Day 20: The Mall

Day 20:

This is our last day. Day 21 involves getting up at 4:30 a.m. to catch a flight back to Los Angeles. The plan for the day was to head downtown again, this time for some shopping and a movie.

Em put on her trademark skeptical expression, Io put on her Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and off we went.

I stopped in at the merdenele place for one last pastry, and then it was off to the tram stop. We headed downtown and checked out the mall.

I hadn't ever been there and didn't even know Bucharest had a mall. I probably should have taken pictures. It looks a lot like malls in LA, and everything there was super-expensive by Romanian standards -- "American prices," as Io put it. For example, a movie is I think 27 lei (about $8.50), which isn't a lot for a movie (particularly one in 3D) but is a lot compared to what other stuff in Bucharest costs. Like, that fresh-from-the-oven big pastry, which would be probably $2.50 in the US, was 40 cents. I'm not sure how that works; in a country where you can buy most stuff for 50% of what it costs in the US or less, how does a movie industry sustain itself charging 27 lei for a ticket? John Keynes would probably know.

Chris Pulliam: Io insisted I post this photo to show you Romania

has bowling, so you and Julie will come visit

So we did that stuff, and then went and saw "Despicable Me" in 3D (which is the only way to see it, let me tell you), did some grocery shopping at the grocery store that was bizarrely in the basement of the Romanian mall, and headed home.

Ta da. That's it. The next day I was up early and onto a plane for Los Angeles. Three weeks in Romania. It was pretty great: Crazy Wedding Week, and then Awesome Tour Of The Countryside Honeymoon Week, and then a relaxing week to round things out before I headed back home.

Big thanks to the Romanian in-laws for putting me up and for moving out while I was there, and to the godparents for all their work and kindness. I'll be back in January to actually live there for six months, and if there's one thing I learned while there it's that I need to learn to speak better Romanian.

Until then, this is Vampire Hunter Ryan Williams, signing off. The blog will start up again in January when I'm back behind the Iron Curtain. See you all then!