and walk with happy Romani
This stage of the trip is mostly recovery and final planning. I'm sure a 6am flight from Budapest to Seattle made sense three months ago when I booked this thing, but it suddenly looms like a peasant's threshing machine over every remaining decision.
Looks like it's going to be a trip to Brasov to see mountains and castles, and then a mad dash for the Hungarian border. More night trains! Get some!
Bucharest is doing its bucha-best, but I'm pretty sure I won't recommend it to anyone. I mean, it was apparently a glorious Eastern European Paris back in the 20s, but wars (wars you've heard about with Germans), and commies and, heartbreakingly, earthquakes have made it the stack of concrete it is today. Like, it doesn't look like a mess. It's been rebuilt, just... in an ugly way.
I dunno, Vlad the Impaler died here. Maybe the place is cursed.
Their villainous leader for twenty years was a fiend in human form named Nicolae Ceausescu who did the usual commie shit -- scary police force, cult of personality, turning all the churches into factories, making it always winter and never Christmas, etc. He took a weekend trip to Pyongyang to visit a brother communist, Kim Jong Il's daddy, and came back with visions of wrecking the town in his head. He loved what he saw up there. Like, it looked good to him. Starving unhappy, broken, terrified people with no hope for a future? Oatmeal skyline? Where do I sign up?
Are there ANY good commie stories? Like the idea of even distribution of wealth and equality for everyone sure SOUNDS good. Like Marx sure paints a compelling picture, but... did anyone ever come close to making it happen? Like, our country sucks because we make war on other countries, but the commie countries seem to make war on themselves.
Ugh, I buy a plane ticket, and suddenly I'm a political philosopher. Suddenly I have opinions. Get home and write some coupons, ya creep.
The plan today was to sleep in, take a bus tour to see if anything was left of this place, like give it a chance to show itself the way it wanted to be seen, the aspirational Bucharest. Woke up nice and early, made some tea, and warmed my feet under a sheepskin. I was tiptoeing around, but I'm the only one in this place. It's, like, a three bedroom home with a spiral staircase and some groovy tiles.
The shower is nuts. It like, squirts you horizontally. Never seen anything like it. I actually said, "the fuck?!" aloud when I turned the knob and the water shot past my face.
It was fun to shower in! I had to get on my knees to wash my hair.
A one-armed man made me coffee in a little breakfast place on Theodore Aman Strada. He didn't speak English, and his way of asking me if I wanted steamed milk was to fire off the steamer and point to it. I nodded yes, since I couldn't remember if thumbs-up was a mortal insult.
He had the news on and it showed dogs being rounded up on the street and then video from the US of a shopkeeper foiling a robbery. The one-armed man and I were amazed by the footage and smiled at one another.
One of the reasons I came here was because I'd heard the place was overrun by packs of wild dogs. Like, that sounded scary and amazing to me.
Saw videos of the dogs waiting at stoplights and going only when the light turned green.
I studied what to do in case of dog attack (avoid it by not running away or looking them in the eye), thought about buying a dog whistle (would it attract dogs or drive them off?) and ended up deciding to just stay away from them. But what if they were everywhere? I wanted to know!!
They aren't everywhere or even really a factor. Saw plenty loping around in crowded places, but they were servile and submissive. Sweet little beggars.
A canillion years ago in Athens, I was slipping around on marble sidewalks around 4am, and there were a million motorcycles. Vespas, scooters, hogs, every kind. And on the seat of every motorcycle was a cat. It was like they existed for cats to sleep on. They were everywhere. And packs of wild dogs had come out of the hills to avoid the heat and they slept curled up at the wheels of the cycles. This really happened. I really saw this, and part of wanting to see the dogs here was to make up for never taking a picture of the Greek animals.
A man walked by singing that he had something for sale. No idea what it was, but the rise and fall of his voice was beautiful. My eyes filled with tears. It was just suddenly so fucking nice to relax and have some coffee in a courtyard and hear that man sing.
Finished my coffee and made my way to the muster point for the Hop On bus. I had passed it yesterday, so I knew where it was. And since I was so sure, I figured I'd dip down a side street and see some new things. Got aggressively lost. Like, I turned one corner, and it was like Wile E. Coyote had spun every street sign in crazy directions. It was like Dark City or something. I just kept walking and nothing was where it was supposed to be.
And nothing was interesting to look at. Usually getting lost is pleasurable, but here.. not so much. Like it wasn't scary, it was boring, and that's worse.
I found a big park and stopped to orient myself. Not on the map.
Some folks were walking toward me, and I tried to ask them where I was, and they ignored me. Like, totally blanked me. Didn't even do the "sorry, no English," thing, just parted around me like I was a stray dog's turd and kept on walking. They treated me like a Romanian bible salesman. I mean, whatever, it's not their job. Maybe it's a bad area, and this is a famous con.
