Eurojournal - 6 July 2006

Romanian beaurocracy. I had heard all about the post office from several sources as the bain of everyone’s existence here. At some point I had to face it. I had to go. I had about 16 postcards to mail and needed to do it this week. All I could imagine was the movie, “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” So we prepared. Got up early and went with the kids early before their naptime -- before any of us could reach our grumpy time. We had a long talk about how boring and awful it will be but we all must remain strong. I promised the kids a pretzel if they could maintain.

We walked down, entered the building and took a deep breath. Ah! Not crowded at all. There were windows everywhere specific to some need written in Romanian. There it is! The window marked “internationale.’ That’s my window. Words of a friend echoed, “even if you end up in the wrong line they will send you to another and you still have to wait. Another line and it may still be the wrong one. It takes me at least an hour at the post office.” I’m thinking to myself, should I just go straight to the information line and ask? I should, but there is only one person ahead of me in the internationale line and the other lines are small.

Not so bad. I made it early enough. Ha! I’m good, we’ll be outta here in no time.

We waited and waited and waited. This woman’s needs seemed endless. The person behind the window disappeared for a long time. Other people are trickling in wandering in front of me. I am about 2 feet behind this person in front of me. I look around and the lines aren’t so much straight behind the red painted line on the floor. The people stand next to the person and wind around. Perhaps they don’t think I’m in line. I scoot closer. This poor woman in front of me -- I hope she doesn’t think I am breathing down her neck. The wandering people find other lines. Luna and Liam are doing great. They are playing with each other and being quietly silly.

It’s our turn. I tried to look for needed postal phrases in my Lonely Planet Romania book. Nothing on trips to the post office. Oh dear, I bet I am going to take long as that woman just trying to communicate that I need stamps for postcards to go to the US. The habitual phrase comes out of my mouth, “Vorbiti Engleza?” She communicates a little. I show her the postcards and she gets right to business. She opens the book, counts the postcards and gives me the stamps. Fabulous. Then she shows me on the calculator how much. 496,000 lei. There is new monetary system here with far less zeros but most still reference the old. Okay, so I think I remember James saying that 100,000 lei is actually 10 ron/leu? Or was it 1? I hand her a 10 bill and she smiles and says “no, not enough.” I have a 50 which we have treated like a really big bill. She can’t possibly need the big bill? Yep, that’s what she needed. It was 49.6. I look puzzled and she shows me the stamps and the calculation. 3,10 per stamp. I get it. We stamp and send them off. Kids were excited to put some stamps on and put the cards in the little red box. I am walking back trying to do the ron/us dollar conversion. That’s over $1 per stamp. Yikes! Oh well, the experience itself was worth it and we all got pretzels.

I am still trying to figure out the old and new money here. I have given too much money countless times and everyone has returned it and shown me which one. It’s nice that everyone is so honest as I would have no clue. Food is extremely cheap here. We can get falafel sandwiches for the 5 of us for 12 ron (less that $5)! Our very fancy expensive dinner last night, the most we’ve ever spent on a meal for all of us was about $30. Clothes are cheap too. New men’s pants are about $3. Phonecards and stamps, however are not.

Money seemed to be our theme today. After the post office I got confident and decided to go to the bank to get a wad of cash since we leave for the village in 2 days. Romania is on the banned list at our bank for withdrawing cash with a pin number. The only way we can do it is if we go into a “reputable” bank and do a cash advance on our debit card or use credit cards. We can use our debit card to make purchases at the grocery store or any other store that accepts VISA. The first bank does not accept VISA. The second one does but I am in the wrong line. I get to the right line and they speak English. They tried using the pin but it got rejected. They gave me some suggestions on other banks. Grrr. Our reserves are gone and kids are ready for a nap now. I lay them down for James and Byron and head off to PATRIR to do some work there for a few hours.

They are tearing up the sidewalk outside to replace the asphalt with bricks. They did this last week across the street and now it looks great. It looks like a war zone. We walk across piles of broken concrete and rocks to get to where we need to go and walk dangerously close to the tractors and diggers. Liam loves that part.