by This morning I had a Skype chat with a friend in Auckland, then I got a phone call from my parents. It was quarter to ten at night there, and they’d parked their car somewhere in Hampden where they could get a signal. On the way they’d been to Pleasant Point for Christmas Eve mass.
The next port of call was the penultimate tram stop on Line 4 to pay my rent, but I was engrossed enough in a book that I missed my stop and got off at the end of the line. It was only a five-minute walk back. My landlady was in tears when she told me that her husband, who suffers from severe depression, will be spending Christmas Day in hospital. On the trip back there was a bloke singing Christmas carols – he got a few lei here and there.
Egg vending machines. These are dotted around the city, and I finally plucked up the courage to try one (for Christmas, the time of year famous for all things egg-related). I inserted 6 lei into the slot, tapped in a number, and at that point I half-expected my carton of ten eggs to go ga-doonk. But no, the arm gradually lowered the box to the armhole at the bottom of the machine. They’re locally produced (you can tell that from the TM code) and are cage-free (the digit 2 tells you that), so the egg machine might become a regular thing.
Yesterday as I saw two pigeons picking at a corn cob that somebody must have bought from the Christmas market, I reminded myself that “corn” and “pigeon” have the same root in Romanian: they’re porumb and porumbel, respectively.
On Sunday my student asked me if I had a pension plan and how I’ll manage “when I’m eighty”. I try not to think too much about that.
In my next post I’ll tell you how my first real Romanian Christmas turned out.
