Good food - bad taxi's

Having a pretty good time so far, the city doesn't have too much to do during the day.  The malls are not as impressive as Vancouver's and there isn't a lot close by to visit.  Ive seem some pretty amazing buildings in my walks and taxi rides though so I do have a sense that I have seen a good deal of what is around. 

The best thing about Bucharest is probably the food.  The staple food of Romania is meat.  Meat and cheese.  Lots of it.  Their favourite is pork, pork in large amounts.  Like you can order a whole pig leg.  They also have a lot of gelatinous pork meat things which I'm not eating.  They look like head cheese, and since I don't want to eat pure fat I keep skipping that.  Another food item they really seem to like is pickles.  The pickles here are so awesome and they also pickle other items as well.  The veggie they seem most fond of is pickled cabbage which I only liked at one place where it was cabbage, vinegar and dill.  The other traditional side is polenta.  They make it less like corn bread and more like gruel.  It's ok, it doesn't have a taste really.

So I have had some bad luck with taxi's in Bucharest.  Somehow I am the only one getting all the bad ones, or I'm just good at complaining.  Coming back from Athens, one of my travel partners accepted a taxi ride for us from a totally non-legit guy just hanging around.  Then we go to get into the cab and its like somewhere in the parking garage and its just a yellow car that he put a decal on.  Thankfully we knew he was taking us the right direction and wasn't going to murder us.  Most of my other cab experiences have been "K+K Hotel, mersi" or "Sema Park" and the guy waving me away or saying no.  That or I get in, its like 34 out and the guy rolls up all the windows and tries to boil me to death.  Other options include smoking while I am in the cab, and calling everyone they know and having a rant for 20 mins.  I seriously can't even imagine having a rant while driving someone or even having that many people to call.  Its really weird.  Maybe its because the cabs are so cheap so they don't give a shit.  It costs about 3 or 4 dollars Canadian to get from my hotel to work (10-12 Lei).  I try to walk through town if I can because I have seen some interesting stuff.  They seem very fond of graffiti in Bucharest and Greece, and there are lots of stray dogs in both places.  They also seem to hate these stray dogs.  I saw one suring one of my walks and he wagged his tail at me and we totally had a moment.  I was like "You are a good dog, I can totally tell" and he was like "Save me from this oppression" or "Woof".  Anyways I guess I shouldn't take any of them home, I don't have enough room for all the dogs I have found.