We’re in Cluj-Napoca (THE BIRTHPLACE OF BELA KAROLYI BTW REMEMBER WHEN I WAS OBSESSED WITH HIM) and apropos of nothing, we see this large silk screen of another man I’m obsessed with, Robert Smith, covering this window as we crossed the street. Had to stop for a picture.

When we were driving to our hotel in Bucharest (at 3am never forget I know I won’t), we spotted numerous posters of this same image hanging in various spots in Old Town so now I’m on a mission to find out why. They’re not concert posters…

It’s giving me the feels though because EXACTLY 25 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK, I saw the Cure for the first time in Canberra, Australia. (And met them!)

Anyway!! It’s 5:46am and we’re getting ready to embark on the Maramures portion of the trip. It already feels like our time in Romania is half over but it’s not. The “do t wanna leave” panic is strong with this one.

I knew I was going to love it here. I knew. Decades of dreaming about it, numerous failed attempts over the last 15 years, and here I am, with Henry who might not always understand the root of my obsessions, but he’s here for it and that’s all I can ask for!

In more ways one it has taken forever to get here, but we made it! We left the house around noon on Thursday (EDT) and flew to Chicago where we were supposed to have a 5:00-something overnight flight to Heathrow, land 8:00am London time and then get on a connecting flight to Bucharest at 9:15am which would have put us here around 2pm romania time on Friday. But right before boarding the London flight, they made an “oh btw” announcement that “a door” needed to be fixed and maintenance was on their way. First it was a “20 minute” delay. Then an hour. Then, “they asked for another hour.” It turned into over three hrs and our chances of making the connecting flight went out the window. The ONLY other flight that day was at 8pm, putting us in Bucharest after 1am. Not great but at least the flight wasn’t outright canceled, but believe me that I had wished it was after we FINALLY boarded only to get EVERYONE situated and a flight attendant to come on and say yeah sorry but we have been informed that maintenance needs to check on one more thing and everyone has to deboard. Oh yeah and bring all your stuff with you. Everything.

The outcry! I was just freaking out like, is this plane safe? Are we ok? I overheard a flight attendant tell the ppl behind us that it was actually the door where the inflatable evacuation slide is. “Believe me, you don’t want that inflating in-air,” he said and that was an image that was seared in my mind from that point on.

You wanna talk about a rowdy group of passengers. Mist of them were already drunk from the first round of delays and a group of the rowdiest ran right back to the bar across from our gate (K15, never forget). So by the time we reboarded (the whole crew was over it by then and allowed us to just bunch into crowds and get our passes scanned out of group order), some ppl were so trashed that I was worried we were going to be a dystopian in-air social experiment but almost everyone fell asleep / passed out immediately.

And then we got to take the Heathrow Express to London for some blessed open air / no airport quality time. It wasn’t the worst layover that’s for sure.

However by the time we touched down in Bucharest, picked up our rental, drove the 17 minutes to the city and checked in to our cutie hotel, it was after 3am. (Side note: that airport was BUSY for being after 1am and Bucharest was still bumping at 3am.)

We left the next morning to start our Transylvanian roadtrip, and I was so sad to check out because it was so pretty/creepy there! And both women we talked to at the desk were so nice. The one the next morning especially! She gave us the sage advice of “don’t feed the bears! They are not pets.” (It’s a real problem with tourists here – way worse than me and the squirrels!)

Well, we are currently in Sibui and I woke up in the middle of the night and decided to just check in and share photos of the Scala Boutique Hotel!

It looks like he’s peeing on the door?!

From this morning!

Courtyard view.

Initial thoughts: Romania was worth the wait 100%! We have had some really nice interactions with a bunch of people here so far and also Sibiu has a small Korean store called Komart lol. Had to throw that in there.

P.S. you know what’s funny/sad? I have wanted to come here for so long that I already had a “Romania” category on my blog, probably from 2007?? After several failed attempts, I finally made it! Grateful that Henry was on board with this :)

(Hello, I recommend reading this post first because I will be referencing people and incidents from that!)

‘Twas the night before Thanksgiving, around 9:30 and we were doing fuck all. In fact, I had just curled up on the couch with a book while Henry was working on something at the computer in the other room. Chooch was in his room playing dumb games with his friends.

I hadn’t even had a chance to open my book yet, when suddenly…

The front door opens.

I had about .25 seconds to run through the probability of this being either Henry or Chooch. Did one of them go outside through the basement, perhaps? And now they were coming back in?

But now there was a stranger standing in the doorway. He quietly closed the door behind him, then turned back into the room.

We locked eyes.

My mental People Rolodex is flipping at warped speed: WHO IS THIS MAN. DO I KNOW THIS MAN.

Now the man’s eyes are flicking around my house. “Oh…shit. I walked into the wrong house.”

