27 Luni

Sinaia is probably the most beautiful location in which I have been required to attend a work related conference.  The small tourist town is nestled in the Bucegi Mountains in Prahova County, conveniently located (for me at least) about 60 kilometers north of Ploiești and Valea Călugărească.  Winding through the endless green mountains, travelers find Sinaia’s train station located at the very bottom of the valley with the town inching it’s way up the mountainside.  The roads of Sinaia steeply switchback around houses, historic and new alike, and are undoubtedly incredibly treacherous in the snowy winter.  Fortunately, taxicabs are numerous and cheap, providing a convenient alternative for those not wanting to lug their baggage up steep ramps and old twisting stone stairways.  Little did the inhabitants and other tourists know that a rag-tag cadre of eighty Peace Corps Volunteers would be descending on the sleepy get-away destination.

Knowing that the conference that week would consume the majority of our daylight, a few of us decided to arrive a couple days early.  Since this part of the trip was not Peace Corps sanctioned we had to arrange for our own accommodations; enter the Blue Silver Hostel.  Neither blue nor silver the bright orange building clashed against the historic backdrop of the town, though admittedly in a rather fun and refreshing way.  The hostel is located a short walk to the north of the train station, though since their website doesn’t make this obvious we decided to error on the side of caution and to hail a cab.  The first cab driver indicated that five RON would be sufficient for the distance, to which we agreed; unfortunately after several tries his rather new Dacia wouldn’t start.  While several other cab drivers gathered around to address the problem, we hopped out and found another.  A rather jovial man, insisted on ten RON, but assured us that this difference in cost was due to the fact that his cab would actually start; weary from travel we begrudgingly agreed.  The irony is that had we insisted on using the meter the fare wouldn’t have been more than three RON given the really short distance.  In the end though, divided among the three of us we each got taken for less than a U.S. dollar, well worth it in my opinion just for the story alone.

The hostel was big, with several buildings comprising the complex.  There was a dinning room located in the same room as the lobby, but with no actual table service.  In other words, as I understand it, you provide your own food and cooking expertise and the hostel provides the table, chairs and kitchen equipment; but we didn’t test the theory, opting to eat out instead.  The hostel was clean with fresh sheets and towels and hot running water in the bathrooms.  The owners were nice and quite accommodating considering the several last minute reservations we piled on top of them.  Perhaps the best part is that the hostel was only 10 Euro a night, seemingly the going rate for hostels here in Romania.

Arriving on a Sunday with our conference due to start on Tuesday morning we did some quick research on the main attraction, Peleș Castle, and discovered that it was scheduled to be closed Monday.  Not wanting to miss out on this early 19^th century marvel, we waited for a few more Volunteers to arrive and made our way by foot across town and up the cobble stone mountain road to Peleș.  The hike through the forested mountains would have been quite amazing enough for me in one day, but as the trees ended at a clearing, Peleș emerged from the ground with majestic mountain peaks framing in the distance.  Although, we took a forty-five minute tour I really can’t tell you much about the history of the place, for that you can check Wikipedia.  Suffice it to say that some old king of Romania, perhaps of German decent, built the austere monster some time around 1800.  It has multiple levels (of which my relatively expensive tour only covered the first) each with rooms filled to the brim with gaudy excesses of luxury and opulence.  The place even has a cliché secret passage behind the bookshelves in the library that leads to the King’s private bedroom.  There are two main courtyards, one permanently open air, like you might imagine from Brave Heart or Robin Hood, and another with an electric powered, retractable glass roof.  As if that were not enough, leading to the King’s “Receiving Room” is another large room with every inch of wall space covered in more weaponry than I would ever care to see in one place; with the apparent intention being that of intimidation upon the part of any visitor.  Honestly, I found this whole experience unnerving.  Here we are, Peace Corps Volunteers, with our primary mission that of empowering the Romanian people to further lift themselves up and yet we find ourselves visiting a haughty palace no doubt built on the backs of peasants and the sacrifice of the nation’s treasure.  In my mind, this palace is a clear precursor to the megalomaniacal Palace of the Parliament project built by Ceaceascu during the 1980’s.  If more Rulers throughout the centuries invested as much wealth and energy in their own people as they did in themselves the world could be a very different place.

After visiting Peleș, we wondered back down the mountain along a different path than we brought up, this one lined with street vendors selling everything from various worthless trinkets to coal roasted corn (without butter…crazy).  As we made our way back to the hostel we ran into late arriving Volunteers and made plans to have dinner in ‘downtown’ Sinaia.  From there a bunch of us gathered in my hostel room for a couple of hours to catch up on summer camps and various stories from our respective sites.  After a little rest and relaxation we again ventured out to see what Sinaia had to offer.  The downtown area consists of one main road, which begins at a large park and ends beyond the city limits and is lined with the typical restaurants, hotels and shops that you might expect in a tourist town.  One refreshing notion is the clear lack of chain restaurants and hotels.  Here are a couple things that stood out about the restaurants: though understandably expensive, the food was generally quite good; service on the other hand was atrocious.  Celebrating a colleague’s birthday, in an “American” themed steakhouse, we regularly received flippant comments and disrespectful stares from our waitress.  Feeling that I have to justify why exactly we were at an American themed steakhouse in Romania to begin with, I must add that beef, for one reason or another, is not particularly popular here and thus somewhat difficult to come by; hence we couldn’t pass up the opportunity.  This might be a good time to share a cultural insight as it pertains to differences in service between Romania and the United States.  The U.S. is of course a service-based society, our waiters and waitresses are generally paid minimum wage (of which the ethicality is debatable) and then earn the majority of their income from tips.  Here in Romania the opposite is true; they are paid a reasonable wage upfront and expect at most a 10% tip, if anything at all.  This simple difference in approach could have a big impact to a restaurant’s bottom line; many of times here in Romania our table would have gladly gone for that extra round of drinks or dessert if only we had been asked.  On the flip side, the benefit is that you don’t have an annoying waiter constantly hovering over your head eagerly waiting to fill up your mostly full water glass or encouraging you to leave the table quickly to increase his turnover rate.  Here in Romania it is perfectly acceptable to linger at a table for hours sipping your perfectly made and presented gourmet coffee.

