Foiled by (post-soviet) Democracy

Check the news! Quick! Is there anything about Romanian protests? No? Damn! Well, if the US media wasn't just there to keep people watching you might be seeing something about Romanian citizens demonstrating outside of the People's House, the home of Romania's legislature. They were protesting the government's proposed cuts of 25% to the pensions and salaries of government benficiaries. There were close to 7,000 protestors surrounding the giant square building, which is gigantic and is as long as 8 city blocks on each side. These people were from syndicats representing people from police officers to some college students who were carrying dummies on the end of poles with pilitical officials faces taped over the face. These dummies were later burned and maimed by angry protestors. The interesting part was seeing later on TV the police who told us that even they felt that the government people were thiefs, doing their job and fighting the crazy crowd. Oops, I forgot to mention that these crowds stopped us from even looking inside the building, which is what we wanted to do in going there. I even at one point was given a paper hat from the polive syndicate from a drunk guy who said he hated Americans because we are arrogant, and the only president he liked was Reagan. I do understand that he helped bring down communism, but he was still a horrible president who probably never learned what his cabinet meant when they told him "Ronny, we dont have enough money, we are in a defecit." We left that place after seeing the European version of what looked like a Ku Klux Klan meeting that found a bad dry cleaner who accidentaly made their robes red and burned off their mask part. We headed for the museum of Romanian history, only to find it closed, on Tuesday... a sign of things to come. We went across the street to the bank, built in the late 1800s. I was closed, but the nice security gaurd let us look around, very nice architecture. Then we went down a little street and saw a beautiful church and had lunch in an 1879 beer hall. It was very nice and I had an interesting stew that was very traditional. So we left and walked another hour or so and saw a few more churches, all of which were closed on Tuesday, making the very long walk even more frustrating because it had no rewards.we made it back to the hotel in time to rest up and get ready for a concert. So, we all took cold showers and tried to reverse the oncoming dehydration. It is 35+ degrees Celcius with quite a high humidity content. We headed back to the national theater to listen to an acoustic jazz concert in the little room in the basement. While the musicians were very handsome, and they played some interesting and popular songs, it really wasn't worth a standing ovation. It was quite far from the performance my brother and I heard in New York in March. That concert was just superb. It was over, and so, apparently, was the downpour. The street around back was gutter to gutter water, 3 inches deep. Thusly, the resteraunt sat us inside, which was unbearably hot. We resituated ourselves outside before we ordered, and enjoyed a lovely Romanian dinner which all had polenta and some thick sauces. The day was over, and we made it back safe, well, as safe as one can be after seeing a drunk man try to wail over a taxi cab for three foreigners.