I shall henceforth be known as the Baron of Bucharest

Song of the day: Jazz me Blues - The Original Dixieland Jazz Band

My evening could be summed up a little something like this

Well, really it was a restaurant, and about a week ago (I'm a lazy blogger). And it was five Muslims, not just one (which makes the Catholic Europa and me the atheist) Take that, xenophobic societal expectations!

Yes, I have arrived back from Romania (Transylvania, really. Or TRANSylVAnia!!1!) And it was unimaginably lovely in every respect; lovely nature, lovely architecture, lovely weather, lovely food (though with a distressing lack of sauce) and most of all, lovely people. Without them, the whole trip would have been nothing in comparison (but, lets face it, still pretty damn awesome). Amazingly enough the only people I didn't absolutely love were my own countrypeople (excluding Europa. Sssh, don't tell her) and that's because I'm not supposed to; I know what we're like. Well, that and the fact that Icelanders are notorious for getting outrageously swazzled every time they step outside their territory. Not pretty, a fall-down-drunk Icelandic tourist on a foreign airport (especially because they've generally got enough practice still to be standing, despite being fall-down-drunk.)

But it's my country; I'm supposed to grumble about it. It's a sign of patriotism.

After having spent eight days at Cristuru Secuiesc (where it almost took all my time just to learn to say that) we arrived back in Bucharest (where we had spent one day before moving on, and got seriously lost at least three times) and proceeded to get lost again some astounding four times more. Urban planning? Not really a thing in that city.

And I loved it. I didn't think you could fall in love with a place in less than four days, but apparently you can. I loved the strangely often fried food, I hated (but still kinda loved) the searing heat, how (in the words of Europa) it always felt like you were on your way out of a sauna but never actually made it out. I loved the total unnecessity (not a word but the best I can come up with) of blankets while sleeping (or pajamas, for that matter). I loved the totally weird architecture, where you'd just be walking down the road and then BAM suddenly there is this palace-like gorgeous thing next to you and it looks totally run down which somehow makes it even more beautiful. I love the total lack of tourists. I love the public spaces, the insane traffic, the fact that there are almost six times as many people living in that one city than in my entire country. I will declare my life successful should I ever make it back to București, România.

It's strange that a place I had almost no knowledge of previously would become so voluminous in my mind. I mean, the extend of my former connection to it was that my grandfather was sometimes called 'the Baron of Bucharest' (the joke being that he was a graveyard keeper and in Icelandic the literal translation of Búkarest would be 'a place where corpses rest.' Yeah, my family is morbid.)

But yeah, there we were, me and Europa and our five friends from Turkey (Alliteration!) the only ones attending the project left in the country. We had decided to stick together while we were still there (and as formerly mentioned we got lost quite a lot) and had a really grand time; visited a bunch of museums, restaurants, shops and landmarks. But most of all I remember talking about everything and nothing, and learning how that the more we seemed different due to our cultures, the more I realized we were the same. Like, intellectually I am aware of all the biased or just untrue crap media and society pours into our brains on everything different, but fully realizing it is a whole different pack of lemmings. And it was a great thing to have happen to me, good for my social and mental health. It, to quote a certain YA author, let me imagine people more complexly (which will come in handy while writing, I imagine.) It is probably what I appreciate the most about this trip, retrospectively.

I'll probably write more on our various exploits when I can be arsed, since it seems I will have plenty of time (stupid economy...) Don't cheer all at once.

Salutări.

Operation Vampire Hunt and predicting the future

Song of the day: Þjóðvegur 66 (Road 66) - KK

Today started out pretty good, and promises to get better. DOMA got overruled, I had a croissant for breakfast, and oh, yeah. I'm going to Romania tonight.

That's right, who's going vampire hunting? This guy.

So this might for the time being turn into a travel blog (exciting, isn't it.) and document my discoveries and trials at a course/convention on youth unemployment. After that, me and my friend who shall henceforth be known as The Queen of the Flying Tigers (at her request; I'll think of something shorter) will frolic about the country, and among other things visit Castle Bran; one of the several places linked for marketing purposes  to the disturbing individual known is pop culture as Count Dracula. Full name Vlad 'The Impaler' Dracul III.

