Days 1-2: Arrival

Welcome to Romania.

Day 1:

No Dracula sightings, but I did see lots of other interesting stuff. Due to physics and the Earth's rotation and lots of being on airplanes, Day 1 lasted something along the lines of 48 hours for me. For further explanation, I highly recommend the movie Primer.

Anyway, somehow I started out the day doing closing arguments in a trial (note to jurors: the correct vote is guilty). We finished at 3:30, with a whole hour to spare. I then rushed home, showered, threw the last few vampire-hunting implements into my luggage, and headed off to LAX.

My super-friend Mal was kind enough to give me a ride to the airport. Thanks Mal! Major props! Shout-out! The weird framing in that picture makes it look like I am sticking my finger towards her, ET-like, while she recoils in horror. That's actually her giving me the thumbs-up as I head off to fight Dracula. The flight over here was pretty uneventful. International flying has improved a lot since I first started doing it. Yay for movies on demand, and another shout-out to British Airways, my new favorite airline.

After a short layover in Heathrow Airport, during which the authorities nearly arrested me for trying to bring water through the security checkpoint (I tried explaining to them that this was the same water I just took on a ten-hour transatlantic flight on one of their national airplanes, but the RAF (or whatever) people were, as the British like to say, not amused), I headed off to Bucharest. My wife and father-in-law picked me up in some car called a "Dacia," which seems like a pretty obvious obfuscation of Dracula, so here we have our first clue. But I couldn't really pursue it, because we just headed back home and everyone was very happy to see me but also very awake past midnight local time, so they all went to sleep. Including me, since I had slept maybe 3 of the past 48 hours.

Home Sweet Home

Day 2:

Still no Dracula sightings, but the hunt goes on. Io and I took a lovely walking tour of the nearby city. It seems like everyone here lives in a "bloc," which is a huge drab apartment complex built during Communist times. The outsides are grim and awful looking, but the insides are really nice and homey. Just like the communists themselves! That makes it sound like I have cut open a communist or two in my time, which I assure you is not true. I was speaking metaphorically there.

The in-laws' place is about the same size as my condo in LA. Io's mom and stepfather, Tania and Gagi, have graciously gone to stay in another apartment while we're here, so during the day Io and I have the place pretty much to ourselves.

Our walking tour of this part of Bucharest was nice. The weather is good, a bit hot and humid but fine if you're out in shorts and sandals.

Parking is in such short supply in front of the blocs that everyone just double-parks. The people who park in front of the spaces leave their cars in neutral, and if you need to get out you just physically push their car in front of your neighbor and then drive off. Hysterical. Luckily, Io and I are on foot.

We walked through the local market, which is sort of a collection of permanent booths selling all sorts of stuff -- you'll have a food both next to a plumbing-supplies booth next to a cell-phones booth, etc. I didn't grab any pictures because most of them were closed on Sunday afternoon, but I'll get some soon. We stopped in at a bakery place and I had my first street pastry. I forget the name -- starts with an M -- but we will just call it Pastry Ambrosia. I suspect I will be eating at least one of these pastries every day. They come hot out of the oven and they are so good.

We checked out the local square, and walked some of the streets. I guess this area is technically not a suburb because it's inside the city, but this isn't the downtown area either. Sort of the outskirts of Bucharest.

That is a map of Bucharest, with the route we walked highlighted in red. I actually have no idea where we walked and just made that all up, although I think it is generally in that area of the city. We checked out the local subway and did some people-watching.

It's a curious mix. You've got old folks out playing chess and backgammon in the People's park like something out of an old movie, and then on the next corner you've got young kids wearing American-slogan shirts trying to learn to Ollie on their skateboards. There are lots of trees and plants around, but garbage collection is indifferent at best so lots of times as you're walking along you'll get assaulted by this horrible stink. Overall it seems a lot like many other cities, which is sort of too bad when you're trying to write an interesting blog about all the cool things in this distant and foreign land. Small world, I guess.

One thing that is different, at least from America, is all the stray dogs. I guess there's no Romanian word for "dog catcher," and dogs are just left to roam around at will. They all seem fine. None of them were mean or anything like that. But the city is rife with them. I don't know who feeds them and so on -- maybe they just make use of all the handy garbage -- but I did see a few times where people had left bowls of water out for them, usually by cutting off the bottom of a big plastic jug. This photo to the left goes with the comment about skateboarders, though, not stray dogs. That's probably pretty obvious.

We ended our walk at the local "hipermart," which is the Romanian version of a giant Wal-Mart style department and grocery store. The hipermart was itself set inside an even larger mall, making it the sort of hiper-within-hiper construction that could lead to wormholes and the ripping open of portals to other dimensions. Maybe all those people worried about the Large Hadron Collider should turn their attention to eastern Bucharest.

The mall was very similar to the same things in the US and presumably the western world over. English is considered very cool and youth-oriented, so a lot of the signage and stuff is in English in an attempt to be cool. Younger Romanians tend to wear clothes with English slogans on them, which means that the assortment of old ratty T-shirts I brought on this trip has suddenly transformed into club-worthy hipster wear. That's the magic of culture.

We came home and had traditional Romanian dinner of schnitzel and fresh bread from the hipermart, saved the world...of Warcraft...with what I now call "our American friends" until Ioana accidentally dumped an entire cup of water into the keyboard of my laptop (it's fine now, thanks), and went to bed. I took a giant nap during the afternoon and now hope, foolishly, that I am totally cured of my jet-lag. Oh fragile hope. Day 3 has dawned, and I have high hopes of finding more clues to the Prince of Lies. Or at least getting another one of those awesome pastries.

Io assures me that this is the name of a type of fish