Friday, September 14, 2012
When Oswaldo disappears into the bus for another full day of talks at the university I get ready to go meet my new Danish blogger friend, Eleonore. Texting back and forth we agree on a meeting place and explain what we're wearing - which, oddly, turns out to be the colors of the Romanian flag: red, blue, and yellow. It also turns out we both like to talk (a lot!) and soon the conversation is rolling in the shady garden restaurant Eleonore has chosen for our meeting.
After a tasty lunch of pasta and salad we decide to walk around and pass the Danish ad I'd mentioned before (and share a Danish laughter about it):
Eleonore has lived for a year and a half in Bucharest in Bucharest and knows cool details, not immediately visible to the tourist. Behind an amusing sculpture of Noah's Ark on a busy avenue,
and through a huge bookstore in a beautiful old house with many rooms, lies hidden a lovely garden restaurant. We want to cross the huge avenue just where we are - it seems pretty empty of cars - but then I notice a cross with fresh flowers at the roadside and realize somebody died doing just that - and we quietly walk up to the corner to use the green traffic light. Romanian drivers are on a par with Brazilian. Pedestrian lives are not hugely important.
Eleonore suggests we take the tourist bus, from the roof of which you get a general impression of the city, its layout and monuments, but on our way to the busstop it turns out we share a fondness for bargains and dive into Minimix, a discount clothing store, where we go through the racks with great concentration. Later, on top of the bus, my hat blows off (another passenger catches it for me) and because the sun is really strong I tie it firmly with a scarf, now looking very strange to my new Danish friend, who is plainly enjoying the sun on her face. It's one of those subtle cultural differences: although Danish I live in a country where you rarely expose your face to the sun.
The bus makes a slow circle around the town and towards the end we cross the river to see the megalomaniac structure Ceausescu built for himself - looks like a combination of a hotel and a casino without the lights - certainly not a speck of color adorns the largest building in Europe. Apparently he razed everything around this building, and indeed, the surrounding apartment blocks lining his grand avenue are all alike, grey and vaguely French.
Back across the river we hop off and walk through the old part of town, stopping to have a delicious 'Exotic Iced Tea' with fruits I've never heard of in the Van Gogh pavement restaurant. We quickly enter the Caru su Bere
fin de siecle restaurant and then an old monastery - nunnery really - with a wonderful courtyard, through which walks quickly a slender intelligent-looking young nun - much like an Oxford don - dressed in a black cassock and with black veil and scullcap. So interesting - wish we could speak to her.
Further down the road they're setting up a stage for live music and we stop to watch the sound test at the same time as admiring a nearby cloister garden - so many impressions all at once.
It's time to say goodbye - and I hurry home to the hotel, stopping briefly to buy multigrain pretzels standing in line with the locals, and to photograph a huge Beethoven-like bust in an abandoned garden. When I stop 3 young black cats run towards me, but alas, they don't want bits of multigrain pretzels, which is all I have.
Back at the hotel David Wiggins and Phillida Gili have made reservations at the Caru su Bere, I'd just seen, and we join them for a merry dinner, with a show of slender young dancers - 2 couples - who later spread out and ask selected members of the audience to dance with them. A sweaty and slender 18yr old boy dancer asks me, and, like the good sport I am, I get up to dance with him in front of everybody, making desperate conversation with someone who has no English. Oh well - all part of the game. Still, the 4 of us have a lot of fun dealing with huge platters of polenta with cheese and poached eggs, carp with more polenta, wild salmon and some brave grilled evegetables washed down with the house wine. I get to talk to an iconic philosopher and his very lovely wife and we all get to dance - Phillida and David even dance in the street :)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/siric/sets/72157631543114231/
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