of it.
25. Discovering roads, cities, places, people, food (I want oatmeal raisin cookies!)
26. Putting on a non-iron shirt and looking serious.
27. Dissecting football plays during playoffs (pass interference, damn it).
28. Speaking English.
29. Writing English and getting paid for it.
30. Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
31. My bosses and my mentors–they’ve taught me more than I learned in 20 years of school in Romania.
32. Micro-brews and not so micro-brews (I heart Blue Moon beer).
33. Goodwill and The Salvation Army (always the best collection of furniture).
34. Using and abusing the word “awesome.”
35. Saying: “Our nation’s capital.”
36. Doing a strong Romanian accent to entertain the troops.
37. Waking up to NPR’s “Morning Edition”.
38. Being this other person called “Cristian”.
39. Learning and anguishing over becoming “a writer.”
40. Explaining America to the less understanding Romanians.
41. Toilet bowls–high water level is what the whole world needs!
42. Making lists about it.
43. Did I say all of it?

December 2005: The horrid (and condom-looking) National Christmas Tree, which stands right outside the White House fence in Washington, DC. Scary!

January 2006: The Washington, DC studio at its cleanest. This is after the addition of new furniture pieces, a carpet and a television set. So BoHo…

February 2006: Snow on 20th Street; a view from the 8th floor.

March 2006: Soccer on the National Mall in the shadow of the phallus. There is something to be said about playing the game of games in such a setting.

April 2006: The Cherry Blossom Festival. More here.

May 2006: Watching the Washington Nationals get their ass kicked at RFK Stadium on Memorial Day.

June 2006: My mom was visiting DC and we ended up (again!) next to the phallus. An odd bit of trivia: Washington, DC is the only place in the United States that I been to in each of my four years (Thanksgiving in 2003, summer vacation in 2004, lived there in 2005 and 2006, and visited again in 2007). Contrary to this trivia, DC is not my favorite American city.

July 2006 – October 2006: No American life during this time; I was in Romania waiting for an upgrade in my visa status.

November 2006: My room in Boston. Some said it looked girlie. That did not bother me as much as the temperature inside this room. The climate ranged from friggin’ cold to polar winter.

December 2006: Sharing stories and journalism gossip over drinks at Brendan B’s in Jamaica Plain.

January 2007: Whether they come from the corner coffeshop or from Starbucks, I will miss the morning lattes.

February 2007: Violent and sexy roller derby action.

March 2007: Colin Meloy of The Decemberists rocks the Avalon in Boston. This was the last of my American shows and one of the top three. The Decemberists make up most of the soundtrack of my American life, and they are my favorite musical pleasure. For example: And I am a writer, writer of fictions/I am the heart that you call home/And I’ve written pages upon pages/Trying to rid you from my bones. (Picture from here).

* View the first two installments here and here.

November 2004: America votes 2004. This was snapped in the early morning as people were slowly trudging to the polls in Columbia, Mo. Opinions were split. Boone County, where Columbia is located, went for Kerry. Missouri went for Bush. The rest is history.

December 2004: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome (fear and respect) The Church of Soccer. We never won any trophies but we did injure players on opposing squads–including breaking the toe of one poor soul. His bone was showing afterwards. Gross.

January 2005: Upon returning from a month long visit to Romania. Being back home was fun, but back then, returning to America was much better. After all, I owned a bike and some awesome mod furniture!

February 2005: During my second year at MU I lived in a nice apartment only a couple minutes away from a biking trail. The trail went through the woods down to the Missouri river, which you could follow for miles. Biking a few miles on Saturday mornings was a pleasure. And so were the burritos that followed!

March 2005: Nashville. Oh yeah!

April 2005: With Sara and John–celebrating the end of our graduate school years.

May 2005: This was a design project–for real! How worldly are you?!

June 2005: With Elle on the roof of my Brooklyn sublet. My two months in Green Point, a Polish pocket of Brooklyn, were some of the best I had in America. Owlspotting was born here (on June 21). dbrom died here. And much fun was had.

July 2005: Times Square, New York City, on July 4. That night I watched the fireworks show above the Hudson river. Sweet.

August 2005: By August 2005, I had moved to Washington, DC. This is a shot of the pool on the roof of my building. It was open from April through October and it was heated. Yes, that was hot stuff.

September 2005: Thomas Friedman, architect of the “flat world,” is something of an oracle of the business and political world. Here, he was “performing” at a DC book fair (with many rich middle aged people in attendance)–while a gigantic anti-war protest was taking place just five minutes away. Only in the nation’s capital!

October 2005: Sunset in Florida.