Yo-ho-ho, merry new year! (I)

Since it's been quite some time since my last post I'll be mixing some of the events that just happened in some kind of wintery tale which is actually not so wintery (it rained a lot these days).

For you own good I'll split it into smaller chapters so that it's easier to digest.

Part I - za bighining

Being my first x-mas without my family and also in another country I expected I'd get less into the atmosphere but actually it turned out to be quite nice. It all started with the x-mas decorations from Ikea, very nice and cheap. Having the decorations we had no excuse for not getting a x-mas tree. In the search for the tree we ran into some guys that were also selling the traditional x-mas meal to-be: the wonderful carp! They were selling it right next to the x-mas trees so there was a high chance we'd get a slightly different smell than we would expect in our living room. We found then another place where me and Raluca got a really nice one. They were nice enough to chop the bottom to fit in the support as well and nicely wrapped it in a net. The tree was a hit! It's still vigorously pointing its branches towards the ceiling.

Then there came the visitors, 10ks of maize flour for the long craved 'mamaliga' which will last probably the whole year, fried home-made sausages in lard, hard-core sheep cheese, smoked cheese, 'belly' cheese and all other kinds of such romanian x-mas delicacies. And what would x-mas be without the magnificent sarmale? Well we had to make them so they brought the appropriate leaves :D and they turned out to be delicious. For those of you whose mouths are already watering as you're reading, I apologize but I really felt like sharing this . To the others, well you've either had them recently or you don't know what the f**k i'm writing about in which case you need to come to Romania :D

So having ended the food paragraph, I'm moving on to the x-mas morning. We had nice presents under the tree in the morning and then we had lunch again which was thoroughly quenched by Jidvei, Cotnari and such other kinds of Romanian wine :p

Having ended the drinking paragraph (for now), I'll get to the next days in the next post.