There was a band playng tradtonal music, and the atmosphere was amazng, although admittedly helped by the fact that as t was a frends/famly do, virtually everybody knew at least half of the other guests, and the food was utterly excellent, although slightly challenging in order to manage to at least try a bt of everything, as there were so many dshes. I later discovered that the head chef had n fact been the Ceauceascu head chef for a perod n the 80’s, whch was knd of scary until looked at vaguely logcally – Normal people had to make a lvng, and obvously the famly would only employ the very best, whlst i ‘m guessng that an ‘invtaton’ to work for the famly wouldn’t be easy to turn down unless he had no plans for along and prosperous life. And besides, t wasn’t as if Nicolae died of food poisonng…
Anotehr feature of thecity, and far more noticeable than in Sofia (and less friendly) for example are the huge numbers of stray dogs around. Much of the problem stems from the same 1979 earthquake and Ceacescu subsequently usng t as an excuse to demolsh a chunk of the cty. Lots of famly homes were destroyed and people located to concrete hgh rses on the outskrts where they had no room for ther pets, many of which had then just been set loose. And Bridget Bardot (i thnk?) hadn’t helped either. I had a friendly remnder of this the following day, when with Oana away to Cluj to vst frends, and me havng taken u my normal roll of wandering at random and on my return,a lovely black dog decded totry and take a chunk out of my left leg. I’m not sure f he thought I was scaryng away hs pigeons, worryng the nearby newborn puppies (not his, and wth lots of other people around), thought was gong to steal his ball or smply thougt would make a good meal, but he gave me a decent np. I was close to the hostel, and so had t cleaned out quckly, and the brillant (all along – more people like her and her famly should run hostels) landlady gave me antiseptic cream etc to smother over it, and so with a bit of luck, won’t die of rabies, although i probably won’t know how true that is for another few months…
No comments:
Post a Comment