Come to Romania, eat some pizza!

The headline of this entry is also my suggestion for a new national slogan - let me explain why! Romania is a "Latin" country - which in general means its people speak a language similar to the most popular latin-based languages: French, Spanish, and Italian. Culturally, I've also been told Romanians feel that there are similarities between them and the Italians. There is one area in particular though in which Romanians have far exceeded the Italians - their love of pizza! It is served in 99% of the restaurants I have been to - both fine dining and fast food. You can get almost anything on your pizza here, and should expect to see some unusual offerings. A couple of nights ago, I went to a local Romanian pub and ordered a vegetable pizza. I was thinking of course of something similar to the vegetable pizza you would get in the US (called here "Statele Unite") - maybe some spinach, tomatoes, and mushrooms. Well, to my surprise - there were potatoes, broccoli, peas, corn, and beans. Essentially, this was American style vegetable soup on a pizza. I ate it of course, and it wasn't half bad. I guess that captures the essence of the experience here so far - it's like having a pizza with strange toppings on it.

A hard days night...

While jet lag is certainly not a uniquely Romanian experience, waking up at 3:30 am in Bucharest does add a little something extra to it. There was no way I could get back to sleep so I decided to tough it out and stay awake. Eventually the rest of the city woke up and it was time for my first language lesson at 9am. Now I can say "Ma cheama Mike. Cum te cheama?" Beyond that, and its back to English. Fortunately, I have 10 more weeks of language class to get past "My name is Mike. What is your name?" Well, by this afternoon I was already nodding off in my very first meeting with the project team. I did the math and realized that I had woken up at about 9:30 EST and as far as my body was concerned, by 4 pm Bucharest time I had been awake "all night" and was heading into late morning by EST. Hopefully tonight will be a normal rest. If not, the coffee here is incredibly strong, which I suppose is why they serve it in such tiny cups!

Bucharest baby! Bucharest!

I arrived at the airport in Portland, Maine (after a week of playing Navy) too late to check my bags, so I had to get switched to a connecting flight to Philly then on to DC, where I was to board my international flight. Murphy's law prevailed and after a delay on the ground in Portland, missed the connection to DC in Philly. I was then switched to a flight direct to Munich from Philly, but the glitch was that my bags were checked to get onto the connection I had missed, and were nowhere to be found. I was told that if they had made the connection I had missed, they would be sent to DC and held there for security reasons - while I went on to Bucharest without them. You have to love homeland security (that remark probably just got me flagged by the FBI). Anyway, after about a half hour of searching on the part of the airline staff, my bags were located, but had to be rechecked for the remainder of the trip. Of course, all of the flight changes caused me to be flagged for "special screening" by security. After a very thorough inspection (no body cavity search involved, thankfully) I finally got aboard the flight. The third variable in all of this was that once I was in Munich, I had to change airlines from US Airways to Lufthansa. I have to give some praise to German effiency here - I thought it was going to be a nightmare, but it was the smoothest part of the flight, and as a bonus the airport in Munich had full wireless internet access.

So I finally made it here and was taken to my "apartment". I won't go into details about it, but its a far cry from my luxury pad in Chicago. It does have a couple of large balconies though, which are actually bigger than my bedroom. See the pics for the views.