The week that was... in the fridge of Europe. We arrived shortly after a massive cold snap hit most of Europe. Fortunately it was a few days after the metre of snow that had buried Bucharest. Our week started with nighttime lows of minus 17 degrees and right up to a positively tropical 10 degrees on Saturday. The cycle of freeze/melt/repeat appears to have stuck on the 'Melt' stage and it was a huge relief to go out today for a long walk up the boulevards to the Palace of Parliament (AKA: the Peoples' House). I was able to look up and enjoy the surrounds instead of staring at my feet and avoiding any impromptu iceskating. Mind you... there are a lot of dog owners in Bucharest who have a laissez faire approach to picking up dog poop... so the recently defrosted brown stuff had me looking at my feet again. But enough 's**ts and giggles'. It's been a great 10 days in Bucharest and as always we've learned so much history - in particular that of the 20th century. Being on the other side of the world in 1989 and in my case head down with final high school exams... I was aware the Wall came down that year. Very fuzzy on the details. Knew it was in Berlin. Certainly neither of us knew anything about Christmas in 1989 and the revolution that saw many Romanians killed (including the dictator they brought down, Ceaucescu). In fact, even now, over 25 years later, Christmas is still a time of mourning for many families that lost loved ones in the crazy days after the coup d'tat. As we know from the wonderful movie 'The History Boys', history is just "one f**king thing after another" (and that's not me swearing - it's in the movie!) And as we sit cosily in our Air BnB apartment, history is again being made (or trying to be) here in Romania. Over the last four nights there have been massive protests/rallies about 3 kms up the road in Piata Victoriei/Victoria Square. (Or so we've read in the news... we're tucked up in the central heating every night revelling in the cosiness and cooking dinner.) Anywhere between 50,000 and 120,000 per night have been protesting against an emergency decree passed by the PM in the dead of last Monday evening. He has, in short, decided to decriminalise crime. In so far as if you are corrupt and take bribes, fiddle the books etc, it only counts if it's over €44,000 a pop. As one commenter has said, if you take a euro (or a million euros) to expedite something when you're in public office - we know you're corrupt... we're just haggling over the price. Anyway, there are a lot of people up in arms and the rest of the EU is not overly impressed either as the last 10 years has seen Romania moving slowly in reverse down the corruption lane. We're not sure what will happen over the next few days, but they are interesting times. (Woo Hoo! as of Sunday morning the government and the PM have officially woken up to themselves and have said they will repeal the decree... Romanians are very happy... but are going to continue with the rallies until it has actually happened) As of Sunday evening - it has apparently been repealed... citizens still not convinced. Aside from history happening around us it's been a great 10 days and we've been tootling about eating, drinking, taking in culture, architecture, fine art and the sights and sites of Bucharest in general. On Monday we visited Caru cu Bere (literally Beer Cart/Beer Wagon) a stunning beer hall restaurant in the Old Town, just over the river. It's somewhere you're supposed to go for a look, even if you don't eat. But at 26 lei (€6/A$9) per person for a set menu 3 course lunch (that's served until 1800 hrs/6 pm)... why ever wouldn't we eat! Had the funniest waiter whom we immediately christened Mr Grumpy. Apparently after 3 days in town we should be fluent in Romanian. Bless. Anyway, he eventually explained the menu and we ordered up and noshed on. It was probably about 6 pm when we rolled ourselves out into the cold. And we mean cold. It was 'only' minus 2 degrees, but it felt a lot colder as humidity was 98% and there were flurries of fresh snow. We headed up the main drag (Calea Victoriei) and found our touristic target - Pasajul Macca-Vilacrosse. The chief architect of Bucharest and his bride (the inn-owner's daughter) were given the inn that originally stood on the site for their wedding in 1843. By the end of the 19th century the inn was demolished and the fork like, two-tined, yellow glass passages were built and named after the architect - Vilacrosse and Macca (his brother in law). The original Bucharest stock exchange was there and it was also filled with jewellery stores in the 1950s. Now it is but a chilly shadow of its glory days and full of shisha cafes. It is probably a bit more lively in summer when the risk of freezing to death is lower. When we returned home we spent the evening booking our trains for the rest of the Romanian adventure. There was one awkward leg where the journey was 7 hours and we either had to leave at 5 am... or at 4 pm to get a direct train. Neither option appealed so we checking flying... which ended up costing only €10 more between us, and taking 40 minutes. That was that sorted! On the subject of travel planning, house-sitters that we are we are very used to having an apartment or house to call our own. So much so and for reasons of longevity and budget (we are here six weeks), we have actually turned into Air BnB aficionados. Prior to this trip we'd only used it twice before (and of course done a bit of managing in Langkawi). 