Dear family and friends

 

we are touring Romania; monday we arrived in Bucharest and went to Chabad to celebrate Jewish New Year, it was in a huge Hall of new modern hotel Radisson; about 500 people, locals, a lot of Israelis who work and doing business here and a lot of children, Rabbi put us at his table  together with a President of the jewish community of Bucharest, we enjoyed very much warm, family atmosphere, service and delicious food,

 

we had an extensive city tour, Bucharest was called  Paris of the East between WWI and WWII and Balkan Moscow during 45 years of Communism, Chaushesku was the cruelest dictator among  the former socialist countries dictators, people were very poor but he build the Parlament of 1000 rooms, only our Pentagon building is bigger,he build copy of Paris famous Champs Elysees but wider and longer, during the bloody revolution of 1989 he was killed  with his wife  in 3 days by people, no trial,

 

i visited the house/ museum of Georgeo Enesku, great Romanian composer and violinist, Romanian Rapsody  his most famous work, we went to Royal Palace outside of Bucharest in the  mountains, so beautiful with magnificient sculptures, paintings, furnitures and carpets,

 

we drove North West through Transylvania, which is a disputed teritorry, used to be Hungary than was given to Romania, they still have hard feelings about each other,

 

Carpatian Mountains were already snow capped in some places, on the way we stopped at city Brasov and visited Dracula Castle, in all 4 countries  tour guides told us about problems with Gypsys which are 4 % of the population, some of them study, work live in a big multygenerational houses, but most of them do not want to work, do not send children to school, 90% are illiterate, a lot of crime, they live in a terrible dirty slams, nothing can be done,

 

if you look at my first email,s map of sept. 14 you see we made a circle of 4 countries from Budapest to Budapest, it so interesting to learn the history and present and i always read books about these places. now Ron is going home and iam taking a 2nd tour flying to Athens and going to Albania and countries of former Yugoslavia.

 

much love to all.

 

photos

1 in front of Chaushesku parlament

 

2  Chabad Synagogua in Bucharest  we went  on Tuesday

 

3  narrowest street in Europe , Brasov, Transylvania

 

4  Roman folk dances

 

5   Brasov old Synagogua

 

6 Carpatian Mountains

 

7 Dracula Castle