Goat Town and Pretzel Place

It is easy to find the ugly in Romania. It is everywhere. It doesn't help that we're in one of the less interesting areas - near Bucharest where the land is flat and not a castle is to be found. But once the reality of it sinks in, we started to get used to it and are now finding the beauty, or at least the less ugly. We have started to name the little towns we drive through. There is Goat Town and Pretzel Place. Why do all the goat owners live in only one village? Why do all the pretzel producers compete in the same village, why don't they share the loaves? Don't ask, just drive and avoid the horse carts.

The horse drawn carts are still a come again? sight.These are working horses doing real farm and labor tasks, not ferrying tourists around the landmarks (there are no tourists because there are no landmarks). Today, we ate lunch on some benches outside a tiny little construction store. Down the driveway came the horse and driver, off to deliver some window blinds. You don't see that at Lowe's or Home Depot. But hay is cheaper than gas and it takes longer for the transmission to go out, so there would be economic advantages.

We are settling in and finding the things that will make our time here easier. We bought some forks and plates, a bowl for all the fruit people are giving us and some cutting boards to make sandwiches. At first the street we're on seemed seedy, but now it's looking kind of interesting and I'm getting up the energy to take a walk and do some shopping. I'm feeling the urge to color my hair Russian Red. Just kidding, that would be contributing to the ugly.

Some sort of fruit I've never seen, not plums, not cherries, can't remember the name.

Another fruit I've never seen before. Can't remember this one's name either.

Why does Romania have digitized pricing on the store shelves and the U.S. doesn't? 

Complete strangers keep giving us fruit. Eat five an hour, that's the rule.

We are adding to the hotel ambiance every day.

I've given up on my hair looking cute, clean is good enough.