90% of our accommodation here is actually going to be in AirBNB properties. Certainly helps that Qantas now dishes out frequent flyer points if we book via their site. Our current little flat is very cosy indeed and it's great to have a sofa to lounge on and a kitchen. In fact everything was going swimmingly until Monday night when a downstairs neighbour was banging on the door and determined that something in our bathroom was flooding her apartment. Already in our jim-jams and reading peacefully we demonstrated that the bathroom was completely not at fault. She returned with more bangings and a plumber 15 minutes later. Nope. Still no evidence that we could be flooding her apartment. Come 8.30 am on Tuesday, the owner's agent was banging on the door with neighbour and plumber in tow. Suffice it to say it was demolish the bathroom time. So we left them to it and went out for breakfast (having negotiated a one day refund from the owner for the sheer inconvenience of not having water. Or a loo. Or a bloody sleep-in. We'd had so much fun with Mr Grumpy at the restaurant the previous evening, we headed back to Caru cu Bere and had baguette, cream cheese, smoked salmon, onion, olives etc for breakfast. He actually launched himself at James when he walked in and shook his hand... a sweeter waiter you could not hope to meet. Even when we asked for a couple of eggs to come with our order. Weird. Must have been the moon. We returned to the apartment with trepidation about 1 pm to find two huge holes in the bathroom, a mass of broken tile and concrete and the plumber (who looked just like Manuel out of Fawlty Towers), covered in dust.  'Big' and 'Problem' were words used a lot. The pipes running through the building linking apartment after apartment down through the building were essentially rusty swiss cheese... hence all the water landing in the woman's apartment below us. Fortunately we were off out to enjoy the sunshine and finally partake of our free walking tour of Old Town, Bucharest. As our regular readers know, we are huge fans of free walking tours. We even bigger fans when 50 people turn up - takes the pressure off how much you feel you need to tip at the end of the tour. We have been on free tours when only 4 people attend. Don't do that anymore. Anyway - today was a 50 people day. Even if everyone only gave the guide €1... thats €50. And a monthly salary can be around €300. The tour itself was great fun and we were of course snug as bugs - having prepped well for our time here in the fridge of Europe (fur coat, fur hat, sheepskin boots etc). At least half the participants were turning blue after the 2 hour walk. Our guide waxed lyrical about Vlad Tepes (AKA: Vlad the Impaler), nasty S.O.B. who got the Romanians out from under Turkish rule back in the day. This guy's activities made the Spanish Inquisition shenanigans look like tickling. He explained how Vlad's family crest was the dragon... and the Romanian word for dragon is also the word for devil 'drac' - So Vlad of the Dragons became Vlad of the Devil.. and thus the legend of Count Dracula and Bram Stoker's novel came about. Whilst our guide was probably being born in 1989 when the revolution occurred he seemed up on his history and proudly stated several times "we killed him" with regard to Ceaucescu and his wife. We also were hugely impressed with his English skills (darn these multi-lingual Europeans). It was lovely to wander home through the old town and settle in for an evening of watching the plumber destroy the bathroom. It seems he spent the day being hugely busy and putting new flexible pipes down the wall... but it was still a tip. We actually thought we'd be ending up in a hotel for the night - but 'lo and behold, by 9.30 pm, we had a functioning 'loo, hot and cold water etc. Albeit with dust and dirt and 2 massive holes in the bathroom wall. Small mercies. Wednesday saw the departure of the water service again (and early... so no showers again), but that was OK as research on Tuesday evening had led to the discovery of FREE WEDNESDAY. Ah the joys of a bargain. We were planning to visit the Art Collections Museum and the National Gallery of Romania anyway, and research showed that the first Wednesday of every month is free entry. What we knew about Romanian art could actually have been written on the back of a stamp. With a crayon. But we are experts now - and like it a lot. If we'd been stickering all our faves on the walk around the Art Collections... we would have run out of stickers. It's an unusual gallery. Instead of being arranged by artist or period, it's a three winged Palace with many rooms and each is dedicated to the name of the person who donated their collection. So owners don't see their prized collections dispersed/sold/amalgamated into a general collection. Items included paintings, furniture, jewellery, sculpture, oriental carpets, Japanese netsukes - the works. So as we walked around we would see work by an artist we liked... then in another room you'd see more by him or her. Brilliant. The National Gallery was also grand and we only had enough time and energy to take in the European collection. Now realistically, the galleries aren't expensive. For the two we visited, that would have been €10/40 lei between us. BUT. This is Bucharest. We went to the Cercul Militar National (essentially another