Accountant Adventures: Social Observations

Look of Terror

I headed to the far North side of Bucharest to the Hereastrau park to look around. On the way I encountered an elderly woman who was obviously in need of help and was walking in the middle of the street. As cars would pass from each side she would turn towards them and cover her eyes. I remember when I was little and closing my eyes made things disappear. The cars were honking and swerving to avoid her. When I got to the park entrance the woman had also made her way down the street and was also entering the park. I watched as she walked up to every person she could find and seemed to ask for directions. Every person that she talked to seemed very polite and pointed in a direction that she was slowly wandering towards but kept asking every new person she saw. She tried to ask me two times and both times I informed her that I only spoke English and would be of no help.

I have noticed in Europe that there are a lot more old people wandering the streets going about their lives. My theory is that since everything old people in Europe need is within walking distance their children let them stay in their homes. It’s not like in America where you need a car to get anywhere. Without a car the old people can only hurt themselves and if they do they will be a much smaller burden on their children who won’t have to pay for years at an old folks home. Seems like a win-win situation.

The park was very large and undergoing heavy reconstruction and maintenance. During the course of the day I saw several hundred people raking leaves, planting flowers and replacing park equipment. Updating parks seems like a great way to spend those stimulus dollars. I think as part of the American stimulus package we should convert from the English measurement system to metric. Metric makes so much more sense and we could create new packaging, road signs and educate people all to stimulate the economy and move America forward.

Similarly to India there is an immense wild dog population in Bucharest. Some of the dogs seem to have ear tags which are presumably used to keep track of the dogs. If they would simply round up all of the female dogs, they wouldn’t have nearly as many wild dogs for long. If a wild dog gets someone’s house dog pregnant it’s the person’s problem who owns the dog to look after the puppies and without female dogs in the wild there would be no other way for the wild dogs to reproduce.

I went to this outdoor museum that has several hundred village homes from throughout Romania that have been brought to Bucharest to show the history of the different regions. The variety of the homes was very interesting along with back stories as to the climate in the regions and the reasons the homes were built the way they were. There was also a ferris wheel made out of wood and I walked up to it and gave it a little push and it moved. I looked around to see if there was a sign forbidding me from sitting on it and there was not. I pushed down hard with my hands and it seemed like it would hold me. I sat my camera on a bench and set the timer and then ran to jump on the ferris wheel in time. As I went to put my butt on the ferris wheel seat it let out a really loud creek and violently shot backwards. I lurched up in terror that I would break this ancient ferris wheel and be imprisoned in Romania. Luckily nothing broke and the police were not called to investigate.