#4 Lost in Translation

#4 Lost in Translation

So for the first week of being in Romania the Cluj Days were taking place.  Pretty much it is a festival that goes on for a week.  Today we went to the first day of it, of course it was raining a bit.  As a note it rains here a lot! It is kind of like Florida though because it’ll rain for like an hour than it’ll be sunny the next.  We all lost faith in the weatherman.  It does not work here in Romania.  I also packed for hot weather and its been in the low 60’s here.  So no shorts for me.  There is a main square in the city and there they had all the beer tents and the concert stage.  Through out some of the walking streets they had tables anything from clothes, jewelry and food.  This was the first time I was able to eat traditional Romanian food.  While in line we were trying to pronounce the name of the beer that is made in Cluj.  It is called, Ursus.  The guy in front of us thought it was funny that we were trying to pronounce it so he was helping us.  He also explained to us that the goulash we were ordering comes from Hungary originally but the Romanians took it on as their own and changed it up a bit.  I started noticing that even if you pronounced one syllabal wrong in Romanian people did not understand you.  I was having a lot of difficulty in speaking the language.  However, I did not have as much

trouble reading it because of the classes I took in Italian.  We also learned after a few times it happening to people that you need to always count your money.  A few of my friends received the wrong change back.  After lunch we shopped for a bit and then made our way to a different section which had tables filled with stuff that was made by the Roma people.  There were a lot of Roma people selling their stuff.  This section of the festival was pretty crowded and we kept getting bumped into.  This was the first time I really worried about being pick pocketed. The stuff they made was beautiful but it was difficult talking to some of the people because they knew no english.

That night we went to Club Midi.  The music was all house/electronic music so I felt right at home.  I really saw that music is universal.  I had a lot of fun and even tried Absinthe.  It burned and took your breath away.  Anyway the educational point from the club is that the bartender tried to scam me.  I gave him 10 lei for my beer that cost 5 lei.  I was waiting for change and he like waved me off.  I turned to my friends because I thought maybe I was wrong on the price.  I checked the menu and I was right I was supposed to get 5 lei back.  I told him then that I need my change.  First he told me that I only gave him 5 lei than he changed the story and said he gave me my change.  We were told not to play the foreigner card or argue with people here but this was ridiculous.  He spoke English fine and I was really polite but persistent about getting my change.  I guess he realized I wasn’t going away so he gave it to me.