Maybe gypsies wave a Lonely Planet guide they found in the trash, ask you where the action is and slowly undo the clasp on your evil eye necklace. Anyway, fuck those people. I went ahead and asked a park employee who was changing the trash. She was like, "Sorry, I have no idea where the Imperial Palace is. Sorry."
I know you've changed the trash there, bitch. There's no way you don't know where the fucking Imperial Palace is. Still, though, she took the time to lie. Those other people. Grrrr. BUT, I've ignored an hundred people in my life, certain they wanted my necklace! So, un-grrr.
I decided it was a bad area if everyone was gonna act like a kuh-reep.
Anyway, weird to have gotten lost. I'd been doing so well. Maybe there was another earthquake while I was at coffee. Eventually just backtracked the whole way. Hansel and Gretel knew their business.
Found the bus, hopped on. The sound system that explains everything was on the fritz. It was like, "To your left GRAAAK and PFFFZZZT" so I just took it off and looked around. Like a person.
Everything looked like this:
Nicolae Chow Chow Pickles really did a number on this place. My guess is if I had more time to, I dunno, get into the rhythm of the city, I might... ah.. who am I kidding. Don't come here.
Bus went its silent, clumsy way to a park, so I hopped off. Park was amazingly beautiful and packed with surprises. Come here.
Just... leafy serenity. A gorgeous lake, fun statues and weird busts. I bought some corn on the cob and munched my way through a weird skateboard thing for kids, and into the middle of the weirdest circle of giant metal heads you ever saw.
If nothing else, it was an incredibly perfect day weather-wise. Like, a snappy little breeze and perfect light.
I got lost in the park looking for something called the Zodiac Fountain. Just, totally lost, and the map made no sense. Lost. For the second time in a day. How? Am I not eating enough vegetables? Wandered past geese and a bizarre peacock:
Its wise, winking avian eye told me to just give up. Just lie down, it whispered. Let Bucharest defeat you. No, peacock!! No!
Punched my way through the trees and made it to where the bus lets you hop on. You can't keep me trapped in your circle of heads forever, Herastrau Park!
Passed more of Chatandchew's hard rock follies, and grew weary. The next stop was supposed to be The Museum of the Romanian Peasant, but the bus just blew by it like an aristocrat in a carriage. If there were a mud puddle, the bus would have tried to splash it. You're making it super hard for me to be into you, Bukowski-rest, old buddy.
Got off at the next stop. Forced the issue by standing next to the driver and wheezing. Got out, headed back to the peasant museum and rolled my ankle in a pothole.
Not completely, like these sweet high-ankle boots helped me out, but enough to be concerned. It's my weak point since I fucked it up stealing that bookshelf. That fateful night! My knee has been messing with me lately too. Now you know all my business! Maybe I'll replace this leg with a stick like whats-his-stick back in Cluj.
Decided to go home and make sure it wasn't all chowdered up. I didn't fall, and it didn't... snap, but it didn't feel good, and I'd been doing a lot of extra wandering because of all the getting lost. So, back to Transylvanie Strada!
Took off the shoes, drank some tea, knew darkness, and then I was fine. Decided to ditch the camera and just walk unencumbered and free to the museum. I love documenting the trip in pictures, but it also puts a kind of... pressure on me. Like, this isn't a picturesque place, and I wanted to just give it a chance as a city and not as a photo album.
That worked, I think. Had a nice little limp to The Museum of the Romanian Peasant and boy was it great. Just a dazzling collection of art and wooden machines and clothing and dishes. The colors and... humanity of it was all so... spiritual. The discipline these people had. Awesome, crappy pictures of biblical stories, beautiful because they were so bad. I loved every piece of it.
Weeeeeeeeiiiird basement with a communist coloring book with pages showing kids that peasants were ignorant, lazy and bad. Just, the creeeepiest propaganda with the straaaangest art. Like, the wicked peasants would be a field of wheat with a face or a sleeping tractor with birds on it with a face. Maybe we fought the Cold War because the commies were fucking weird.
Bused back to the fancy old town for one more kabab. Fashion models were doing a shoot. Eurotrash everywhere in sunglasses with their sweaters tied around their necks. Lots of lighting equipment. Hard for the girls to walk on the cobblestones in their heels. Tried the kabab with pickles this time. I just adore these Eastern European pickles.
Hearing the man sing his "for sale" song, feeling the breeze in the park, the museum, the kebab with french fries wrapped up in it... these are the things I'm going to remember about this sad, proud city.
Tomorrow I head back to the hills. Off to Brasov in search of Dracula's Castle!
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