Hi all,

I kinda feel bad for talking yet again about going home (6 weeks! Oh, did I say that?), but as you can imagine, it’s been on our minds quite a bit lately.

I distinctly remember sitting in Steve and Marie Pearce’s loungeroom about 12 months ago discussing our expectations for the trip to Bulgaria. (Steve and Marie work with WEC and they generously offered to take us through some of WEC’s “preparing for living OS” material.) Well, recently, we’ve been discussing the opposite – what we’re expecting when we return.

This post isn’t about those gruesome details, but it was interesting to realise that we feel slightly apprehensive that “home” may not feel as wonderful as we’ve imagined it in every homesick moment for the last 9 months! This is irrational, of course. A result of having far too much time to think about it! But it lead to me thinking up a short list of highly important, but little things that we’re looking forward to being reacquainted with.

1. Coffee! It’s not surprising that this is the first thing on my list, right? I wrote about the coffee situation here, suffice to say that the things I love about coffee – fresh roasts, diverse origins, a well-made flat white – simply aren’t found here. I complain about it, but we nevertheless do enjoy Bulgarian coffee, amongst other cafe offerings.

2. Shopping that makes sense! Elly said she can’t wait to be able to go into a clothing store and see things that look nice, and feel comfortable enough to ask to try them on, and to be able to explain what she might be looking for… and so on. It’s a combination of cultural differences, the language barrier and fashion from the ’80s (and not the cool part of the ’80s which is “retro” now).

3. Growing something! Some people think dirt is disgusting. I can’t wait to get it under my nails as I get back into gardening. Okay, so I had a measly pot of coriander and dill during summer, but I’m talking about dirt I can dig in! Eating some home-grown vegies is something I’m certainly looking forward to. Sam and Dani: want me to build you a vegie patch?

4. Texting! After we’d been here long enough to forget some of the details of what life in Ausland was like, we realised that almost all of our social engagements were initiated by SMS. I must have sent less than 5 since we got here. It just seems like a fiddly, unreliable means of communicating, when phone calls are cheap or free! But it’ll be good to get back into.

5. Driving! I haven’t driven a car this hemisphere. I was all for giving it a go – in fact, at one stage we were considering getting a Lada – but then we saw a nasty head-on collision on the highway one night… and that turned us off the idea. Implicit in this list item is that I’m soooo looking forward to drivers who occasionally consider that wanton recklessness could lead to a painful death. Do Australian drivers still know that?

6. High fidelity! We’ve been enjoying a lot of new music this year. It only struck me this week that we really haven’t heard any of it through decent speakers. It’s either been headphones (eugh!), laptop speakers (double eugh!), or the external computer speakers we bought (not bad). I have a feeling that hearing music on some big fat speakers again is going to blow our minds (and eardrums).

7. Rain! It’s mid-Feb, so we’re almost finished our winter, yet we haven’t had a proper soaking for months! We had quite a dry autumn (not sure if that’s usual here; I prefer Tassie’s windy and wet autumns) and then it got cold. Which meant it snowed. Don’t get me wrong, I love snow, but when we got caught in a nice early-spring storm last weekend, I realised how much I like (and miss) rain.

Hi all,

We had a great time away over Christmas and New Years’ in Romania. We ended up staying in Transylvania – enjoying the Nairns’ excellent hospitality – for nearly two weeks! It took so long to travel there and back that we felt like we needed to make it worthwhile. We spent about 50 hours on buses and trains, and Google Maps tells me that we travelled over 1600km. And we thought BG and RO were neighbouring countries!

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A Romanian phrase we used quite often over our trip was “la mulţi ani!” (pr: lah mooltz ahn) which means “to many years”. It’s quite a pretty phrase, I think, but also very useful. It’s used for Christmas, New Years’ Eve and birthdays.

James went to a village for New Years’ Eve, so it was up to Texan Dave and Elly and me to have/find/create huge amounts of fun for the countdown.

Inspired by rumours of the stoic efforts of Romanian nationals who stay up to watch the dawn on New Years’ Day, we planned to stay out late. We left the house at 11:30pm and made our way to the centre of town, where we could hear loud and decidedly “traditional” music. Sure enough, a swaggering, middle-aged Romanian guy was crooning away with a backing band of clarinet, fiddle and accordion. Sorry Dad, it was nowhere near as good as that sounds. Nevertheless, it felt so authentically Romanian that we quite enjoyed it, even after Elly pointed out that we were probably enduring the Romanian equivalent of John Farnham or someone with equivalent mass appeal.

