Craiova is a medium-sized town near the Bulgarian border, and my first stop in Romania. In 1999, we met a man on the train to Brasov. His name is Dan Constantinescu, and we've been writing to him ever since. He and his parents and his brother Cristi live in an apartment in town. Their village is Teasc, about 20 km to the south. Dan works about 5 jobs, some of which don't really pay for themselves and none of which would enable one to survive in Silicon Valley. I don't know how the world manages.

The open-air market in Craiova. These are smoked cheeses.

More cheeses indoors.

Cabbages. I'm always impressed how large cabbages and cauliflowers are in other countries. Americans seem to admire them petite. "Well, nothing goes better with cabbage than cabbage. " — Mrs. Bucket, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

OK, now we are into some serious haven't-quite-got-into-the-EU-yet lifestyles. My friend Cristi has a car with a rather unusual disability. Here he is getting a couple of liters of gas for it.

The car is named LEANA and if it hasn't blown up yet, you can see that the gas tank is actually a plastic bottle in the engine compartment. It is connected by a tube to a carburetor. You see how unnecessarily complicated the last century of product development has been in Detroit.

I forget what the significance is of statues with the horse's hoof off the ground. Wounded in battle, perhaps. Two feet would be dead. Four feet, taken away directly to Heaven in Rapture; but difficult to carve before holograms. This statue shows the Romanian hero Mihai Viteazu, (Michael the Brave) who unified Wallachia, Transylvania and Moldavia for the first time, causing the Austrians, Hungarians, Poles, and Ottomans to unify in their own way against him. He was assassinated in 1601. You may find out about him using Google on Mihai Viteazu which reveals the following Sponsored Link: Mihai Sale New & used Mihai. Check out the deals now! www.eBay.com

I think Cristi took this picture of me in a bar or coffeeshop.

Cristi Constantinescu.

Dan's Grandmother's house in Teasc, south of Craiova. We went there for dinner.

I hope you are all terrified of this Romanian chicken. if you are reading this website it means you are sure to catch Avian influenza, which was seething in Romania at the time. I am amazed that I was let back in the country. I expected to be writing this from Guantánamo. Don't forget, all the people who were rounded up in Afghanistan and you don't know where else are still being held without trial at Guantánamo. Just because you have stopped thinking about it doesn't mean that the injustice is not compounding.

Sunset in Teasc. In spring these arched pipes will be covered with plastic to give tomato and pepper seedlings a head start.

A dog with a nest in the haystack.

I believe these gents were painting the house. Dan didn't like the color because it was too Gypsy-like, but Cristi did (see previous picture). I don't know if they were joking with me, but Cristi and Dan said that I was the first foreigner who had ever been to Teasc. Look how we regard each other. Isn't it amazing that we can read each other's intentions so well, while separated by so many miles and generations from any common experience? I've been worse misunderstood by the Boeotians of the Santa Cruz Mountains than by anyone in Teasc; but of course in California they can understand what I'm saying.

The wine cellar. The wine was this season's and not entirely ready yet. The leaves you see stuffed in the top impart a flavor but I can't identify them.

Now this is a home entertainment center with style. The wall of ceramic brick imparts the heat of the fire to all the adjoining rooms, while the little shelf there functions as a stovetop. You don't need anything in the world if your house has one of these, and if the Germans / Turks / Russians / Hungarians / Bulgarians haven't stolen all your coal supplies during some war.

Dan and Laura sitting down for dinner. Cabbage rolls, chicken, polenta which they call mămăligă, yogurt. You can't believe how good this all is and they eat it all the time, or at least on weekends. The enormous loaf in the middle is bread. Just out of the oven. It reads like a Chinese propaganda poster of the Red Guard era, the good life as experienced by peasants who, as American propaganda points out, can't afford Playstations. If Dan is longing for McDonalds he didn't show it. The red pepper came out of a vat in the basement. The vat had mold on top and would probably freak out the USDA and the Tamiflu Consortium and proponents of a sterile life everywhere. They put aspirin in the ketchup to preserve that. I wonder if it still works in Coca-Cola in rural Dolj?

Cristi wandered around with the Nikon.

I think he might actually be a simple peasant. But, I think he is in Dan's physics class. Dan Constantinescu is a physics teacher at the high school here, the wages for which don't even cover his gas money. He does it out of a sense of Duty which would floor Sir Arthur Sullivan flat. I wondered what physics means to someone who never leaves his village. But what does physics mean to somebody who never leaves his planet?

Dan and Cristi's grandfather ...

... and grandmother ... (photos by Cristi)

... and dog. Check out the photo on the wall, the 1950's were everywhere and nowhere more than behind the Iron Curtain. What did the Romanians call the Iron Curtain? Somebody write and tell me.

This is Dan in the years immediately before Ceaucescu was shot like a dog. I wonder if he would still be wearing the uniform if, you know ... you think you have these ideas but they are just the Zeitgeist: come back in 50 years and downloading from BitTorrent will be as hated as child pornography or maybe everyone will have all knowledge free in his head. Depends on if Jack Valenti or George Soros has a stroke first.

Dan Constantinescu. The TV behind looks like it is showing an ad for edible building materials. I would not dare open the hue/saturation dialog on this photo.

On to Busteni