Snow!

Yesterday afternoon as I left the Holocaust Institute, it began snowing here in Bucharest.

Knowing that it was too cold to walk the entire way home as is my usual want, I trudged to the Universitate metro stop, but took a different route. Rather than walking straight up Calea Victoriei and turning onto Regina Elisabtea, I chose to navigate the cobbled alleys and side-streets of the Lipscani neighborhood. Afficianados of medieval architecture would generally find themselves disappointed by Bucharest, which has little to offer in the form of a concentrated "Old Town". The Lipscani neighborhood affords one charming exception to this rule. I started with the oldest section, walking past Hanul lui Manuc (Manuc's Inn) a hostelry situated along the original trade route through Bucharest. Currently closed for renovations, the Inn is at least two hundred years old, which makes it young compared to the structure immediately behind it, the citadel built by Vlad Tepes--aka the historical Dracula--in the fifteenth century. Not much remains of the structure today, and a good deal of imagination is needed to mortar the fragments together into the grand structure it once was. Winding may way from there, I walked down Str. Lipscani itself, which in the 1800s and early 1900s was known as one of Bucharest's premiere mercantile spots. Lipscani intersects with Calea Victoriei just past the former headquartes of the Romanian National Bank, built in 1885. And so it felt like I was walking through the centuries, snow-blanketed and quiet.

At home, though, we're reaping the benefits of 21st-century technology. We finally figured out how to port video from our laptop to the tv, so now we can watch our DVDs on a bigger screen. We also upgraded our cable to digital for a very low price, meaning we get over thirty additional channels--plenty of distractions to keep us occupied during snow days.--B