We will be staying at a location in Transylvania, and this will cause me quite a bit of distress for the reason that after watching that awful Sandler flick Hotel Transylvania, I am utterly incapable of pronouncing it normally. Instead it will sound like I am being injected with a syringe full of clichéd stereotypical accents while being electroshocked at the same time and it goes something like 'TRANSilVANia!!!'

I will therefore resist all and any impulse to ever say the name. This may prove difficult.

From what I've seen, the temperature in Romania at the moment and for the foreseeable future will be hanging somewhere around 30 degrees Centigrade. This, of course, means that my brain is going to melt and I am going to DIE. Because, you see, here in this particular part of the northern hemisphere, we call it summer when the temperature rises over ten degrees, and 17 degrees for any amount of time is considered a heat wave. We do occasionally get something like 24 degree, at which point we stop wearing clothes at all and sleep outside. But I exaggerate (only a little bit:)

I'm not even going to get a tan, because I don't get tans; I get slightly weathered, or in extreme cases bleached, rather like a piece of driftwood on a foreign beach. And if I don't wear sunscreen at, like, strength 30-50, I'll burn so badly I won't be able to move. But I shall prevail; I have churches and museums and weird shops to see and people to meet! I even intend to wear my Pizza John shirt as much as I can in the vain hope that I will meet other Nerdfighters, and that they won't be discouraged from talking to the maniac with the giant map getting lost as soon as she steps outside her hostel in midtown Bucharest.

It's odd, though, how things turn out. I didn't ever expect going to Romania of all places; I don't even know anyone who's gone there, but I immediately got excited when the Queen (let's just call her Europa. For the moon/continent, not the mythological figure. Though I could of course make some nasty and uncalled for joke regarding her love of animals) told me about the project and since we could both afford it we thought why not? Although when looking at the photos she was a tad discouraged by the fact that the architecture looked very similar to Poland, from whence she originally hails. But we think it will still be different enough to be very interesting and worth visiting. It will be an adventure.

So I'll try to upload some pictures of interesting things and some interesting facts/happenstances as well once we've began our journey.

Now all I need is Rafiki to shower us with pieces of wisdom and make us get lost and we're set.

I think about stuff

Song of the day: Hey there Cthulu by Eben Brooks

Imagine singing this at the top of your lungs as you are re-arranging the bananas and a customer comes into the shop. She left in a hurry, for some reason.

Still, it's not like you have any other choice between singing (they don't allow iPods/mp3s) and the radio. And when you start hearing the same song four times every hour on the same station, you either turn it off or slowly go insane. You clever radio people may think no-one listens to your station long enough to notice, but we do.

That said, I like my job. Not that many people come in, so it gives plenty of time for studying thinking of deep philosophical questions, like 'did Ted Knight and Jim J. Bullock had anything to talk about on the set of Too Close for Comfort?'

Okay, not my idea, but a still very good question.

What am I saying, I haven't even seen that show.

Another would be 'how the hell is a wedding between my atheist self and my Catholic friend ever going to work in thirty years' time when we (or at least me) inevitably turn out as crazy cat lady spinsters? We would never be able to agree on the decorations!'

Or I'll just constantly draw the sign of the Deathly Hallows because it's not like I can draw anything else.

 It never looks half as cool as this, though.

Then there is the strange moment when a photo in your local newspaper looks like comedian Lee Mack. Maybe he has an evil (good?) twin living a low-key life in Iceland. Or he has dopplegangers in every country on stand by to protect his secret identity as Comedian Man.

I also think I'll jump on the 'what the hell weather, it's spring and we're getting really tired of your shit' train. I mean, for the last weeks, there has literally been one day snow, the other windy, then sunny, then the whole cycle repeats. I guess I'll just blame global warming. Or blame us for global warming, therefore blame us in extension for the weather.

Now, it's time for sweet potato fries (oh gods so delicious), and finally getting my mum to watch The Hobbit with me so I can share my nerd-love for it. More on that later.