Summary of the past two months. Pt III

Hi Everyone,

Hope you had a good Easter Break. Bet you ate far too much chocolate and
drunk far too much beer/wine!

Well, everyone is gearing up here for Easter this weekend. Everyday this
week as you walk through the city in the evening, you can hear singing and
chanting from the numerous churches. Every church is full with people
standing outside. Apparently during Holy Week leading up to Easter Sunday,
each evening there is a religious service to mark what happened on that day
in Jesus' life. Surprisingly Friday is not a special day here. Everything
leads up to ressurection Sunday and then Monday is a public holiday.

Talking of which, Monday May 1st is also a public holiday here.
Unfortunately I don't get the day off because I am having to travel to
Timisoara (in the north of the country) to be ready for meetings on Tuesday
morning. Timisoara is 9 hours on the train!!! I am then travelling to Iasi,
which is across the other side of the country for meetings on
Thursday/Friday, returning to Bucharest on Saturday. This is all part of
looking at how they will move their border controls from the West of the
country to the East when they get accession to the EU.

Yesterday (Tues 18th) I had a meeting with the Vice President of the Customs

Authority. A very smooth and suave man who understands English but does not
like to speak it. So I spoke to him in English and he replied in Romanian. I

hope he understood more than I did!

The weather continues to make me feel at home. Yesterday was beautiful with
clear skies and warm sunshine (22C at 7pm). I had my dinner in an open air
restaurant overlooking a lake in a park. Of course when I say "open air" I
mean surrounded by 100 Romanians of whom 99 are smoking continuously (the
other one is only smoking occasionally). All food comes ready smoked,
whatever you ask for! Then today I woke up to pouring rain, quite chilly and

now there is a thunderstorm going on. Hope the Easter weekend is dry and
sunny.

By the way Bucharest is not troubled by the flooding at all. Parts of the
country are under water - and in some places they have purposely flooded
land to relieve the pressure on the Danube. But we are fine here, although
if this thunderstorm keeps up that might change!

It is time to go home. Look after yourselves and I'll be in touch again
soon.

Andrew