Sopa de letras multicolor

Hay elecciones municipales en junio, y con tanta alcaldía, tantas siglas y tantos colores, la cosa me tiene mareada.

Mareo politológico. ¿Tanta alcaldía? Bueno, Bucarest en realidad se compone de seis ayuntamientos (uno por Sector), más uno general. Vamos, imaginaos una Comunidad Autónoma del tamaño de una ciudad, es decir, casa tras casa tras casa, y dividida en seis provincias. Pues más o menos eso, descripción de andar por casa. Yo vivo en sector 1, trabajo en sector 5 y voy a clases de rumano al sector 2... Todo ello en un perímetro de menos de media hora andando desde mi casa. Me intriga, intento aprender, cómo se puede desarrollar de manera coordinada una ciudad cuando un paso de cebra depende de un tipo, y el siguiente de otro... Pero bueno, hay dos explicaciones: primero, que la Primaría General manda mucho más; segundo, que Bucarest NO es una ciudad con un desarrollo coordinado ni mucho menos.

Mareo alfabético. Una quincena de candidatos, una quincena de partidos... Social, Liberal, Popular, Campesino, Demócrata, Nacional, Cristiano... Elige tres palabras, pon un guión, tienes un partido. Vamos, que necesito un master para orientarme aquí, menos mal que...

(Mareo audiovisual)... existen los colores. Estas son las elecciones arcoiris. Como las líneas del metro de Madrid, a mí no me preguntéis nombres, sé que está el partido naranja butano (el del presi, una rosa en el logo), el partido rojo pasión (el ex-rojo, tres rosas en el logo), el amarillo limón (tengo un boli), el verde lima (que no es el Partido Verde), el azul cielo. A ver, vivo al lado de Sala Palatului, que es un poco como el Palacio de los Deportes, así que ya me han tocado tres mítines de diferentes colores, con sus banderitas al viento, sus jóvenes repartiendo bolis, sobres, camisetas y su stand con alguna persona arengando al personal.

Mareo gráfico. Se necesitan urgentemente en este país trabajadores para el sector de la construcción y asesores de imagen... La primera propaganda que me endosaron fue la del candidato de mi sector (uno) del Partido Social Demócrata, y entre el fondo de bandera roja ondeando, la cara de niño bueno, delegado de la clase, esos ojos de corderito degollado "por favor votame"... Hoy vi su video electoral, y ¿sabéis a qué discurso corresponde esta imagen: "El Sector 1 vota. Juventud. Innovación. Voluntad. Profesionalismo. Es tiempo de cambios... etc."



Pero bueno, repeinados todos... Otro video, este del Partido Campesino: "Bucarest, una ciudad que mata¨, empieza el video. ¿será verdad, como dice el video, que la esperanza de vida en Bucarest es menor que en el resto de Rumania?



El color de la toga de Ciencias Políticas es del mismo color butano... Este mitin me recuerda mi orla de fin de carrera.... La salida de este mitin me pilló en la calle... qué agobio.



ANEXO PARA FREAKIES

http://infoalegeri.ro/

Candidatos a la Primaria General

• Andrei Marian - PRR
• BlagaVasile - PD-L
• Diaconescu Cristian - PSD
• Dumitrescu Dan - PER
• Frumosu Dragos - UPSS
• Fuciu Daniel - PNG-CD
• Gheorghe Dinu - PPPS
• Gusa Cozmin - PIN
• Ion Ioana - PRE
• Ionicescu Gheorghe - PVR
• Ludovic Orban - PNL
• Meir Nati - PFC
• Mihai Mihaela - PNDC
• Mironov Alexandru - PSR
• Oprescu Sorin Mircea
• Pavelescu Aurelian - PNTCD
• Stanciu Lucia - PAS
• Stefanescu Codrin - PC
• Varbaciu Nicolae - PSR
• Verdinas Verginia - PRM
• Vilau Ioan Adrian - UPSC
• Vladu Alexandru - PP

Candidatos para el Sector 1

• Bojanopol Mariana - UPSS
• Bustea Elena - PNTCD
• Chiliman Andrei Ioan - PNL
• Constantin C. Oana - PSR
• Damian Spiridon - PVR
• Manea Vasile - PER
• Mitroi V. Florea - PPPS
• Murgeanu Razvan - PD-L
• Oprea Marian - PNG-CD
• Petrescu Anca - PRM
• Plesa Alexandru - PRR
• Rotaru Oana Stefania - PIN
• Solomon Natalia - PAS
• Tanasescu Paul - PC
• Tudorache Dan - PSD

Etc... Etc... Etc...

