*** Tuesday, 31 Dec 2002 ***
A staff member mentioned to me that Romanians in 1945 and 46 felt that USA had abandoned them to the Russians. I have heard this multiple times so the belief must be there. Yet, I don't know why.

The classically-styled University building just down the street from my apartment.

Many people walk around with a single _branch_ of a Christmas tree. It seems to be a popular gift even after Christmas.

The weather is warmer since Saturday; so much so that the sidewalks are clearing. Anything that faces the sun and anything where someone made even a flimsy effort at shoveling is now clear. Thank God.

Electronics in my pants pocket, in my coat pocket, on my back. My iPod adds a sound track to the sights of Bucharest. The city is more beautiful with the Bach-Gounod Ave Maria in your ears.

This morning on my way to work, I walked up Batistei to the street with the 5/16 trolley line as a variation. With the sidewalks mostly clear, it was a quieter way to go.

Bucharest seems to have a habit of changing the names of its streets. I have seen this before in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan when the government decided to honor its local heroes whose memories (not to mention their bodies) had been ignored/suppressed by the Soviet Union. Lenin once said that the greatest threat to the Soviet Union (the heir to the Russian Empire) was "minorities question". He was referring to, among others, Turkmen, Khazaks, Uzbeks, Kirgiz, and dozens of other groups (usually numbering in the millions) who inhabited the fringe of "Mother Russia". One way in which the minority chickens have come home to roost is in the renaming of streets, squares, buildings, etc.

But I don't get it here. When I walked up Batistei I passed a street that had its name changed since I was last here. The former name (Strada Jean Louis Calderon) was that of a French journalist who was killed in the Revolution of December 1989. The new name is Strada Prof Dr Dimitrie Gerota) who, the sign informs us, was a surgeon and philanthropist (1867-1939). Why would the Dr. Gerota rate higher than Mr. Calderon? What is the logic here? I also noted that the boulevard 1st Mai is now boulevard Ion Mihalache. Given the inevitable confusion that name changes cause, what is the incentive? (When I was I was in Ashgabat I invited people to a party at my apartment and discovered that no one knew my street by its new name -- I had to include the old name so people could find it.)

The system for paying for you ride on buses and trolleys here is interesting. you must purchase tickets in advance at certain booths (i.e., not every kiosk sells them) and when you board you are supposed to take a ticket and put it in a small device fastened to many of the vertical holding bars and then pull the top of the device toward you. The result is a ticket with a sequence of holes unique (?) to the bus you are on. Supposedly you are subject to a demand to present your punched ticket to an inspector but I have never seen such an event occurring. And I noticed that I see very few people actually punching tickets. It is possible to buy an "abonament lunar" which is a monthly pass that can save you at least 25 percent off a month's commute so perhaps all those non-punchers did that.

A close-up of the University building. Note the detailed carving around the windows.

Fireworks seem to be very popular as the New Year approaches. They seem to fall into the small rocket variety and the "cherry bomb" variety. I haven't heard any "Chinese" fireworks (a rapid explosion of a number of fireworks). It reminds me of the Fourth of July but they don't celebrate that here.

Someone planned an early end to the office day because the night guard showed up at Noon. The eight or so people who had come in started going around and wishing the others a happy new year. I got the picture.

A subscriber wrote:
"Every problem has a solution, and your first two items may provide a synergistic one.
"Back . . . in the mid-1980s, I was in one of our South Side parks one day when I say four Asian men walking side-by-side down a park pathway. As I observed the men, I could see that their heads were carefully swiveling back and forth and there was little or no conversation. I realized I was observing a hunting party. Then I asked myself what they might be hunting for.

"As I searched my memory, I recalled that in the 1970s as a grad student I had seen some stuff about the cities being overrun with packs of wild dogs, growing out of dogs released by people who couldn't or wouldn't care for them. But I also recalled that I hadn't seen much about this recently. It came to me that these were fairly recent Southeast Asian immigrants on the lookout for stray dogs - Yum! Yum! So, when Romania gets enough "Chinese" restaurants, and real Asian people to run them, it too will probably solve the urban "wild dog" problem."
There are fewer wild dogs here and more Chinese restaurants. A coincidence? You decide.

To bed at 10 PM and to sleep immediately.