Spring in Bucharest? How lovely to know that we have sunny days in the 60’s and back home in Meadville it is still snowing, snowing, snowing. The forsythia is already blooming here as is an errant magnolia tree. On Tuesday night, thanks to Christopher’s museum recording career, we received free tickets to see Romania’s best violinist play a Stradivarius at the museum. We sat in the second row and swooned over the Bartok and Rachmaninov.
Afterwards we headed to a fancy dinner at an Italian restaurant about twenty steps from our front door, where, to Christopher’s great delight, they had a wood burning pizza oven. As we are finding, however, fancy doesn’t necessarily imply attentive service. Our waiters were alternately neglectful and stubborn—refusing, for instance, to leave our many bottles of wine on the table so we could all help ourselves. We had to wait and wait and wait for the bevy of waiters to notice that our glasses were empty and forlorn. And as this is a restaurant frequented by the newly rich and ostentatious, we had to sit beside this mobster type who smoked his cigar and made a big show of the champagne he’d ordered for his much younger girlfriend.
Thankfully, the foccacia made up for these minor irritations...as did the two wineglasses Christopher and I swiped—we have been drinking our market wine-$5 for two liters-poured from a cask directly into a recycled Orange bottle from teeny tiny glasses that make us feel like we are drinking $1 liters of wine. I can now report that we happily drank the swill from our new Bordeaux glasses and it now drinks like it's actually $10 liter (though this may also have something to do with our bootlegged copy of Lars and the Real Girl actually working! Romanians are adept at illegal downloads of movies so we’ve been watching all the current releases on our enclosed balcony at night. Though for some reason, 10,000 BC isn’t as compelling on the small screen as it might be on the big screen with popcorn and mammoth KitKats).
What else do we do here in the Spring? Go to cafes and drink a variety of coffees. Walk and walk and walk and buy Alexander giant soft pretzels from the pretzel shops (these are baked in wood ovens and sell for about 50 cents each). We’ve also been going to Chismigiu Park where Sophia delights in the trampoline and we delight in the beer gardens. People have started picnicking and we’ve been noting some very odd arrangements: a man skinning what looked like leeks, chopping them into small pieces, and then dumping them into jumbo Water bottles filled with water. Leek Tea? Another couple was happily dining on cheese, rolls, salami and an appalling bag filled with what looked like an assortment of innards. And then on the way out of the park, we encountered a man meticulously sponge bathing in a fountain.
We are also happy to report that Sophia is her usual self at school. She had to sit, for a few minutes, in the “naughty chair” for talking too much. She was then tickled by her teachers. Her teacher told us that they are all thoroughly enjoying having Sophia in class—and that they have never encountered a child who talks as much as she does. She has also mastered a few ballet moves and is diligently practicing her Romanian language lessons.
Afterwards we headed to a fancy dinner at an Italian restaurant about twenty steps from our front door, where, to Christopher’s great delight, they had a wood burning pizza oven. As we are finding, however, fancy doesn’t necessarily imply attentive service. Our waiters were alternately neglectful and stubborn—refusing, for instance, to leave our many bottles of wine on the table so we could all help ourselves. We had to wait and wait and wait for the bevy of waiters to notice that our glasses were empty and forlorn. And as this is a restaurant frequented by the newly rich and ostentatious, we had to sit beside this mobster type who smoked his cigar and made a big show of the champagne he’d ordered for his much younger girlfriend.
Thankfully, the foccacia made up for these minor irritations...as did the two wineglasses Christopher and I swiped—we have been drinking our market wine-$5 for two liters-poured from a cask directly into a recycled Orange bottle from teeny tiny glasses that make us feel like we are drinking $1 liters of wine. I can now report that we happily drank the swill from our new Bordeaux glasses and it now drinks like it's actually $10 liter (though this may also have something to do with our bootlegged copy of Lars and the Real Girl actually working! Romanians are adept at illegal downloads of movies so we’ve been watching all the current releases on our enclosed balcony at night. Though for some reason, 10,000 BC isn’t as compelling on the small screen as it might be on the big screen with popcorn and mammoth KitKats).
What else do we do here in the Spring? Go to cafes and drink a variety of coffees. Walk and walk and walk and buy Alexander giant soft pretzels from the pretzel shops (these are baked in wood ovens and sell for about 50 cents each). We’ve also been going to Chismigiu Park where Sophia delights in the trampoline and we delight in the beer gardens. People have started picnicking and we’ve been noting some very odd arrangements: a man skinning what looked like leeks, chopping them into small pieces, and then dumping them into jumbo Water bottles filled with water. Leek Tea? Another couple was happily dining on cheese, rolls, salami and an appalling bag filled with what looked like an assortment of innards. And then on the way out of the park, we encountered a man meticulously sponge bathing in a fountain.
We are also happy to report that Sophia is her usual self at school. She had to sit, for a few minutes, in the “naughty chair” for talking too much. She was then tickled by her teachers. Her teacher told us that they are all thoroughly enjoying having Sophia in class—and that they have never encountered a child who talks as much as she does. She has also mastered a few ballet moves and is diligently practicing her Romanian language lessons.
Kerry
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