Thursday, October 12, 2006





Anonymous said...

Hi Andy,
Van der Meer's photos are absolutely fantastic.

I, for one, have lived in this country for all my life, and I've never heard before of the Negresti fair; I'm quite surprised you're saying that it's common knowledge.

And a question related to your "Hummer" entry: how do you call a lady (middle aged, annoying, semi-business women type, i.e. reformed school teacher / engineer / economist) driving a Touareg, dressed in a suit, in the middle of the mighty capital-city? What I mean: what's the feminine for wanker?;)


Andy said...

Well, I'd never heard of it either, Irina. And I checked both the Lonely Planet and Rough Guide books, and they didn't mention it either. So it's not that common knowledge. I suspect it's fairly well known in Transylvania, and especially well known among the Rroma and Hungarian communities, though I don't for a moment think it's exclusively a Hungarian/Gypsy gathering - from what I have gathered its basically people from all over Transylvania - Romanians, Hungarians and Gypsies. I was just upset that no-one mentioned it to me before, since I would have liked to have gone :-)

I'm a firm believer in non-gender specific terms of abuse, and so I tend to use these words on an equal opportunity basis (Condi Rice is a bit of a wanker, for example, and Margaret Thatcher was definitely a complete and utter wanker). But, I realise that's a jump for many people, so how does "git" sound? (I'm not convinced that Touregs are an indication of wankerdom (or gitdom) by the way. There's something slightly too cool about VWs in general)

Anonymous said...

Andy, it looks to me that I owe you a few explanations. I know that being a bastard it’s genderless; the thing is that when I hear the word “wanker”, I automatically think of its Romanian translation. And the point is that in Romanian it’s a masculine word (and it applies only to guys) so, for me, it’s a tad unnatural to use it for a woman; that’s all.
I do agree that the WV’s are cool cars, but I have the example of several of my co-workers who were okay people some time ago, but upon buying WV’s have turned into utter wankers; I dunno – it might be a Romanian thing, or they might just have had it in them and the cars might’ve just brought it out… But the lady I was speaking of showed all the signs of an annoying human being (she was on the fast lane, and then, by manoeuvring her car, she was switching for the first lane, ‘cause obviously she was trying to turn right).

Andy said...

Hi Irina

No, I understood completely, and it's the same in English usually. I just think that like "bastard" the word has more or less lost its original meaning, and can now be used as an all purpose insult. But not everyone would agree with me.

Maybe it is a VW thing. Whatever causes it/reflects it, your example sounds like a prime wanker (or git)

nojer said...


You see, I used to think that about Porsches until I saw the Cayenne.

Re: the market, I'm not really interested in buying a peasant. I don't think I've got anywhere to keep one.