Romania

It's day three in Romania. The flight here was long and kind of painful. 5 hours at the Prag airport was not so much fun at all. But we made it in the end. We spent the first 2 nights in Bucarest and a very lovely hotel with a very comfortable bed. My roommate Rina and I are getting along very well. We're having a lot of fun.


Bucarest is an interesting city. The little we got to see of it. There is quite a large contrast there. At times it was quite overwhelming. This picture is the view from our fancy 4 star hotel. Yesterday we took a tour of the parliamentary palace. It's the 2nd largest building in the world, after the Pentagon. Ceaucescu had begun building it, almost bankrupting the country, enslaving his poor peasants to do the work. It's this grossly extravagant building. I felt very uncomfortable actually at the waste of materials at an incredible cost. Communism took it's toll on the city. Beautiful architectural buildings are still in terrible disrepair. As money gets poured in to the city and things begin to be renovated it will become a very beautiful city.

Today we moved on to Brasov. It is in the Carpathian mountains. It is much cooler here than it was in Bucarest. The countryside is beautiful. Though I missed a lot of it on the bus ride here because I slept through a lot of it. This town we're in now is very charming. I'm looking forward to exploring it more tomorrow. It's an old Saxon time. It looks like it could be in Germany. There's a church in the middle of the town square. Here again though, as charming as it is, buildings are in a state of disrepair here too.

We had our first concert today. It was a little stressful earlier in the day with rehearsal not going as planned, orchestra not there on time, space not set up... organization not very organized. And I was so tired. I think all the work I've been doing in the last couple of months is maybe starting to catch up with me. The concert was great though. It was difficult to sing since the acoustics in the hall were terrible. The sound got immediately swallowed up by all the carpet. But the audience was so very sweet. At the end of the show the applauded us off the stage and continued. There was one little beautiful Baboushka who's 98 years old who cried and hugged the soloists and as many choir members as she could, me twice. Steven, the tenor soloist, gave her his flowers. There were a bunch of tears. She didn't want too leave. It was so wonderfully sweet and adorable. Very magical.