“Yes,” I managed to whisper, half-paralyzed, not quite with fear but surprise. Shock.

This happened so quietly and calmly, that even Henry had a delayed reaction at the computer, not quite sure what is happening.

“Wow, this house is….I should go,” the man said, and turned to leave. Now I could hear Chooch creeping on the steps. He apparently thought it was Blake dropping off Starbucks for him after work and was shocked to see that, no this was not Blake.

“Yes, you should go,” I agreed, and now it clicked where I had seen this face before: he is one of the people moving in with Rob (please refer to previous post!) and he had also come over to Ruth’s on Monday to make sure was OK. Plus, I had seen him several times over the weekend moving stuff into the house.

So a stranger, but also a neighbor. But still a stranger.

“Do you mind if I just stand here and look around for a minute?” he asked.

Now here is the point where my constant need for praise and attention drop-kicked any remaining supply of rationality out of my cranial trap door. Since the pandemic, we have barely had anyone over here aside from family, Verizon guys, and plumbers. So I was kind of like, “YES, YOU MAY” which I know pissed Henry off, but hello I would like to note for the log that Henry was the last one in the house and didn’t shut the door all the way, so this is a very BLAME HENRY situation we have on our hands here. Also, passive Henry never once attempted to intervene.

Also, this guy was fucking high. Imagine walking into my house for the first time, incapacitated. This was around the time he finally introduced himself as Robert, the boyfriend of the girl also moving in with Rob who Rob said was his daughter but GET THIS: she is actually the ex-gf of Rob’s son, Brandon!? That is…weird? Right? That she’s living with her ex-bf’s dad and her new bf?

“Do you get high?” he asked, to which I immediately said no. “Oh, well do you mind if we smoke pot over there?” he asked, and I said that I didn’t care what he did as long as it wasn’t in my house (??) and he goes, “No, I mean, you can’t smell it through the walls, right?” I had to explain to him that he didn’t just walk into the wrong SIDE of his new house, he walked into the wrong house entirely.

“Well, we don’t share any walls since you’re all the way over there, so no, we can’t smell it,” I explained and then in my head, thought, “LOL that’s Ruth’s problem.”

Man, this guy (who was born in 1988, a fact I will never forget because he told me like 1,988 times and I wanted to be like, “THAT’S WHEN G-DRAGON WAS BORN!” but you know, we just met) had questions about everything. First, he asked if everything in here was for sale, like he thought this was a lighting store or something?

He’s still standing at this point, and I’m sitting on the couch wondering how much longer this was going to last before I had to tell him to leave. He was very quiet, calm, polite, totally high though. Henry wanted no part of this at all and LET ME DEAL WITH IT?! He told me later, “Oh, you seemed to have it under control. I assessed the situation and he didn’t appear to be a threat.” WOW, way to be the man of the house. Not to white Knight Henry, but imagine a petite Seth Rogen and that’s basically what walked into our house.

But then Robert started talking about the drama that happened the other day. “What the hell was up with that??” he asked, and I was like, “Buckle up, Robert, I’m an expert at Pioneer Ave information.” So now Robert is sitting on the couch and we’re chatting like old broads at tea time. I forgot that I used to be good at conversationing and peopling! Anyway, the irony was not lost on him that he essentially did the same thing as Johnny Cash, just in a much less sinister context.

You guys, he LET ME TALK ABOUT KOREA and that is all I ever want, truly.

I would also like to memorialize the fact that prior to this, I had put on a YouTube video about various things to do in the Smoky Mountains, nature-wise, and another extremely boring video had started playing with a super old man narrating in in a dry voice, like something you’d have watched in school on a day when you have a sub and they have nothing else to give you, work-wise. I desperately wanted to change it but the remote was on the other side of Robert. So I let the boring ass video play on like in some old bitch living in a wood-paneled RV.

I mean, that seems like the type of TV someone like that would watch.

About 30 minutes in, he mentioned that he was born in Romania and I almost lunged at him in excitement.

“I AM OBSESSED WITH ROMANIA,” I said in a very serious fashion, and he was caught off guard by this.

I will say it was frustrating though because he couldn’t remember anything and asked me numerous times what my name is and how long I’ve been living here. Henry said he texted Chooch at one point and said, “It’s like a revolving convo.” I demanded a screenshot of these texts for journalistic purposes:

Typical Chooch, only cares about his drink, zero concern for Mum’s safety.

Apparently during other parts, Chooch was hovering on the steps listening in and he and Henry were communicating through facial expressions. I wish I could have seen their faces when ROMANIA came up because I’m sure Henry closed his eyes in defeat and Chooch gave his fists a “NOW SHE WILL NEVER LET HIM LEAVE” shake.

So yeah, Robert moved to the States with his parents from Romania when he was 7 but he still speaks Romanian fluently and was just there this year to visit family! HE TAUGHT  ME HOW TO SAY HELLO HOW ARE YOU IN ROMANIAN BUT I ALREADY FORGOT.

