In the Carpathian Garden. Party within you

 

Waking up in the morning, I was greeted by the sleep-deprived Scott. It turned out that while I was lost in deep sleep, there was a party happening under our window and a family dispute right outside our door, both keeping Scott awake all night. So, we started our day by asking to cancel our remaining four nights and get our money back so we could find a more suitable hotel — one where neighbors don't start hammering each other's eyes at four in the morning. The receptionist seemed a bit puzzled and claimed that we were in the quietest rooms of the house where not even half a chord could be heard. That explained the bowl of earplugs at the reception. We weren't satisfied with the idea that listening to bass all night qualifies as a peaceful sleep, and the receptionist reluctantly got the manager. A man in sweatpants appeared, listened to our complaints, and allowed us to check out.

We packed our stuff, booked a room at the Novotel just 850 meters away, and walked over there. We left our bags in storage and did a walk near the parliament building. The Romanian Parliament building is one of the heaviest structures in the world (over 4 million tons) and the second largest administrative building globally.

In the afternoon, we took a taxi to a market located in a local version of Lasnamäe. Next to the market, there was a square filled with fantastic food stalls. While Scott queued up for mici (local skinless sausages), I headed to a lángos stall (fried bread topped either with sour cream and cheese or, say, Nutella and bananas). It turned out lángos were sold out, so I then went to a fish stand. Shortly after, Scott joined me, sans mici, as they ran out right before his turn. Well, fish it was.

We did another round in a local shopping mall and Starbucks, then started our one-hour walk back downtown. The main street was lined with architectural relics from the eighties — large, grey, pompous buildings whose glory days were firmly stuck in that decade. The only plus compared to Lasnamäe was that every building's ground floor was crammed with various shops — groceries, bakeries, currency exchanges, erotic shops, phone stores. But as soon as you stepped through the alleyways between the buildings, you'd find two to three-story buildings from the '30s and '50s with beautiful but deteriorating facades. The closer we got to the city center, the more completely abandoned and derelict haunted mansions there were.

In the city, we ate fresh pasta, which was superb, followed by cakes at a local Peruvian's place. By eight o'clock, we were back at the hotel, ready for tomorrow's trip to the Black Sea.