Back to Bucharest!

(left: the Bucegi mountains under cloud - old pix so no snow here. Please use your imagination - white, Christmas card effect, fairyland at the end of my nose) Ooooooooooooooh, how lovely it is to be back! No time yet to walk the streets I love so much and explore - what's new in both the good sense and the bad. My 'agenda du ministre' is filling up and I have five days to cram in as much as possible. Bucharest becomes the 'other' city that never sleeps, at least, I won't be sleeping much by the looks of things!

Having spent a wonderful weekend in Brasov with my dear Lidia et famille, we drove through yesterdays snow and found the roads clear from Comarnic...two and a half hours later, we entered Bucharest in fog, but it didn't matter. I could see, feel, the city of my heart beyond it and despite the fatigue of the journey (I had the easy job...passenger!), my heart leapt with joy for the second time since Friday when I arrived in Brasov to be reunited once again with Lidia.

(left bd. L.Catargiu) So far, I have observed no change (visually), but haven't been anywhere. Kiseleff is as majestic as ever, its old houses in Brancovanesc style (many of them, at least), still there even if they now belong to companies rather than housing their original owners. Pta Victoriei, my bd Dacia...the bookshop Sitka still there with its sign that never sees a bucket of water and a sponge, the Hotel Duke there on the corner, Fornettis that never fails to make my mouth water even if I'm not hungry, the Coke bottles on the building Magheru/Dacia (soon to be gone if the new law holds)... I sighed and sighed and...sighed!!

My return to Bucharest began with dessert at the Howard Johnson Plaza Hotel to celebrate a wedding anniversary. Chocolate fountain (they must have known I was coming), cakes of all varieties, fruit salad etc etc... delicious champagne (I had forgotten how good Roumanian champagne is compared to the heavy French stuff. It's light and one can manage a few glasses and still touch ones nose with the index finger, eyes closed) and excellent coffee. it is the FIRST time I have ever been to the Howard Johnson, apart from the time when Rosie did a runner and ended up sitting at the entrance of the afore-mentioned hotel...I received a call from a very nice lady to tell me she had my dog in her room and would I go and collect her. I arrived in room 312 (I think) and found Rosie lying on a large bed, legs in the air surrounded by sweet wrappers...my little dog had style, i'll tell you that!!!

From there to Aura's, a tentative attempt to contact as many friends as I could via Facebook, a freshen up, skype call to home to sing a birthday song with much love and then dinner...just got back and all I can say is that the week ahead stretches before me and I am so excited to see everyone, hoof those streets again, navigate the holes whilst looking upwards at the facades and sculptures this city has to offer, chat to the maidanezi with the goal of encouraging them to baptise the Codre statue at Pta Revolutiei (see past blog post HERE), buy a hot covrig at Pta Romana and soak it all up. I have a list of people to see and things to do as long as my arm. All news as it happens.

Until then, somn usor, vise placute and... Romania, te iubesc (as says the tv show and I echo it loudly and with all my heart!!)