Coffee spoiler

Hi! It's been so long since my last post... I'm afraid I'm a third lazy, a third busy and a third practical-problems-fighting, that equals I'm a crappy blogger...

Anyway... As it's lunchtime (Spanish lunchtime, 15 h.), I just have another "food" anecdote... This time related to one of my addictions, that is, coffee.

Romania is supposed to have coffee tradition, in contrast with tea tradition from Slavic countries (you know, the Latin island in a Slavic world). The traditional coffee is the Turkish one, but noone ever prepares it, and no cafeteria or restaurant offers it. Too long to prepare, no time to loose (capitalist frenzy? or practical approach?)... So they changed to long, American coffee. You know, the coffee we Spanish and also Italians consider bad... That´s why it´s difficult for me to consider Romania a "coffee country", after all.

Well, after the fake sociological introduction, let´s go to the anecdote. This weekend I invited a friend to have lunch, I prepared coffee and she found it soooo strong... So this morning, when they came to install air conditioning at my house (now I'll be safe in Bucharest July canicule), I offered coffee (I always do, coffee, water, whateverm in Spain people fixing thing at your place would accept, here they say no and look surprised for the offer, but I can´t help keep offering, I feel unpolite if I prepare a coffee for myself and don´t offer around...). Well, this time they said yes. But then I went to the kitchen, tasted my coffee cup and noticed it was so nicely strong... So I decided to commit a crime: I poured one tenth of a cup and then filld the rest with water... they seemed to like it like that!

Lost my coffee principles today....

Bueno, hace un montón que no escribo, me temo que ando medo vaga, medio ocupada, medio preocupada, medio liada... Ya sabéis que escribo cuentos de 2 líneas cada 4 años, así que mi vaguería en todo lo escrito no os sorprenderá.

En fin, que reaparezco con otras anécdota alimenticia, bueno, no demasiado alimenticia, más bien adictiva: una historia de café.

Rumania es un país cafetero, en teoría, una isla en un entorno amante del té, como es la Europa eslava. El café tradicional es del tipo turco, con los posos dentro del vaso. Ya nadie lo prepara, nadie lo sirve... demasiado trabajo. Y se han pasado al café largo, americano; por eso me cuesta considerar a los rumanos como verdaderos cafeteros, porque ya sabéis, para españoles, italianos (no sé si para colombianos y toda la pesca), el café bueno es el café fuerte, expreso, y un café americano es algo que sólo se bebe porque no hay más remedio.

Así que en Rumania se toma café americano. Fin de la afirmación falsamente sociológica. Inicio de la anéctoda. El otro día invité a una amiga a comer, y cuando llegó el momento del café, le costó horrores beberlo, demasiado fuerte. Hoy vinieron a ponerme el aire acondicionado, y les ofrecí café; siempre lo hago cuando vienen a arreglarme algo, en general aquí me miran raro, en España el 50% de las veces aceptan. Aquí no debe ser costumbre, pero la verdad es que me siento muy maleducada si me preparo un café y no ofrezco, así que lo sigo haciendo. Pero hoy aceptaron, y de repente me encontré con un problema: mi café de cafetera italiana era muy fuerte, no les iba a gustar... así que cometí un pecado capital, puse en una taza un poquito de café y rellené el resto con agua. !Parece que les gustó¡

"Tengo pocos principios, y los gasto en las tonterías que me da la gana" (Irene dixit, hace siglos, y sus amigos se lo recuerdan cuando quieren callar alguna enrevesada teoría...). En fin, parece ser que en lo relacionado con el café hoy he perdido un buen puñado de principios...

