Fear Is For The Long Night

I know I sort of promised an action-packed weekend, but it ended up being a little less action-packed than anticipated. Exciting plans to haul couches around again ended up getting postponed, and plans to visit Io's friend Madeline had to be put off because of an outbreak of scarlet fever at her place. No joke. It's like the Wild West out here.

The weather stayed warm through the weekend, though, so we went out walking and doing errands. The warmer weather has brought out lots of people after a long winter cooped up inside.

Hanging around outside is like a national pastime in Romania. During the non-winter months, groups of people hang out in the street all hours of the day and night. People play soccer, they hang out and talk, smoke, throw dice, and every single block, guys are out washing their cars.

Car-washing is a huge deal here in Bucharest for some reason. Romanians wash their cars like Americans drink Starbucks. You go down the streets of Bucharest and literally every block there's a carwash. I have no idea why. I mean, for clean cars, obviously, but it's like an obsession.

The warmer weather also saw a return of Romania's stray cats. And I don't mean the kind fronted by Brian Setzer. Winter is hard on Bucharest's population of strays, particularly small animals. You'll notice in all my winter photos, there are no small stray dogs. That's because they've all frozen to death. Io tells me that the cats, though, tend to find their ways into basements or other warm places, and re-emerge once the weather turns warm.

The warmth also brought out Bucharest's first crop of snowdrops. These flowers are considered the harbingers of spring. Io says their distinctive scent always means the end of winter for her. They grow wild in the area outside of Bucharest, and gypsies pick them and sell little bundles of them in the city.

Unfortunately for myself, and the snowdrops, and the cats, the weather plunged back to near-freezing temperatures once the weekend was over. Really cold. My hopes that winter was on its way out have been dashed, although as yet there's been no new snow. I think I can deal with the cold, as long as we don't have ice covering everything making it impossible to get around. To people who live here, though, this is nothing, and if I start going "Wow it's cold" I know I'll get an earful about the winter of ought-seven or whatever, so I don't.

Today we headed out to the godparents' place to pick up some baby stuff. Although technically it's bad luck in Romania to get baby stuff before the baby's born, I guess we made an exception here. Cati and Ovi had lots of great hand-me-downs from Anna, so we scored a car seat, two rocker chairs, a sack of clothes, a baby bed, a couple of mobiles, and a bunch of other stuff.

By the time we left, the car was packed full with baby things. Thanks, godparents! In that photo we see Ovi the bicycling fiend. Ovi and Cati have no car, but Ovi is such a demon on the bike (and Bucharest's traffic so crowded and crazy) that he was getting places as fast or faster than we were.

The rest of the week should be pretty chill. Ha ha! That's wintertime humor. We've got a couple more ESL classes to teach hopefully, and some more errands to run, but nothing major on the schedule. Sort of the calm before the storm as we prepare for the arrival of the new baby.