The next day, Monday, we wondered around town, visited an ancient monastery and lazily picnicked in the park.  A vendor was renting out ‘big wheel’ rides to children that would spin relentlessly around the large fountain in the center of the park.  The well-tended grass was densely spotted with the blankets of people of all ages enjoying the lovely day.  I have noticed that Romanian’s make better use of their parks for recreation than I feel American’s do, save perhaps New York City inhabitants.  Gentle but sullied stray dogs made their rounds from family to family in search of scraps or just whatever attention they could muster.  Youthful couples, with nowhere else to go, freely showed their affection for one another on the public grounds, another stark difference that I have noticed between Europe and the United States; it seems that public benches would be incomplete without teenagers necking in broad daylight.  Since Monday was the main travel day for my group of Peace Corps Volunteers, the remainder of us had almost fully arrived by dinner time so our numbers had swelled to about thirty-five and since this was the first time we had all been together in several weeks we marched up the street from the hotel and completely took over an entire restaurant, of course without reservation.

The next four days were fully absorbed by the conference.  Through the hotel’s restaurant, Peace Corps provided our breakfast and lunch; with our dinners covered through a per diem deposited earlier in the month.  From nine to five we had back-to-back sessions on how to be more effective Volunteers.  Some of the highlights included breakaway sessions run by experienced first and second year Volunteers covering such topics as: Creative Classroom Techniques, Classroom Management Methodology, English Writing Workshop, Lesson Planning and a session on Appreciative Inquiry focused Legacy Community Projects.  Later in the week we had several Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) come to introduce themselves: ARCA a refuge and migrant placement NGO founded in 1998, UNICEF focusing on their school attendance program, Biblionet funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Forestation Movement in Romania and Mai Mult Verde an organization focused on cleaning up Romania’s litter.  Each NGO encouraged us to get involved in any way we can, especially with our students, as promoting volunteerism is a big initiative right now in Romania.  Another guest speaker was Sandra Pralong, an Entrepreneur that has worked with Peace Corps staff in Romania in the past.  She is originally from Romania, lived in New York City for many years, but returned and has lived here for the last twenty years.  Her current project is a book with the working title of “Mental Spaces” that is to focus on the cross-cultural exchange between Americans and Romanians.  She has asked us all to contribute to the collection with written essays regarding our experiences here in Romania, which she hopes to publish next year.

On a personal note, the conference was quite good for me as an individual.  After being nominated earlier in the summer for a position on our group’s Volunteer Advisory Committee (VAC), we held the actual elections and I was selected along with two others to represent our group.  As a member of the VAC I will work with my colleagues as liaisons between the volunteer group as a whole and the Peace Corps staff in Bucharest.  In our capacity, we will act as advocates and filters for the group and sounding boards for Peace Corps staff as new policies are discussed and implemented.  In addition to VAC, I was asked to serve on the Information and Communication Technology committee (ICT) which is responsible for managing the Peace Corps Romania website (www.peacecorps.ro).  From what I gather, my penchant for technology, being the only member of our group with the trifecta of iPhone 4, iPad 2 and Mac Book Pro, gave the false impression that I am actually technically savvy behind the scenes as well.  Though I am most definitely not, there is an area of design where I should be able to help.  Piggy backing off of that initiative, some member of the ICT are also working in conjunction with our Gender and Development group (GAD) on a commemorative coffee table book; this is where my photography background could come in handy.  As if that were not enough, I will also be working with our Volunteer publication of Pofta Mare, which focuses on regionally specific foods.  Though I don’t know much about Romanian food, this only makes sense with my culinary arts education.  Regardless to say, I will be keeping very busy during the cold and dreary Romanian winters, which is fine by me!

The conference in Sinaia was also a great venue for putting several faces with the names of those in Group 27.  They consist of another thirty plus volunteers that arrived about a year before us and as a result they have a year of teaching in Romania under their belt already.  This gave us 28ers a real opportunity to work with some experienced Volunteers.  Not only did we gain keen insights into critical classroom techniques and methodologies but also exposure to important cultural realities that will impact our two years here.

Our time in Sinaia was undoubtedly great.  We met some awesome new people, learned a ton about how to be better, more effective Volunteers and even had time to soak in some of the sights.  The tentative plan is to have the Group 28 In-Service Training (IST) in Sinaia sometime this fall or winter.  Although there are a lot of other great locations in Romania to host such an event, I am perfectly happy returning to this sleepy little tourist town.