Anyway, he stayed for an hour and then we wished each other a Happy Thanksgiving, he apologized again, and that was that. I got up and immediately locked the door behind him.

I immediately texted my brother, Corey, because he is so invested in the Pioneer drama.

Truly! That was not how I saw the night going. Look, I am clearly starved for conversation! I knew this was filling a void when I abandoned all of my filters and started giddily telling Robert about the squirrels. “And they love grapes, but they call them by the Korean word, podo!” (Henry texted Chooch at this point like, “great, now she’s talking about the squirrels.”)

Anyway, Corey and I are now exclusively referring to Robert as Vlad so as not to confuse him with Rob.

Chooch cautiously came downstairs a few minutes later. “OMG did he finally leave?” he asked, and then gave me a very disappointed head shake. Turns out he wasn’t worried that this guy was going to murder me, he was just annoyed because Blake had left his Starbucks in a bag on the porch and Chooch didn’t want to have to walk past Robert. He apparently texted Blake said he couldn’t get it right away because some guy was in the house.

Blake goes, “Who, dad’s new boyfriend?” (When Henry heard about this he mockingly laughed and said, “wow you guys are all so funny.”)

Chooch said, “No, some guy living with Rob. He just walked into our house.”

And Blake said, “Oh cool.”

OH COOL????

“I just can’t believe this happened two nights after you were telling me about the other time someone walked into the house,” Chooch said, and my mind is also a little blown about that too. WHAT DOES IT MEAN?! (Aside from us needing to triple-check that the door is locked.)

***

“Wow, you wanna talk about someone who can talk…” Henry sighed, after Robert left.

“Oh I know right, I didn’t think he was ever going to leave!” I said.

“I was talking about you,” Henry frowned.

:(

I bet Vlad doesn’t even remember being here.

On the phone this morning with Henry, I was spazzing out about a horrible dream I had about Jonny Craig, in which he was so much of a crack addict that he was beginning to lose his teeth. Even now, when I shut my eyes, I can see him with his mouth open all wide as he’s singing, and he’s missing a front tooth and the one next to it is all snaggled and he looks like he should be selling blow jobs at a truck stop in West Virginia, not touring the country with a Scene-popular band. (Except that in real life, he’s not even doing that.) And when this was happening in my dream, Sandy was there with me, seeing it all for herself and in my head, I was thinking, “Oh god, oh fuck no.

Why does he have to be flapping open his crack-obliterated maw right now in front of SANDY? She’s going to torture me with Photoshopped portraits of his new tooth-lite look.

” I was really panicked about this, not worried that Jonny Craig was about two hits away from stealing from kids (oh wait), but panicked because Sandy was going to make fun of me.

Henry laughed disgustedly. “That’s not so much a dream as it is reality.”

“YOU DON’T KNOW THAT’S HE’S LOST ANY TEETH YET!” I cried in defiance.

In other parts of my dream, I was on a cruise with Andrea, but the cruise ship was actually just a docked Motel 6 which at some point we were driven off of by Romanian gypsies so of course I woke up with my extreme yearning to travel to Romania rejuvenated. This clearly means that Andrea is supposed to go with me.

I’ll start looking at itineraries, Andrea, while you get your palate primed for some placenta pie.

ROMANIA 2012, HOLLA.

My Romanian travel brochure arrived today and has pinned my interest right up against a tree trunk like a frat boy fresh from a kegger.

Suspiciously, there has been little mention of the local cuisine so I wiki’d it last night and I’m happy to report that I’ll be losing a lot of weight during my sojourn, which is great because I’ve been looking into stocking my closet with some of those hot goat milking dresses the broads wear in the field.

Also, families sacrifice pigs for Christmas, so if you’re into that you should think about calling your travel agent on the ASAP.

Today, I sold a Lizzie Borden card and a 10-card set, which puts me approximately $30 closer toward my final destination of Romania. Henry’s not invited, since he wouldn’t take me to the hospital. He can have fun staying home in gay Pennsylvania while I’m off riding donkeys and wildin’ out on Romanian date rape drugs. I can’t wait to taste Romanian pie and pee in their toilets. With a little conniving and perseverence, this dream might be realized by next summer. It’s only my dying wish, you know.

It’s not too late to purchase holiday cards. Send me to Romania. If you’re lucky, I’ll get stuck over there and wind up living a meager existence hauling oats in a field with no Internet. And then I’ll lose a wager with a gypsy over who has a bigger ballsack – the town cobbler or the albino who lives under the bridge and inspires dark fairy tales – and next thing I know, I’ll have a gaping hole in my side and my kidney will be chilling out on ice. Don’t you want that for me? Tell people about my cards; make your dreams (and mine) come true.