Briefly: Romania

We toured another little reconstructed village. This one had kitties!


The "People's Palace" is the second largest building in the world, a temple to Ceausescu's megalomania.




He and his wife would do things like make the workers tear down entire completed marble staircases and rebuild them... five times. All of this was related with a cheerful lilt by our young local guide, the unspoken punchline to every such story being, "And then we shot him!"

Speaking of which, we also saw the location of his last stand. As soon as I got home I looked up the video on YouTube. This is one of the most poetic sixty seconds I have ever seen. The crowd goes from cheering for Ceausescu and chanting his name, to spontaneously booing and hissing as soon as he starts talking. Look at his face when he realizes what is happening. He escaped from the rooftop by helicopter, only to be apprehended hours later. Extra volunteers for the firing squad had to be turned away.



Travel fatigued, Kate and I got a bit silly.



A man on the tour turned to my mom and said, "You've got to marry those girls off." HAHAHAHAHA! Wait, what does that mean?!

We had dinner at a lovely old restaurant in the centre of town. I ordered schnitzel, mushrooms, and cigarettes.


And then the cossack joined us for dinner! Man, that was great.


While in Bucharest we stayed at the Hilton Athenee Palace hotel. I love staying in hotels, especially like this.


And then, at two-thirty in the morning on the final day of the trip, we gathered in the lobby and boarded our bus and left.