Sometimes I love being a cultural insider/outsider… the idiosyncrasy, my frequent linguistic experiments (you can call them mistakes if you want but I prefer to think I am a pilgrim of prose. Or perhaps a prophet.  At least until google translate puts me out of business).

A couple weeks ago I did a voice over for a modern-art theater in Warsaw for some exhibit they have going on where I ended up talking about dolphin sex.  Interesting subject.  Not one I would have explored on my own.

Random paths and happenings abound in this role.  A couple days ago a friend at Esquire Romania sent a request for a 200-word-foreigner’s view on home-made alcohol and thus…

Homebrew brandies fertilize several of my favorite Romanian moments… as a liquid side-kick to Transylvanian crack-cocaine (straight-up pig fat roasted over a campfire and dripped onto good homemade bread) … one summer night in July, 2006 when, as the overnight train from to Mangalia pulled into Ploiesti Vest I made the mistake of getting up to stretch my legs and I got stuck in a mass of people, unable to get back to my seat or away from some kid named Tibi who kept passing the tuica and telling me how he hated the EU … watching my American family look like they had just taken a shot of liquid fire as I introduced them to Horinca in some out-of-the-way village in Mara Mures … getting into a yelling match with some guy at Bran who insisted he was selling palinka when he was clearly selling tuica (dude. serios.) … my short-lived attempt to create the SzekelyTini (martini and palinka… not for the faint of heart. Or those with taste buds). It’s always been there; a sometimes delicious, often funky undercurrent sloshing about in an old plastic bottle… but of course it has. Show me someone who says they have been to Romania but doesn’t have a tuica or palinka story and I will show you a liar.

Happy Friday Responsibly.