At 11:55pm, someone was welcomed on stage with sufficient polite applause to convince us that he was the mayor (or someone like that). He gave a rousing speech (probably), but was interrupted by a large projector screen lowering down in front of him. He chuckled and popped around the side of the screen to continue his speech, but before long all the stage lights went out and the poor mayor got drowned out by fireworks.

They started a lesser array of fireworks with a minute to go. This confused us, because all of a sudden, without any counting down, there was cheering and bright lights and explosions! So, of course, we cheered and yelled out “Happy New Year” to everyone… only to see a 30-second countdown display appear on the screen shortly afterwards. Impressively, the real fireworks display after the real countdown was much better.

After the countdown an enthusiastic (ie. slightly drunk) young performer came on stage to sing some traditional Romanian songs. Based on the average age of those who sang along with him, we’re quite sure that the songs being performed were of the Auld Lang Syne ilk. Again, we were blissfully ignorant to the uncoolness. The singer eventually got the crowd to chant “Radul, Radul, Radul…” so we’re fairly sure that was his name.

Radul spoke three words of English: “oh”, “my” and “God”. He had a very strange habit of interspersing his long-winded Romanian banter between the songs with cries of “oh my Gaaad”, as if it was another way of saying “isn’t it great to be in Târgu Mureş tonight?” or something equally inane.

At one stage we spotted a bunch of people our age who we quickly decided were not locals. They were dancing too exuberantly. Some red hair and a Guinness t-shirt made me think they were Irish. I think Dave guessed that they were German (or was it Scandinavian…?). Anyway, it turns out they were Croatian.

There were six of them, and they’d travelled to Târgu Mureş because they found cheap flights there! They all spoke excellent English, which impressed me. I asked how they’d learned such good English and they quipped that they watch a lot of TV and spend a lot of time on the computer! But I think they were being humble – I suspect the language is compulsory there, as it is in Romania.

After the Radul Spectacular finished at 1am, the crowd dispersed and the clean-up began. We followed a large crowd, who turned out to be returning to their cars (and not to party). So we walked back to the main strip and found our Croatian friends again. They were looking for a party, too. Like us, they hadn’t realised that all the bars and clubs are closed for private parties on New Years Eve. Since we hadn’t booked, things were looking grim.

Luckily, we managed to crash a party in a nearby restaurant. We’d walked in to ask if they were open but the owner said “sorry, it’s a private party” and directed us to a Michael Jackson-themed bar up the road (eww). But moments later he caught up to us on the street and said “hey, the people said you can come in if you like”. So we did!

Turns out the party was 100% Hungarian, which made for a very multi-cultural experience: 2 Aussies, 1 Yank, 6 Croats and several Hungarians in a Romanian taverna. (Hungarians make up about half the population of Translyvania, since historically the region was a part of Hungary.) They served us sausages with mustard and crusty bread, which was highly appropriate since: a) it seemed a very Hungarian meal and b) it was 2am and therefore the perfect time for such stodgy cuisine!

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We had a good time. Since then, we’ve returned to Bulgaria after an epic 2-train journey of 28 hours. We’re looking forward to staying right where we are until it’s time to catch a plane to ‘Straya! Here’s the plan until then:

- Start school (term 1) this coming Monday;

- Teach for about 8 weeks;

- Have a week off around my birthday (March 9);

- Teach another 2-3 weeks;

- 2 days after the end of term 1, we fly home (April 4)!

Writing it down like that has really made it seem like no time at all! It’s less than 3 months until we leave! We are of course very excited to be going home, but I think as it approaches our feeling will become increasingly mixed. Stay tuned for our philosophising about that particular experience in later blog posts! For now, suffice to say that we’ve talked about it (what else do you do on 4 x 12 hour train rides?) and set ourselves some goals.

Essentially, we want to make the most of the rest of our time here. It will be very tempting to “tune out” towards the end of our trip instead of allowing ourselves to be stretched and challenged until our last day. We’ve barely scratched the surface of the various cultures (let alone languages) we meet every day, so there plenty more “experience” to be had by us before April. Feel free to ask us how we went with those goals in a few months’ time!

