the f word

it happens everyday. it's late, you missed the last bus and take a walk home. everyone's sleeping except the diligent people sweeping the sidewalks.

you have a long way to go. you get hungry. horribly hungry.

then you see the sign that promises redemption...

fornettis are little stores everywhere around that serve pastries like pizza slices decorated with mushrooms and ham or little flaky pastry with sweet or savoury filling. the taste of their goods is... let's say fair, often too sweet or just artificial but somehow addictive.

at daytime you can enter the stores, but may just get a step inside, because you get stopped by the register placed there. at night you get served through a little opened window night desk by the fornetti lady spending the night in her little house of food pleasures.

one of the first words i was able to say in romanian language was fornetti.

sure, it doesn't sound romanian, i don't think it even is and the company isn't either. is it hungarian, isn't it? but i felt good knowing a word to say in case i'm about to starve and lacking of suitable romanian phrases.

but joy follows disillusion. everyone, really everone i talked to hated the fornetti stores. and i got to hear how unhealthy their food is but i was excused liking them because of being new in town.

a few nights ago, we didn't miss the last bus, i said the fornetti-word in the middle of a conversation.

all of a sudden some passengers turned around and gave me these strange looks.

i didn't know that things look that bad for the reputation of fornetti...

so i decided to better not to talk too much about my secret vice but to getting my flaky pastry de mere there from time to time.

the itching

there's a saying which tells you if your nose itches someone will slap you in the face the same day.

this morning my nose itched kinda horrible. great prospects.

ignoring the warning of the saying we left the house.

first we passed by a little church and decided to enter it.

having a look inside, seeing the rich paintings, all that gold and the lusters, i felt the need to take some photos. we asked the only other person around, a lady dealing with some little paper joints filling them with little amounts of cotton wool. she told us that she can't give us photography permission because someone just installed cameras in this church to fight the massive problem of illegal photography in churches.

and she was right, there were little cameras hidden in the chandeliers.

we quit the plan of taking photos and talked a bit to her.

in result we wrote a little letter to the priest to include our families in his prayers.

talking a bit more to her, we had to tell that i'm not an orthodox which confused her slightly.

answering her question for my denomination we had to confess with a simple nimic.

now she was really confused. nimic? how does that work? well, that's kind of usual in some

families :P

and immediatly she offered a baptism in her church, which we friendly suspended to a later date.

we left and took a photo from the outside, legally.

we went to the market to buy some veggies.

situated near some residental area around and inside of an abandoned factory we kept looking for the stuff we needed.

passing by impressive amounts of raw meat, giant cookies within some floating smell of an industrial chicken farm we found the peasant dominated kingdom of vegetables.

nice prices and a variety of down-to-earth goods awaited us. 

buying some onions we almost got into a fight with the chubby owner of the stall and his wife.

not willing to give change and yelling at us we decided to leave their catchment area.

so except for being cursed nothing happened in connection with slapping and face.

later that day my ear tickled. it's going to rain then they say.

it didn't yet.

we let the day fade away with some conu' alecu demisec merlot from constanta that has the slight taste of a piece of wood swimming in some pond for a month. it's a nice wine.