A September to Remember

Have we mentioned the dogs? We read that there are upwards of 100,000 stray dogs in the city. When we see a dog on a leash we think, “How odd!” But we are quite certain that Bucharestians love their stray dogs. We know that they feed them. Besides their own dogs that they keep inside walled yards to help guard their place, Romanians encourage the strays outside the walls, facilitating stray committees that fend off drifters or people soliciting for money. From our balcony, we can see that one homeowner has two doghouses --- one inside and another outside the wall around his property. One of our teacher friends is beside herself with passion and concern for these poor animals and has in fact saved a stray puppy from the depths of wretchedness by offering it an upscale apartment life. “Lucky dog” as they say! Sort of the ultimate souvenir.

In other news, the coffee is monstrously strong, but good. Really, it is Turkish coffee style, mud on the bottom. Our school lunches are wonderful—huge amounts of potatoes, meats, veggies, salads, fruit. Ed eats so much that he requires only a snack of salami and crackers for supper. When the cupboard is bare, there is the small grocery market on the ground floor of our building.

Speaking of food, there is a small knot of gypsy children who hang around our building every now and then. When we go out to the car, they often come running, extending their grubby hands and long faces, exercising their few English words like “please mister”, “hungry”, and with random crying sounds hoping to tug at our heart and purse strings. They don’t try to hide their current stash of potato chips, candy bars or even their chubbiness!

Ed loves driving here and believes that Romanians are ultimately efficient. True, the law says that the speed limit is 50 in town, but if the road is clear, why not take advantage of it and go 90? There are no stop signs out in our area at all, and the rule at corners is simple. Don’t hit each other. In the very busy parts of the city, there are stop lights, and they are rigorously obeyed. But on Sunday, we needed to get to a main avenue, and the street we were on was one way. The "wrong" way! Well, the sign makers didn’t know which way Ed needed to go, and because there was no traffic at that moment, we drove a block or two in the wrong direction. In speaking to the right people, this move will have earned him great respect. A beeping horn behind you is not an impatient blast, but rather a quite polite suggestion that the light is green, and you may proceed. A beep can also mean that you may cut in front of me, or it could mean, please don’t hit me because I’m the one who is two inches from your left rear fender, the one who is finding his own third lane on a two lane road. We need to drive very carefully ---- there’s a horse and wagon carrying a load of watermelons down the road, or a pedestrian on a crossing which has all its paint worn off, or a stray dog sleeping on the side of the road, or a foot-deep pot hole in the middle of the street, not to speak of the man hole with the missing man hole cover. As for parking, there is ALWAYS a place on the sidewalk.

When we sit at our dining room table these days our balcony door and windows are wide open. No bugs come into the house. Straight East, we can look into the wide open fields that are fast becoming Bucharest North. If we train the binoculars into that direction, we can see a shepherd and his flock, a cowherd with his/her cows, and some child coming out there to tell them it's suppertime. It’s all fascinating.