Cav's Place

Bucharest and Iasi are participating in the “European Mobility Week“. Actually, parts of Iasi have been closed off for motorized traffic each weekend for years now, remember when she was showing me the areas, so it was easy for them to partcipate. In Bucharest I guess quite a bit of planning was in order, but in the end, after various other events that took place these days, they decided to also allow only bicycles and pedestrians in certain central areas of the city today, for the “World Carfree Day”.
The Minister of Environment supposedly didn’t drive at all this week, biked for short distances and used public transportation for the longer ones.

That said, I wanted to check out what was going to happen today, especially since I didn’t go anywhere this week so I had to go out anyway to stick to that “plan”.
Was wandering if I was going to get the timing right to watch the “bicycle march” passing somewhere. Checked the streets they were going to be on and that gave me what I thought to be a better idea.
They were going to pass on Kiseleff Boulevard early on, and Herastrau Park is also there. I’m not sure if I’ve been there only once or not at all, so I said I’ll leave earlier and take a stroll around the park before that time.
Getting there on foot would have probably taken at least two hours and I really didn’t feel like it, despite walking perhaps a similar distance once before, this spring. But the book fair I went to with Jen back then was also in the area, so the bus I found out I needed to take to get there would take me here as well.

With that in mind, I went on my merry way. Walked briskly for about 15 minutes to get to that bus stop, got in a bus, got pretty bored on the way despite that annoying old lady who thankfully didn’t pick me to annoy, got off a stop too soon because I basically had no idea where I should get off considering the closed off areas and walked the rest of the way.

Something had obviously just ended right at the park entrance, because some people were dismantling a stage and the ground was littlered with popped blue balloons, so I went on.
The initial plan was to just walk around a bit, heading left, towards Kiseleff, so I’ll go out that gate when I get to it… But since things never go as planned, at some point I saw a bridge and an interesting area ahead, so I took that path and then decided to go around the lake…
And I went around the lake clockwise, which is the wrong way if I meant to end up towards Kiseleff. And that’s one BIG lake. Plus that there’s a dead end somewhere, so after walking for close to one hour I had to take a railroad bridge accross the lake and then wonder where to go from there.
Luckly there are a couple of tall buildings there, one at the end of Kiseleff and one on Dorobanti, which was where I now needed to go as it was already quite late, so eventually I got to a place where I could see them and managed to find the same gate I went in through, after wandering around quite lost for about one hour.
(Needless to say, I didn’t see anything that might have happened on Kiseleff…)

At some point I was walking along the lake and heard somebody say, after having spoken on the phone, “Heh, her kid played on the computer and she didn’t know how to turn it off now”. At that, my mind went “Well, I didn’t turn mine off before leaving and didn’t want to either… Wonder if I turned the monitor off though… Better yet, I was making some tea… Did I actually make it or just left the water boiling and left? Hmm, how long have I been gone for? … Well, absolutely no point in worrying now… Been gone for an hour and a half, have no fucking clue where I am and even if I knew I’d be at least an hour away from home, so… I guess I’ll find out if I see a fire truck in front of the building when I’ll get there…”
I didn’t leave it on though, phew… Had that happen lots of times when I was still living there after Andra left, usually realized it after some two hours, after all the water evaporated and I smelled charred metal…
I keep saying I have basically no short-term memory. But that’s normal, people with excellent long term-memory usually have poor short-term memory and vice-versa.

Otherwise, I kept feeling a dagger through my heart whenever I saw a couple lost in their own little world, be it sitting on a bench or on the ground or walking… And there were plenty of them, obviously…
In a way it makes me really happy to see them. I’m talking about those I feel to be in their own little world of course, not the shallow ones, and I think I became quite good at telling them apart. It always makes me smile when I pass by them… But, at the same time, it really hurts…
Was actually wondering if everybody forgets how it is to love once they get past a certain age, because you usually only see teens and people in their 20s like that, plus the occasional elderly couple that’s just sitting there… But today I actually spotted a few couples in their 30s and 40s holding hands and hugging, and I think one or two even kissed while I was passing by them. That was sort of nice, there might still be hope for this world…

Thing is that initially I wanted to take the subway back, since there’s a subway station right at the park entrance and dad left me a subway card that expires next month with a single use left on it when I went to that book fair with Jen, so might as well use it… But I forgot all about it while rushing to cross the street.
I rushed because what they did was give pedestrians priority even around the closed off the area. Traffic lights for motorists are constantly blinking yellow and those for pedestrians are always green, which actually does more harm than good since it means motorists must actually care, which many don’t.
That means it’s a good idea to cross in a group around there and when I got to the street a bunch of others were also crossing, so I just took the opportunity to tag along and completely missed the subway station. Looked around from the other side and felt like smacking myself, but then decided to settle for the bus…

And of course I got off a stop too soon when coming back too, since I don’t know that area at all and I was dumb enough not to count the stops when going, but better one too soon than one too late…
But at least the ride back was mildly amusing, with two guys who were part of a group fighting pretty much all the way. Seemed friendly enough, despite the fact that at some point two others stepped in to calm them down a bit, saying they’d better not draw blood.
Oh, and while waiting in the bus stop I saw a guy get somewhat beaten up by his girfriend. They made sure there was some empty space around then and she seemed to be practicing some fighting moves on him, until she actually hit quite hard several times by the looks of it. He seemed amused up to that point, then a bit confused. Then, on the bus, they didn’t speak and she basically didn’t look at him at all, looking deep in thought. I noticed because they were right next to me all the way. Suppose one of those annoying “What have I done now?” “Nothing, leave me alone…” moments took place as soon as they got somewhere private…