Thanks for stopping by!

Cheers

Stu.

Music Review: The Pursuit Continues by Giraffe Incognito.

Meet Boris.

There are many things that Boris would like to do in life – such as have a girlfriend, or walk down the street without being yelled at – but unfortunately, Boris is not cool.

Boris has tried numerous approaches to gaining coolness. He bought new jeans and ran over them with the lawnmower (you know, for that authentic ripped look). But that didn’t make Boris cool. He watched every film by Quentin Tarantino (even Jackie Brown!), but that just left him confused. Finally, he moved to Belgium and learnt Flemish so he could return with a cool accent. Alas, he just sounded pretentious!

You see, what Boris never found out is that being cool isn’t about what you look or sound like … it’s about what music you listen to.

What Boris needed was the smooth, 1920s-gangster tones of Giraffe Incognito. It’s obvious, really!

I was trying to think of a good way to frame this review. You know, some sexy way of saying “okay, so this CD is by my brother-in-law, but I promise I’m not reviewing it out of nepotism…”. Oh – I guess I just came right out and said it, didn’t I? Oh well, we’ll see how that goes.

Disclaimers notwithstanding, this album – The Pursuit Continues – is one of those CDs you wish you could find when rifling through a second-hand music shop; something no one else has heard of (yet); something that’s a little off-beat … and most importantly of all, something that sounds great! In that case, you’d go to great lengths to tell everyone you know about it, right? That makes this album eminently blogworthy!

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Musically, this album reminds me of Gotye, maybe the Propellerheads, or even Bentley Rhythm Ace. Giraffe Incognito (aka. William Rainbird) gives us guitars, drums and violin with lashings of amusing samples from scratchy old vinyls that give the album a great cigar-smoke-in-a-1920s-gin-club feel. Most of all I’d say it’s a bass (as in bass guitar) driven album. That’s a good thing; we all know that bass is the second* coolest instrument out there.

Here are some things you might notice on listening to The Pursuit Continues:

Most of the tracks are instrumental. I like this because it reflects the laid-back nature of the album. There’s no rush to keep up with a long series of enigmatic lyrics (tell me: do songwriters aim for lyrics to be vague and obtuse?). It’s about the music – which tends to be playful and interesting.

Where there are lyrics, they’re kinda fun. With tracks like The Bank Robbery, Mr. Gangster Man and Villains, and a song about an escaped serial killer, we’re joining in on an adventure rather than exploring the depths of someone’s psyche.

There’s still a raw quality to the recording. I hesitate to say that, because it sounds like a euphemism for “not very well recorded” – which is thankfully not the case here. Instead, there’s a kind of unselfconscious air to the album, whereas an overpaid producer (in their wisdom) might have said “cut that track, shorten that track, make this track sound more like James Blunt” etc. Nope; not here. Instead of sounding like something else, The Pursuit Continues seems to have a character and personality of its own.

Start and finish. Since I happen to read Giraffe Incognito’s blog, I had a heads-up on this one, but back in August there was an interesting discussion on how important the final (and for that matter, opening) track of an album is. This album is book-ended by solid instrumentals. The opener (The Dutch Camp Lounge) brings things to a great start – it’s laid-back, and it’s got THAT synth note that brings in the drum to give it major cool-factor. The closing track (New Kids In Town – watch out for an upcoming novel of the same name!) does its job in textbook fashion. It’s short, snappy, and a perfect representation of the album.

Nice track names. Like Tortoise With a Turtleneck Sweater. That’s gold. Also Don’t Watch Television Tonight, which becomes more amusing once you hear the sample of Mr. Giraffe impersonating his Dad (with an American accent? – nice).

Other highlights. Villains is very catchy. Beware. Also, my pick for setting a great mood would be Tomorrow’s Past – with a menacing effect on the bass it has a great sense of tension to it. Oh, and the album art – which I’ve only been able to see in digital form since I’m here in BG – is nicely done and sets the tone for the album even before you press play. It’s a parody of Nighthawks by Edward Hopper with the ubiquitous giraffe in place of “that guy at the bar”. Very classy.

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The album is 100% previewable if you go to this website – it’s free. You can even download the whole thing for a donation of your choice (ie. you can pay nothing, if you’re a nasty piece of work ).