Back from Bucharest!

Hi, everyone. I've been offline for a few days because I went to Bucharest to pick up Kay and the boys and we spent the weekend there at the Hotel Majestic in the city center. Bucharest is much like any other continental city. Ceaucescu did his best to wreck it. He destroyed 9 square km of the city center to build the monstrous "House of the People," the second-largest building in the world, and the Bld. Unirii that leads to it. He supposedly had the idea of re-creating Bucharest in the image of Paris -- sort of a "socialist" city of lights, I guess. All the buildings along the Bld. Unirii are done in the same new gothic architectural style as the House of the People, which now houses the Romanian Parliament.

While in Bucharest we met with Madeleine Crohn, who is head of the ABA's Central and East Eurasian Legal Iniative program. She wa s a gracious host and took us to an excellent French-Moroccan restaurant for lunch. Nearby were the Curtea Veche, the oldest church in the city where Romanian rulers were crowned for hundred of years, and the ACTUAL castle in which lived and ruled Vlad Tepes, the historical figure on whom the Dracula story was based. In truth, Tepes was a Wallachian -- not a transylvanian -- prince who ruled in the late 1400s. He gained his reputation because he lived among the Turks as a youth and learned their methods of warfare. So, in the late 1400s, when the Turks tried to invade Wallachia, they found at the border 20,000 of their own countrymen who Tepes had captured and impaled alive. In this Turkish method of torture, victims were lowered onto a sharpened post such that no vital organs were pierced and died a slow death. I'll leave it to your imaginations how that might occur.

As I failed to mention earlier, my original intent was to catch a plane to Bucharest, pick up Kay and the boys, spend the weekend, and fly back. Unfortunately, because the recent devastating floods washed out a lot of bridges, the train and car service to Bucharest is much delayed and everyone is flying. So, needless to say, there were no flights available. Instead I took a car and driver there and back. Going we went a straight route through the plains, a rolling area of farmland, sheep, and cattle. Coming back, however, Mr. Albu drove us (rather fast) through the Carpathian mountains. It was absolutely beautiful. I was able to take a few pics and will get those up ASAP.

So now we're all safely arrived in the apartment in Iasi! More soon.