Last week, I watched live as a commercial airliner heading from Moscow to Chisinau flew in circles inside Hungarian airspace before making an emergency landing in Belarus because an unidentified Romanian official spontaneously decided to ban the flight from crossing Romanian airspace. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, only Russian-language media has written about all the pieces to this strange puzzle, so today I’m … Continue reading Games With Frontiers
I think most people are familiar with the ancient Latin aphorism in vino veritas, literally in wine there is truth, usually interpreted to mean that a person drinking (wine) is often prompted to speak a truth. But for me, what happened not too many days ago at a bar at 2:00 in the morning was less about wine prompting the truth to come out of … Continue reading Dong Ma?
Word Count: 664 After I wrote my post Afterburner, a commenter made the obvious connection to another kind of food. When I mentioned this to my wife, she just said, “Duh”, and I shook my head in disbelief that I’d missed such low hanging fruit in my original post. Whereas the Romanian word usturoi (garlic) comes from an old Latin verb for “to singe” or … Continue reading Afterburner Part 2
Word Count: 198 Well folks, I’ve been living here in Moldova for more than a year now, and even married myself a local woman, but I have heard almost nothing about famous Moldovans. Oh sure, there are some, particularly noted musicians and dancers that enjoy great success in the Soviet Era, as well as one Romanian-language writer who is pretty darn famous. But contemporary famous … Continue reading Bianna Golodryga
WORD COUNT: 530 One of the unexpected bonuses of learning Russian is discovering just how how much comedy exists in that language. I was always raised to think of Russia as a dour, dull place, but underneath that grey exterior exists a beating humorous heart. Russians engaged in fighting Ukrainians have come up with an interesting nickname for their opponents: Укропы or “Ukropi”. This comes … Continue reading Dill Heads
All Things Romania 