Fast Food Wisdom

Fast Food = cooked food that you buy in some kiosk to be eaten on your way... (My own Irene's definition).

1) In St. Petersburg, in Koroblestroyteley Street, they have the best kebabs (Shaorma) in the world... Maybe because those where the first ones I tried, when I was 19 (b.G.: before Globalization), and were eaten with appetite and in good company.

2) In the Netherlands you can insert a coin in a machine and get a Coke, a coin in another one and get a chocolate bar, and then a last coin in a third machine and get a hot hamburguer... Not very tasty, by the way, with some Dutch "touch" in the sauce that didn't convince me at all. I would advice to get three chocolate bars instead and wait to reach some place and get a proper meal.

3) In Britain Fish&Chips' fish is too greasy and quite disgusting... Chips fried in that same oil, I don't know why, taste very good, though, specially after pub crawling (half pub crawling in my case)! And, by the way, kebabs are much spicier than in other places in Europe I've been in... The Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi influence, I suppose.

4) In Italy you can get a piece of pizza in every corner, Pizza al Taglio, and it costs differently depending on its weight. On kebab local specificities, I'm afraid, I don't know... But food at an Etiopian cafe is worth trying! (Although it's not fast food in that case...).

5) In Romania fried chips are served INSIDE the kebab, all together with the meat, vegetables and sauce.

6) I would need some outer look at Spanish Fast Food context to detect local specificities... Help on that :) But yeah, I do have one (a Madrid one, in fact): we get huge sandwiches filled with fried squids!! ("Bocata de Calamares")

PostScriptum: Kebab is my favorite kind of fast food, just in case this fact passed unnoticed for any of you...

Cinema Paradiso

Today I closed my laptop at 18.30, decided that my working day was over and headed to the cinema, to a "Cinemateca" near my house, Cinema Union, a small cinema where the films are shown only if there's at least 6 people, where one day they show 1922's Nosferatu, and the next 2007's Juno. Sometimes it's a DVD screening, which is deceiving, but I like this place anyway because it's just around the corner, and because the athmosfere is quite easy-going, kind of nice family business treatment for us clients. And besides, money-is-money, films cost 10 lei (2,5 euro) and I've been told that Fridays are free (I have to check that. But it might be, because the other day, a Friday, I thought I skipped into the other Cinemateca -felt a little guilty- but maybe it was free -it was crowded, so it sounds reasonable-).

Anyway, let's focus on my story: I was going to watch, this time, Michael Clayton, at 7 pm. Nothing rare, nothing surprising. A mainstream film that I didn't get to watch in Madrid, and most of you, I'm sure, have downloaded from the Internet. They had been showing it a couple of months around here in distant Malls, so I didn't feel like going by myself. Film distribution is like that, here, most of films are firstly released in modern cinemas at the Malls (with its high prices, 5-6 euros -think on Romanian medium income, not in mine or yours- and far too talkative audience), then disappear a couple of weeks and come up again, if you're lucky (I''m still waiting for some, don't lose hope), this time in some shabby-looking 2-euro movie theatre in the city centre... The city centre, where I live, and where I'd like to go to the cinema anyway, no matter where I'd live.

Hey me! Behave! Don't loose your focus... So I arrived Cinema Union. It was a rainy Monday: even students stay at home on Mondays. That's why I wasn't really surprised when the man at the door told me that there was no film at 19 pm, I just thought, "damn it, there's not even 6 people today...". But no, he explained further: the film couldn't be shown because it hadn't arrived on time from Cluj (a Transilvanian town) ! He told me to call next dayto check if the film will be on (as I told you, it seems a family business, sometimes).

So here I am, coming back home in a 21st-century European capital, full of lights, cars and shops, and somehow feeling inside the 1950s' Cinema Paradiso, that film by Giuseppe Tornatore where a man had to sprint its bike through Sicilian roads to deliver in time a rudely censored love movie, or some Western, to an expectant population...

But I must come to see Michael Clayton this week. I must. Because I'm really curious, I want to check one thing: will it be a DVD copy? Finding out is worth 2 euros! It would be completely absurd but I sort of have a hunch... Isn't Romania Ionesco's home country for a reason?