Șapte Case

Back in September when Michael Ball & I first went to Bucharest, a few short days after arriving at post, I was so jet-lagged and flustered on the road that I didn’t really take in all the sights along the way. A combination of having a terrible rental car that made it exceedingly difficult to pass even the slowest horse-drawn cart, having to adapt to the crazy Romanian-style of driving, trying not to get lost and a lack of sleep and general disorientation rendered that voyage useless in terms of enjoyment.

Moldovan country side in the Fall...

Moldovan country side in the Winter... 

It’s amazing how much a few months and a functional vehicle can change your perspective. This past week I drove to Bucharest for the second time, and the experience was completely different. You might be wondering why anyone {in their right mind} would make a 7 hour trip on a Wednesday and return immediately, the following day. Well, for those of you who know me well it should seem perfectly normal and come as no surprise that the main reason I went on such a crazy road trip was to give two Brazilian soccer stars who play for the Dacia Chisinau Soccer Team a ride to the airport in Bucharest. It's a good thing Brazilians, in general, are pretty well-liked around these parts of the world and even more so when they are soccer players, because it made crossing the border a piece of cake. I just had to drop the "oh, they're Brazilian Soccer Players" line and the customs officials were totally won over, otherwise they might have thought it strange for an American girl to be driving two foreign dudes across the border into Romania. For the record, I did also have a few other {legitimate} things to take care of while in Bucharest; places to go {IKEA, Starbucks, H&M, an Indian Restaurant}, people to see, you know, perfectly rational reasons to go on a mega road trip by yourself, mid-week, to a foreign land. I'm always surprised how comforting having a sense of familiarity can be. Even though I actually never spent much time at IKEA, Starbucks or H&M in the US, something about those places in a strange location makes you feel at home and draws you to them. When I lived in Cuba for 4 months I remember really longing for something {anything} that reminded me of home {we have a little embargo going on so finding American products is pretty difficult}. The day I found Brazilian Chocolates at the local ice cream parlor I nearly shouted for joy, instead, I barely composed myself and restrained myself to purchasing all of their on-hand stock. 

While dining at said Indian Restaurant {with an Indian friend} we struck up a conversation with another guest who also happened to be Indian who was shocked to discover that my husband was OK with me driving by myself with two Brazilian Soccer stars to Bucharest. He was under the impression that Michael Ball should be entitled to give a ride to two Moldovan Super Models in exchange. 

After I had packed up my car with IKEA goodies, leftover Indian food and Dutch cheese from the Christmas Market, I hit the road and headed back to Moldova. The solitary ride home was actually quite enjoyable. At every turn there were scenic views of horse-drawn carts cutting across hazy hills, giant medieval-looking carts piled high with cabbage, Orthodox Churches dotting every tiny town along the way. The landscape would change every so often from bright green fields of winter wheat to brown wintry plots grazed by sheep, vigilantly watched by their shepherds. Vendors along the road were selling potatoes, onions, cabbage and "must" {aka young wine} in plastic bottles of ambiguous and suspicious character. It had snowed in the region to the east of Bucharest and in Moldova overnight, and everything was covered in a thin, beautiful layer of white. I so wanted to stop around every bend and try to capture all these scenes but the roads in Romania don't usually have a shoulder and stopping could lead to serious consequences. I did manage to snap a few along a lonely stretch of road in Moldova...

My favorite village along the way was a town called Șapte Case, literally, "Seven Houses." I counted them by the way, and there were closer to 12 but who's really keeping track of these things? When you enter the town there is a little sign with the town's name and a reduced speed limit. Typically in Romanian & Moldovan villages there is a well at one end of town or the other, beautifully decorated and made of carved wood; often painted blue. When you exit the town {less than 30 seconds later} there is another sign with an increased speed limit and the town's name with a red line going through it {in case you didn't put two and two together and figure out that you were out of the town already}. Șapte Case perfectly captures the region, a tiny little cluster of homes, surrounded by fields of fertile soil, with a road cutting right through the middle and not much else. There was something that struck me as quaint about it: Simplicity in it's purest form. 

My goal is to spend at least a little more than a day in Bucharest on our next trip there and do more than just eat exotic foods and shop for familiarity's sake...which will probably have to wait till the spring, after the treacherous wintry road conditions are long gone.