I spent the afternoon poking through art supply stores on a Harry-Potter-Diagon-Alley kind of street called Hanal cu Tei in Lipscan, everyone's favorite neighborhood.
In this neighborhood, run down buildings stand next to refurbished ones, shabby belle-epoch chic dominates the mood. The stores and cafes that are open are busy, street muscians draw a pretty good crowd. At an artisan-kind-of market you can buy honey and homemade soaps, hand-knitted socks and, from an old man wearing a tie and sweater vest, funny decorated gingerbread cookies.
Some of the streets are being re-cobble-stoned. I heard that a Spanish company won the bid to do the re-cobble-stoning. They came in and tore out all the old, real cobblestone, which they sold. Now they are repaving with cobblestones made of new cement. Romania. It's sad sometimes. That could be their tourism slogan.
Then on the way home, my taxi driver wanted to discuss whether God intervenes in the requests of humans, or is prayer a form of auto-suggestion. He believes in prayer because he feels the answers from God! Then he asked where I've traveled in Romania and he was super excited to hear that I'd recently come back from Lake Balae.
He has seen yeti there! Well, he hasn't seen him with his own eyes, but he took photos there, and when he looked at the photos later, yeti is in them! Well, not yeti, but bears with lights coming out of their eyes! He told me he has seen yeti twice--with his "photographic eyes"--and that I should look through my photos of Lake Balea very carefully.
I don't know about the Lake Balea photos, but I think I see yeti in the lower left of the photo I took at the cookie stand! That's creepy!