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Sharing The Heritage: Part 3

  • Posted on January 30, 2008 at 7:26 am

If you missed the beginning of the story, you can read it here and here.

My aunt and my uncle started building their house in my grandparent’s yard. The yard and the land around have 5100 m. My mother share is 1275 m. and there’s is 3825 m.

They filled the yard in front of there’s new house with three and flowers, to look good, plus a place for the barbeque grill, for the warm summer evenings, for cooking outside the kitchen. Obviously, it remained very small place in the yard for other operations needed to build the house.

My mother spend all her summers in my grandparents house, helping her sister with attending the workers by cooking, doing the dishes, so her sister will go to work. During this time, my uncle asked her if he might build storehouse on our side of the yard. She accepted for him to build an 8-m. long, 4-m. length wood storehouse. That covered our share in the yard, close to the house and the kitchen.

That was their plan after our refusal to sell. To eliminate us bit by bit. First, by occupying the land with the storehouse, later on, with the threes. We realized eight years later. Until then, we were the same good relatives we always have been. Helping them, even when they became rich and famous.

Now the new house is ready.

I lost my job and I had to move with my mother in my grandparent’s old house. The hell got loose!

You’ll find out why in my next post.

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Sharing The Heritage: Part 2

  • Posted on January 28, 2008 at 7:21 am

Do you remember that I started telling you my story of sharing my grandma’s heritage?

My father died and my mother is a pensioner now.

After the Romanian Revolution, the relatives I told you about became businessmen. In Romania, translate this by, stealing from the government and pretending you are working.

At first they didn’t make big money. That is the reason, they lent their apartment and move out in my grandparents house. A place with out door WC waters from the well. Not to mention that the house shakes at each trailer passing down the road.
They destroyed the well (witch was common property, according to the Romanian law), installed three sinks, a toilet in my grand parents house.

All those are improvements made in an inherited space, therefore both the proprietors are allowed to use. At least in our county, were the law is like this.

Three years later, they moved back to Zalau, the town they have the apartment in and started to make big money.
They decided to build a big house in the shared property. Before they asked my mother if she is selling her quarter from the yard, the rest of the lands, far away from the house being not interesting for them.

My mother denied the offer, saying that now, because she has no husband and no money, my grandparent’s house is the only place she can spend the summers. Especially with the terrible dust and hot summers in Bucharest.

Later, they asked again. The same answer. My aunt suggested for my mother to ask my brother and me if we want to sell. She intended to make a document in which it stipulates that my mother stays proprietary as long as she lives and then they will own our share.

Again, my mother refused the offer. We refused as well.

And guess what?

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Sharing The Heritage: Part 1

  • Posted on January 26, 2008 at 7:17 am

This is not an easy thing to do in a country where the law is optional.

After my grandmother died, all my grandparents’ belongings have been shared in four. My mother got, like the rest of her siblings, a quarter from the land, the house (a 65 year’s old house). All O.K. at the beginning.

I have to mention that we are talking about a country house, none of the children lived in, all of them having their apartments and their lives in different towns. We are living in Bucharest, at 550 km. from my grandparent’s house. I found out later that the distance worked in our disadvantage.

Few years later, two of the siblings sold their share from the house and from the land around the house to my mother’s sister.

We are talking about my aunt who was helped all her live, along with her family, by my mother.

By help I mean:

  • My parents lent her money to by a car (refund was delayed years after the period agreed);
  • Our apartment in Bucharest was everybody hotel in terms of us being wake up at 2 o clock in the middle of the night for 14 years, once a month, because my cousin (my aunt’s daughter) had business to do in Turkey and the bus arrived in Bucharest;
  • For three years my aunt stood one month a year to us in order to give her exams;
  • Four years, my other cousin (my aunt’s son) went to the University in Bucharest and came to us in order to eat (the food paid by his mother and cooked by mine);
  • All of them came with their friends or sent them to us, whenever they needed a place to sleep in Bucharest: and they needed a lot to go for visas at the embassy, to go shopping, to go to the airport;
  • My uncle needed the documents for a job transfer and my parents handled the documents, e.t.a.

Makes a long story short: for 40 years my parents did nothing else that helping everybody in my aunt family.

And what do you think it happened?

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My Broken Hand: Episode 2

  • Posted on January 20, 2008 at 7:12 am

For those of you who did not read the first episode, here it is.

And now, the follow up:

Wrong! Mr. Stanculescu left in a hurry the cabinet. One minute later, one of the two men, left as well. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I immediately ask myself, why I gave to this bastard such a big tip. I answered the question, telling to myself, that after the gypsum will be changed; the famous surgeon will make sure that everything is O.K.

But, let my tell you how we changed the gypsum. Oh, yes, you read it correctly. We. This operation requires two persons. The assistant told my that a have to participate. I denied. He said: “is nobody else here, I can’t change it by my on. Do you want to do this”. I said: “no”. He said: “then, what shall we do”? I accepted to help him and I followed all his instructions exactly. I tipped him as well and I returned in the famous surgeon office to be checked up.

He looked at my hand; asked my if it is O.K. I felled no pain, so, as far I was concerned, it was O.K. He said that is O.K. and we said good bye.

Being a patient, I was not familiar with the proper procedure. I trusted his judgment, being so famous and all. I founded out later that an other X-ray was required.

My hand is now slanting, he continues to be famous, to take big tips and to teach, the future generation of students, how to be a doctor in Romania.

If you have the impression that here by taking him to court, he will be punished, and my hand fixed back in place, that means you know nothing about Romania.

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My Broken Hand: Episode 1

  • Posted on January 19, 2008 at 7:08 am

I broke my left hand from the palm joint, dislocating it, and I went to the hospital. Before continuing my story, I feel compelled to warn you: if this is ever happen to a foreigner; please leave Romania with the first flight and go to fix it in an other country.
I didn’t have this opportunity and my hand is now slanting.
Obviously, I was in a shock stage. First of all, nobody will give you anything to take you out from the shock stage or to calm down the pain, before they twist the hand in order to put it back. You can not imagine the pain. Actually, you can: it is the same one I felt when I broke my hand. Now I had to relive it, so the hand goes back in place. After, they made an X-raze, and they told my, that it was a success. I left the hospital and I went home. Decided to change the hospital for the next check ups. I did that one-week later, just to make sure the hand is in the right place. I had an X-raze, and three doctors assured my that everything is O.K. I believe them.
By the time I had to go to the doctor to change the gypsum, a friend of mine already contacted one of the famous surgeon in the country: university professor doctor Stanculescu.
We went there with a bottle of Courvoisier cognac worth of 250 E and money for his assistant to tip him. Plus we paid the legal taxes that The Municipal Hospital in Bucharest charges, which, by the way, are huge.
From the beginning we gave the bottle to the surgeon, in his office. He was not attending any patient during my stay in the hospital. So, he doesn’t have the excuse of being busy. Like, this is an excuse!
Here starts the madness. From the start, I had an X-raze, which he checked. He told my like all the other before him that up to this point everything is very good.
We passed to the next step: we went in a cabinet was I was to have my gypsum changed and my hand repositioned. There were two men in white, which I thought are one a doctor, the other the assistant. Mr. Stanculescu approached one of them and instructs him what to do about my hand. I imagined that it is collaboration between them, followed by the actual operation.

-to be continued-

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