Later on we walked to the tiny grocery store on the corner. It was one of those days when the slush had all frozen overnight and been covered with a fresh layer of snow, and some places were starting to melt in the afternoon sun, but the places in the shadows were not, and it was hard to tell exactly what your feet were going to encounter when you ventured out into the world. We saw an old woman standing on the sidewalk up ahead calling for help. Her back was bent forward at an angle. She looked frail and uncertain, like falling was on her mind. There was a young man walking on the other side of the street and she called out to him, beckoning him towards her. The young man across the street was maybe not the kind of young man you might expect to see going out of his way to help an anxious crooked old woman. He was a strutting sort of sullen looking young man with long oily hair and pants cinched tight halfway down his butt. But he crossed the street and let the old woman take his arm, and he walked slowly next to her and guided her partway down the sidewalk. At which point either his patience had worn thin, or he had plans in another direction, because with a few words and gestures he transferred the old woman to a young woman passing by. The kind of young woman that you could in fact picture going out of her way to help. And as we walked away that was the last I saw. A young woman letting an old woman hold onto her arm as they inched their way down the sidewalk. As far as I could tell, all of them were strangers.
A few days later we did some professional walking. We hired Laura from Bucharest Step by Step to show us around her beloved city. She agreed to combine her 'Best of Bucharest' and her 'Hidden Bucharest' tours for us, and at the appointed time she arrived, breathless, and eager to please. It was a cold January day and the sky was a brilliant blue. Laura's hair was orange. A shade of orange not normally found in nature, at least not on people's heads, but one that seemed to be all the rage with the fashionistas of Bucharest. Laura's chunky cotton turtleneck was exactly the same color. She had an ipad filled with pictures of her son, and historical photos of all the famous buildings in Bucharest. She had an endless supply of facts and information and stories.
Our tour began at the Romanian Athenaeum, the landmark building in the center of the city,
just a few steps away from our apartment.
just a few steps away from our apartment.
Laura told us how the people of Romania had helped pay for it with the famous 'donate one lei' program. Her face lit up as she talked. It's a beautiful building. The lobby is full of marble and carved woodwork, with pastels and painted 'fleur de lis' everywhere.
The concert hall inside is all plush red velvet, with a place for the king to sit, when there used to be a king, and the whole history of Romania painted high above our heads on a curving wall. And when we go outside and look up, there is Beethoven's name shining in the sunlight above our heads.
We start walking down historic Calea Victoriei or 'Victory Avenue' and find the giant statue of King Carol on his horse. Laura tells us King Carol did good things for their country, and that he reigned for a long time. She says Romania is 'not so lucky' in their history, with so many people conquering them, or wanting to conquer them. She says the time of King Carol was a good time.
Revolution Square is next. We look up and see the Memorial of Rebirth. It's a tall pointy white spire with what looks like a meatball skewered on the top dripping blood. Laura laughs and says the Romanian people 'don't like it so much', and that they make fun of it. When I look it up later I learn that the 'blood' is actually paint from a 2012 act of vandalism that no one has bothered to clean off.
Our guide points out the balcony across the square where the insane dictator Ceausescu stood for his last speech. Laura says she doesn't know what he was thinking, speaking to the crowd as if nothing had changed, after the Berlin Wall had already fallen, and revolution was in the air. She tells us how the people in the square turned against him, and how he and his wife tried to escape in a helicopter, but were caught. About how they were given a trial that only lasted one hour, were both found guilty and were both executed by firing squad on Christmas Day 1989. Laura laughs and says, 'a Christmas present for the Romanian people'.
Next she shows us the famous Macca Villacrosse Passage, a covered walkway between streets. We look up to see gorgeous yellow and turquoise glass ceilings. Laura says this is the only double passageway in the city, because the man that owned the building in the middle refused to sell, so they had to build around it.
Everyone is hungry so Laura takes us to Caru' Cu Bere in Old Town. She dismisses the restaurant as 'so touristy', but we go inside anyway and eat salty soup in bread bowls and linger for a long time talking. On the way out she points to another restaurant that she says is much better.
Laura shows us ancient churches,
and hidden street art.
and hidden street art.
She takes us to a museum that used to be a palace. It smells like smoke inside. There are grumpy old women in black dresses watching our every move. Our entrance fees go into a ziploc bag. Upstairs there is a video playing, and we see Nixon riding in an open convertible with Ceausescu, his fingers flashing those famous victory signs.
Then Laura takes us to her favorite street in Bucharest, where all the mansions are, and shows us the one she likes the best. We find the little hidden coffee shop where she takes her son to carve pumpkins in the fall, when the ivy on the walls is red. We walk through a park, and Gary asks about the men standing like sentries in skinny wooden boxes at the entrance, watching everyone. Laura says 'Romanians are sometimes suspicious of each other. Maybe it is left over from the communist days.'
Laura loves the architecture of her city. She points out a 1930s art deco building across the street and shows us a picture on her ipad of the swimming pool with mechanized waves that used to be inside. She says the ownership of the building is being contested, that the heirs of the people that owned it before it was taken by the state want it back. It could take years. There are lawyers. Laura says some people get their property back, and some don't. She says her mother had her home taken by the state, and was forced to live in a house with a shared kitchen, and it was 'shitty'. She says over and over, 'it was shitty'. Laura says she laughs now, but those were really hard years. Her parents were chemical engineers because Ceausescu wanted to convert Romania into an industrial nation and he needed engineers. But after the revolution there 'wasn't so much work', and they were in their 40s, and it was hard to get what they needed for their families. Laura says everyone had the same things. All the kids had the same bike, the same camera, the same tape player. She shrugs and says, 'there was not so much choice'.
