Bucharest is wonderful

[fivemack]

The museums of Bucharest contain curators, almost all young, female, attractive, monoglot-Romanian and married, in battalions far outnumbering their visitors. From the look of the signage, I could have had many deep conversations about museology and the art of textile preservation, if only my Romanian went beyond 'va rog' (please) and 'multsoomesk' (thankyou); all they said to me was 'no photography'.

There's a really splendid Breugel four seasons in the National Art Museum, with a particularly enthusiastic portrayal of the autumn pig-slaughtering session. The main square is superbly theatrical, with a rococo University Library building to shame Cambridge and a domed, be-freized Athenaeum. There's a beautifully green and expansive municipal park around a lake just at the edge of the city. I have many photos, but can't upload them from this machine in the hostel.

It is very hot - even the thunderstorms don't cool the place.

The entertaining problem was that I arrived, with four Euros in my pocket, to discover that the hostel doesn't believe in credit cards and that every bank and ATM in Romania was shut that day since they're re-issuing the currency. Thankfully the hostel took my passport as security, and Doug of Half-way Down the Danube is a wonderful person, lent me some money to keep me fed and watered, and sacrificed two lunch-hours to wander around the city with me chatting about the Balkans. The ATMs reopened today, though both the ones I used dispensed the old currency, so I wonder what the point was.

Off to Sinaia tomorrow by the 0910 train; an hour seemingly not well-known to backpackers.

Comments

[taimatsu]

What, you can't even say 'sase bere si doua Fanta, va rog' or 'am doi copii, o fata si un baiat'? Shame on you! :)

(I have a 'Teach yourself Romanian' book which is very handy.)

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

That's cheating; also, that's an awful lot of beer (and what is a baiat?).

I can't get the numbers to stay in my head at all, though I did manage to grasp that a taxi driver asking for 'due sota cincizeci mil lei' was trying to rip me off, in time to leave the taxi.

[taimatsu]

A boy. I was the only one in my group of ten to speak any Romanian, so in contexts it's actually not a lot of beer at all :)

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

I don't recall your having a son and a daughter ...

[taimatsu]

It was one of the sample sentences in the book. I didn't say it was *true*. :)

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

I can now ... managed to chat at that sort of level to the taxi driver all the way to the airport

(Londra! Joculuri Olympici!)
(Fata Romanesca mai frumosa)

And I can now remember the numbers. But I'll doubtless have forgotten the whole language by next week.

It's 2am. I'm two hours jetlagged anyway, so I think it's 4am. bed.