Said I loved you but I lied

Paul was very keen to title this blog "Who let the (community) dogs out??" as an ode to Romania's (particularly Bucharest's) plagues of wandering, unowned and, as Josh keeps reminding me, potentially rabid dogs. Josh is also sufficiently well informed as to be able to tell you the cause of the vast numbers of stray...errr...I mean community dogs - from memory I think it is something to do with a government decision to move people into housing blocks but not let them keep their dogs....?

As amusing as Paul's suggested title is, I prefer to call this blog "Said I loved you but I lied" as a tribute to Michael Bolton, whose concert we were lucky enough to be able to attend in Brasov last night. When I say "attend", what I actually mean is: the idol himself was performing here last night, concert starting at 9pm, and the performance was in an open air arena, heavily patrolled by both private security and the Roumanian police force. But we're not sure what they were patrolling for, because when we walked past at about 7.50pm, hoards of locals had set themselves up on the streets surrounding the arena (on the inside of the polcie barriers) and appeared to be devoting their Saturday night to waiting for the certainly fantastic performance. So, when we walked past again at 10pm and the Bolton himself was about to come on, freeriders that we both are, we nosed our way into position and cheered and sang along to the songs we "new by heart". For at least 20 minutes anyway. It was certainly an experience. And I've always wondered how those old "rockers" go at concerts - turns out the answer is amusingly and in small eastern european towns. The only disappointment was that we were unable to ascertain how much people had paid to actually be inside the arena, we were offered tickets by some scalpers for the bargain price of $A200.

Enough frivolity.

We left you in Bucherest, a city we had some doubts about visiting but about which we were proven wrong. Bucherest was slighty cooler than the sauna that was Bulgaria and the temperature allowed us to explore the city itself which is a delightful infusion of communist statues, (coloured) fountains, huge sqaures etc and gothic architecture. The architectural highlight of the city is definitely Ceausescu's parlimentary palace. This is an enormous building which Ceausescu (the former dictator of Romania whose rule ended when he was shot on Christmas Day 1989) designed having been inspired by his trips to North Korea and Beijing in the early 1980s. The building is the second largest in the world, after the Pentagon (tell me, what does that say about America's ego?) and is built entirely from Roumanian products. But the oddest thing about the palace is that because so little of it was built before Ceausescu's death, the democratic government decided to finish it to his plan, minus intricacies such as wall size portraits of the man himself and his wife and a helicopter pad in the main ballroom.









[Suggested caption: "Romanians discover coloured ink, hilarity ensues".]

Ceausescu's palace also gave us our first introduction to other tourists. More particularly, toursist of the American variety on a Christian mission in Bucharest, or as they called it: "mapping His kingdom". Suffice to say one of them actually had on a baseball cap with a bald eagle rampant on the stars and stripes and another looked like he had taken a break from filming the Sound of Music....

We departed Bucharest for Brasov in the Transylvanian mountains by very swish airconditioned train, which has inspired us to catch the Orient Express from Belgrade to Istanbul... The Transylvanian mountains are cooler again and very European, with castles and churches dotting the green hills which we're told become ski fields during winter. We went vampyre hunting today in Bran which was fun and picturesque, but for the flocks of tourists which caused us to be very grateful we had paid $A10 and made our own way there rather than being led around by our hostel's guide for $A100.

We now plan to head further up into the mountains and wind our way back down the western border with Serbia. But for now - we're going on a bear hunt (think the children's book by Michael Rosen) and if we make not like the tourist two years ago who tried to feed the bears rather than just watch them, we'll blog again soon!

Editorial note:
1 We've mastered the magic of linking to things. Enjoy.
2 "I said I loved you but I lied, this is more than love I feel inside". What, exactly, is it then Michael? Indigestion? Mild curiosity? In fact, I propose that this unnamed, stronger-than-love emotion be christened "Bolton" in honour of its presumed discoverer. Sample use "I'm Boltoning this newfound ability to link to stuff." 3, Kate has shamed us by displaying the ability to post links within our comments section before we managed it ourselves. In our defence I note that we are using deeply old school technology and that Kate met her previous boyfriend on the internet, so she has the inside track in this regard.