Laura worries that the tour has been too long and that we are tired. She wonders if we have liked what she's shown us. We tell her all the superlatives we can think of. It's hard to say goodbye. Gary shakes Laura's hand, but I reach out for a hug. Her hug is long and strong.
We go walking on other nights looking for places to eat that don't allow smoking inside. We find La Placinte, a bright and cozy Romanian mini-chain restaurant where our waitress speaks English and says everything we have ordered will be 'tasty'. We find Beca's Kitchen on another night after walking in the dark past massive imposing buildings, some empty and scarred and covered with graffiti. We have a memorable meal and walk home through cold dropping rain and slushy puddles.
The last time we go walking in Bucharest is a Sunday, but we do not go to church. Instead we set out to find the third largest building in the world, the gigantic People's Palace, one of the most extravagant and expensive building projects in the history of mankind. It is a monstrous monument to one man's ego. The dictator Ceausescu paid for it, in part, by systematically starving the Romanian people. It's no wonder our tour guide Laura could not say its name without contempt in her voice.
We also find statues.
And a beautiful bookstore with sparkly decorations.
And then we go for one last dinner at Lacrimi si Sfinti, the restaurant Laura recommended. We have an amazing and filling and possibly even authentic Romanian dinner, and even though we have been walking all day, we decide not to take a cab home. We head out towards the main boulevard, the famous street that goes past all the monuments and revolution square. It's dark and late, and there aren't many people around. We're walking and holding hands. It's cold. My coat is zipped all the way up. I have my warmest sweater on underneath, and long underwear, and gloves, and a giant scarf wrapped around my head, and I'm still cold. We're walking slowly, and stopping to take pictures. The famous buildings are all lit up. There are colorful holiday lights strung across the streets. Some of them are blinking on and off.
Suddenly there is a boy next to us. A beautiful little boy with dark hair and long black eyelashes. His face is sweet and he's smiling, walking alongside Gary. He looks up and says, 'please, one lei, please', and he does not seem practiced or jaded, but only innocent, only a little boy asking for help. He is carrying a piece of cardboard almost as big as he is, like an opened pizza box, or a little bigger. He's carrying it with both hands. We look down at him and smile. I ask him how old he is, but I don't know if he understands. I say 'are you five? Or six?' and I hold up my fingers. I don't know what he thinks I'm saying, but he says 'more'. I hold up ten fingers, and he laughs and nods and says yes. But I am the mother of two boys, and watched them grow from five to nine to eleven, and if this boy is ten years old then I do not know boys and their growing up ways. But maybe he thinks I am asking how many lei he wants us to give him. This small beautiful boy walking alongside us on this grand boulevard in Bucharest in the middle of winter.
Gary reaches in his pocket and gives the dark haired little boy five lei, and the boy walks away bouncing, saying 'thank you' with sparkly eyes, and a smile he can't contain. We're walking more slowly than he is, and soon he's in front of us, holding his cardboard, and also now the hand of a younger child. Is it his brother? His sister? He's holding hands with a child smaller than he is and walking fast. Next to them is a woman. It's hard to tell how old she is. I wonder if she's their mother. She doesn't look at us, or talk to us. The three of them are walking quickly away.
But pretty soon they stop, the woman and the two small children, and we see them standing in a dark alley. They are checking out a pile of cardboard there, picking up pieces and examining them, searching for something. It looks like they're hunting for more cardboard. For their beds? To make a shelter of some kind? As we walk by I imagine them sleeping outside on this freezing night. Gary looks at me and I look at Gary and he says 'should I give them more?' And so he turns around and goes back, and gives the woman 100 lei. And we keep on walking.
Soon the three of them pass us again, the two little ones holding hands. The boy with the long black eyelashes is bouncing. They walk fast and cross at the stoplight ahead of us. We get stuck waiting for the red light. We see two young girls standing on the corner across the street. The woman says something to them as she passes by. When we cross the street the girls are next to us immediately, one on each side pleading 'please please one lei please we are hungry'. They stay next to us all the way down the sidewalk until we reach our apartment. Gary consults with me about what we should do, and then goes off to buy them some food. I stay, and try to make conversation. I ask about their family. They say their mother is dead, either run over by a taxi or killed from cancer. I don't think we understand each other. There is a father somewhere, and many other children. Maybe. Gary comes back with a sandwich and five lei for them. They look at the sandwich and the older girl's lip curls in disdain, but they take it, and the money, and we quickly walk away.
When we get back inside our refurbished soviet era apartment I look up beggars in Romania. I see that child beggars are pretty common here, although these are the first we have seen, and that during the communist era, when abortion and contraceptives were outlawed, people had so many children they couldn't feed them, or take care of them, and they became a big problem. There were gangs of them on the streets, sometimes controlled by pimps, and that even though it has gotten better, there are still a few around. I fall asleep thinking about sparkly eyes and long dark eyelashes and a smile that cannot be contained.
People in Bucharest kept asking us why we were there. In Romania. In the middle of winter. Taxi drivers and waitresses and clerks in grocery stores asked. When they found out our last known address was in Hawaii some of them couldn't stop laughing. We laughed too. Because we didn't have any good answers.
Later on, when the questions in my head send me searching for my own answers, what I find myself thinking about are not sparkly bookstores or delicious meals or statues of heroes on horses. I'm not thinking about gigantic buildings that are monuments to monstrous egos, or colorful glass passageways, or art in unexpected places. What I find myself thinking about is a long strong hug from a woman with hair a color not normally found in nature. About strangers holding each other up. About a beautiful little boy with a cardboard box for a bed. About being blessed. And about what might happen if we didn't always just keep on walking.
