Bucharest Romania, let's try this again

My first year as a mother was much more consuming then I had thought it would be.  Instead of a creative relief, blogging always felt like another nagging item on my list of things to do that seemed to never get crossed off. 

So here I am sitting in my tiny apartment in Romania with a 19 month old daughter, looking for a proper way to pass time.  Jason is working on Ghost Rider 2 and we're along for the ride.  I think it's important in the film industry to keep the family together as much as possible.  Harlow needs to at least see her father's face before she falls asleep at night.  Besides I don't think I could be away from my husband's jokes for four months, no one makes me laugh like him. 

Above are a couple pictures of the city, I didn't take them because I didn't want to be that guy with my camera.  Pretty sure no one here is a tourist, everyone seems to know what they are doing and where they are going but me.  The first picture above is what we saw when we drove into Bucharest it's called the Arch of Triumph the driver explained it's history but I wasn't paying attention because Harlow was cracking me in the back of the head with a book, but apparently it's supposed to be similar to the Arch in France.

This is my first time in Europe, and things really are so different here.  The city is old, I'm talking really old where everything looks like it's falling apart.  So immediately I thought uh oh this place is rough and scary. At home when a city is falling apart it usually means you're in the ghetto. But after a day out and about I realized that's not the case at all.    

Bucharest, Romania is around 551 years old with some serious wrinkles from wars and earthquakes to prove it.  Most of Europe refers to Bucharest as "Little Paris of the East"  (Rachel you would love it here.)  I find myself constantly thinking of France when I hear people speak the language which is mostly latin based so spanish/Italian and tons French words.  But really I think of France because all people eat here is bread and cheese.  And no one I mean NO ONE is overweight, seriously everyone is super skinny and I've been on the look out, especially after grocery shopping yesterday, talk about slim pickings.  Nothing was healthy, bread, cheese, tomatoes and weird canned or dehydrated stuff.  Wow do I sound like an uncultured American or what??

Yesterday I tried to find a mall with Harlow strapped to my back, of course the first thing I go searching for is a place to shop because let's be honest buying things makes me feel good and consuming fills the void, what?   So after trying to translate directions on google, yeah I still can't figure out how to change the language on there, I'm sure its very easy but it's not working out for me.  Anyway I figured it couldn't be that hard to find, (this coming from someone who uses her iphone to find the post office right down the street in Burbank) cut to 5 hours later the mall that was supposedly 10 minutes from our apartment was still no where to be found.  This place is HUGE and everything looks the same and none of the streets make sense, there are backs alleys that lead to no where and cars parked all along the sidewalks and people everywhere.  Cute little Romanians, women in their hip trench coats and high heeled boots and hot euro men in their slick little leather jackets smoking it up on every street corner.

My feet are killing me, I haven't adjusted to the time yet, but I think I'm going to like this place.

Four more months to go...


PS  I'm going to have to type these posts fast with my crazy toddler, she demands my attention 24/7 so if you're sensitive to spelling and grammar mistakes I apologize ahead of time.