palace) for lunch. Now in Bucharest "palace" means nothing to do with royalty and everything to do with grandeur, opulence and wealth; so 'fit for a king'. In fact most of the palaces were governmental - the Postal Palace. The Banking Palace. The Police Palace. And in the case of our lunch venue, the Military palace. Incredible. Our 2 course lunch with a litre of wine set us back 62 lei... so well subsidised by the 40 lei saving at the galleries. We continued our day with a walk home down Calea Victoriei, through the old town, via a delicious cake shop we we splurged less than a euro on a cake for our evening dessert. Now during our research into art galleries (god bless Tripadvisor) we tripped over the fact that it was possible, by appointment with 2 days notice and with official ID, to have a one hour, private tour of the old and new palaces of the National Bank of Romania, including an overview of the currency and a visit to the gold room. Hmmmm... sounds expensive. But no. FREE!!! (I know, I know... based on rave reviews like this, you'll all be packing your baggages for Bucharest). Our official appointment notification came through Wednesday evening, so Thursday morning was scheduled for lazing about and running taps without the presence or noise of a plumber. Then we tootled across the river and met our guide Ruxandra for our snazzy tour. And forgot the camera. Fortunately there are some photos available online so you can enjoy the interior of the palaces too. Stunning would be the best word to describe the old palace in particular. Back in the day (prior to those pesky communists ruining everything for 50 odd years), Romania knew how to build a palace. One of the architects even worked on the Opera Garnier in Paris - and that is the ultimately is "wow" factor. So we enjoyed our walk around and now have expanded our knowledge of the world just a little bit more - for instance the original coinage most popular for use in Romania, before it had its own, was a 'Leeuvendaalder' or lion-thaler. (Thalers were coins circulating throughout Europe. One of the largest and most popular was a high value silver coin minted in the Netherlands from 1575 which featured a lion.) By the time the lion-thaler was discontinued in the mid 18th century, the Romanian people had come to identify the lion (or 'leu' in Romanian) with money. Today the currency is still the Leu (1 leu or in multiples 2 lei, 10 lei etc). Of course the word 'dollar' has evolved from the daalder or thaler as well (and thus the mighty greenback and the feisty leu have a great deal of history in common). Utterly drained by all this history and disappointed there weren't any free samples in the gold room (did you know a 1 kg bar of gold is literally just a bit smaller than a 100 gram bar of Lindt chocolate?), we went to lunch late at Hanu Berarilor - our local just 2 minutes from the apartment. Too yummy. Too much wine. Took a nap and continued watching the entire series of Jason Bourne movies (and most importantly, avoided large political demonstrations). Friday we chilled out and had a rest. Saturday we had an absolute scorcher of a day (it got up to 10 degrees). Water was literally pouring off the buildings as the thaw saw a lot of the snow and ice melting before our very eyes. We stopped for a snack at a pizza joint that had the best pizza we've had since Venice in 2013 then walked from Unirii Square all the way down Ceaucescu's grand boulevards to the Palace of Parliament (AKA: the House of the People). It's the second largest administrative building in the world (next to the Pentagon), it costs over US$6 million a year for lighting and heating, it sinks 6 mm a year, it wasn't finished until after Ceaucescu was shot in 1989 so he missed out on making a grand address to his people from the balcony. His goal was to rival (and exceed) the Champs Elysees with his wondrous boulevards and he demolished 20% of old Bucharest to get the space for his dream. The rooms that have been decorated are apparently the height of luxury - but a great many were never finished properly and less than half the rooms are in use. And yes, before you ask, Ceaucescu was short. But boy, that dictator knew how to overcompensate. Sunday followed Saturday as is usually the case and before we knew it, it was packing day. Again. But on a brighter note, Sunday evening was our final cultural engagement in Bucharest. Back down the road to the National Opera house (our second home) for the ballet "Le Corsair". Essentially Pirates of the Caribbean - olden days style and in tutus and tights. Boy Pirate meets local girl after shipwreck, love, kidnap, slave trade, freedom, drink spiking, kidnap/recapture, betrayal, rescue, freedom again and sailing into the sunset. Brilliant! Stunning costuming and a staggeringly beautiful and polished performance. Offically our second ballet ever - and what's not to like at A$15/€10 for two people for an evening out. We had a great view from up in the gods and were central to the stage. Though the next one we book - we might splurge on slightly better seats... a bit of luxury never killed anyone.

And to finish with a joke from our walking tour guide. Romanians are a happy people. Why? Because they will never see the end of the world. And why's that you might ask. Because they're 50 years behind the rest of the world. And on that note we leave you. Tomorrow we head to our next stop - Brasov!