in the community: “I have grapes in my pocket.”

I was at work yesterday when one of the Orthodox priests came by to invite us to City Hall for a “New Year’s” presentation to the mayor.  He asked us to recite an uratura (a poem granting wishes and health) to the crew. While it was last minute, we were up to the challenge.

When we arrived at City Hall, we were whisked inside.  After we watched traditional dancing and heard kids sing and recite uraturi (much better than we were going to), we ended up at the City Hall staff meeting where the priest was going to officially introduce us.  The meeting started, the mayor gave a quick intro and then they called for the priest for our intro.  But the priest had disappeared.  With the TV camera zooming in on us, I just started speaking Romanian and I introduced us, we read the uratura, and there was applause.

Moments later after what seemed like business talk, we were given tuica and salam; the mayor piled on a huge amount of grapes on our plate.   A few minutes later, we had large glasses of red wine (facut acasa – homemade) put in our hands.  We saw the champagne in the corner of the room and thought that maybe we could escape sober before the corks were popped. We hadn’t eaten anything all day, so the booze was hitting us hard.  But we got cornered — with grapes and alcohol and (adult) uraturi and small talk with the mayor.  We got our glasses of champagne in the midst of our conversation with the mayor. David went to take a sip and completely missed his mouth, pouring peachy champagne all over himself.  When the mayor got up to get him a napkin to clean up the dribbles, David leaned over and tipsily giggled, “I have grapes in my pocket.”

We laughed our entire walk home over the icy sidewalks. In retrospect, I think we inadvertently crashed the City Hall staff New Year’s party.  And while crashing this party, we got ditched by the priest, spoke some Romanian, and got a bit boozed up by the staff.  And David left with grapes in his pocket. La Multi Ani!!