Gura Humorului - day 3

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As is my habit, I rose before 8 and with no ill effects from the previous night I had my morning coffee/cocoa. During the previous night I filled the memory card of my video camera and sought to transfer the files to one of my thumb drives. After a number of failed attempts I discovered a direct transfer was not possible, I had to transfer them to R.’s hard drive and only then download them successfully. Thank God R. had a lot of room. I looked at some of the video and it seems I’ll be able to do something with it if I can sufficiently master my software back home.

I hitchhiked ("made an autostop") into town, even if it was a Sunday and I fully expected things to be pretty quiet. I walked around a bit and indeed found most of the shops closed. As I walked the rain started. I found a covered structure resembling a porch swing and sat on it, swinging back and forth. much to the amusement of the three small children sitting with their dad across the sidewalk from me. They started begging dad to make their swing go back and forth, too. Surprisingly. I saw a number of very small pieces of hail.

I waited out the rain in a local bar and then hitched back to my gazda's place. Amazingly, the same people who picked me up a few hours ago were the same ones that returned me. R. remembered that a friend of Daniela, our gazda, had a stall at the market in front of the monastery. We went up there and I eventually bought a traditional festive Bucovina shirt. The woman explained it was old (maybe 50 years) and when I inquired about a new one I was told they are monstrously more expensive, because of all the work that must go into it. The antiques are much cheaper.

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