Hello, friends! Happy Father's Day to the awesome prepper daddios on this email list - I hope you have a great one and get to spend time with your favorite humans!

This week, I left Bulgaria and arrived in Romania. I like to use car services for trips like this. It's a wonderful way to see the off-the-beaten-path places a traveler normally wouldn't get to experience. The side trip I took was to Prohodna Cave, which means "the eyes of God." When I saw the photos online, I had no idea how absolutely flippin' MASSIVE this cave would be. I've included a photo with humans for scale.

It's been around so long that there are signs of neolithic human habitation in them. It was a truly humbling experience to go into this natural wonder. The "eyes" were caused by erosion and often "weep" when it's damp. It was quite muddy and slippery to hike down to the cave but my ankle held up, and I managed not to wipe out. 🤣 If you know me personally, you know what a miracle that is - I'm kind of clumsy.

When I arrived in Bucharest, I was pretty bummed. The apartment was not what I was expecting. It looked identical to the photos in the listing, but there are a lot of things that aren't overly convenient.

First of all, folks in Europe do not love air conditioning like folks in America. There's a mini-split in the living room but the bedroom is quite distant and felt like it was a thousand degrees. Fortunately ,the couch is extremely comfortable so I've set up camp in the blessedly cool living room. The stove is terrifying - you must turn on the gas and light it with a match, and it makes a small "boom" noise. Sandwiches it is, because did I mention I'm a little bit clumsy?

And finally, the building is an old Soviet Bloc-style building in a huge cluster of similar buildings. Hot water is at the whims of building management, and there is no schedule or rhyme or reason to when it's available. I've been fortunate in that it's been hot each time I've wanted to avail myself of the glorious, gigantic bathtub that was the main factor in me choosing this particular AirBnB.

Of course, part of my disgruntlement upon arrival is that I was hungry. I'm such a grumpus when I haven't eaten. I've managed to work around all the inconveniences and am perfectly fine now that I've settled in.

Now, let me tell you about Bucharest.

Oh my gosh it's one of the most beautiful cities I've ever visited! The architecture! The river with the charming little pedestrian bridges! The fountains! The food! It's GLORIOUS.

I took an Uber downtown, and the scene was totally different than my a-commie-dations in Little Russia. (Just kidding, it's not that bad but I was forced to use that pun once I thought of it.)

The architecture is so over-the-top and exuberant. There are so any details and sculptures included in the very fiber of the buildings. I visited Lipscani Street and could easily see the mixture of influences - hints of Paris, Rome, and Istanbul were all present. The buildings in that area felt like works of art that the builders put their hearts and souls into when creating them. It was all I could do not to stand there and gawk with my mouth wide open trying to take it all in.

I visited some shops, had an incredibly strong mojito to beat the heat, and stopped by a really neat museum called "Little Paris Museum." (That's the nickname of Bucharest from the late 1800s and early 1900s before it fell under Communist rule.)

There's a fascinating history here. You can find more photos on Instagram if you're interested.

I had some interesting conversations with a couple of locals who spoke fluent English. One of them said that people here feel that the war in Ukraine is basically over and that it's only in one tiny area of the country, near the border of Russia. They aren't overly fond of the leadership there, and he was stunned when I told him that we in America aren't allowed to voice negative opinions of Ukraine or Zelensky on social media. Another fellow told me, "We think that America is turning into a Communist country. And here, we know Communism." He gave it 20 years max before our leadership is completely taken over.

Obviously, all these are just opinions, and my Romanian friends are only seeing the information doled out to them by their local European media, but the insights were very interesting to me. When a person who is old enough to remember the fall of Communism says we are headed that way, I tend to believe him.