Live!
On Thursday, we had hoped to visit the local Penguin factory. We were out of luck since no one at the factory dared to take a decision whether we were allowed to visit or not. The owner was out of town and only returned on Thursday afternoon. Penguin, together with Polar and Johnny's Castle Whiskey are some of the more well known local brands of liquor, all produced by the same distillery in Beius. Our nights in Beius had been positively influenced by the use of these infamous drinks.
In stead we had dinner at a reasonable restaurant in town, the Principessa (some saying the only restaurant in town), and ate cow's stomach which, surprisingly, not everyone found very palatable. What was considered even worse, though, were the cheese, ehm, rolls that were served as desserts. Two of these things could stuff a cow, how could they expect us to eat these as dessert!?
Just before dinner, Art and I had gone live on the local radio station Sonyvest. Earlier in the week, we bumped into one of the station's DJs, a very nice girl called Ramona, who invited us over. When we did stop by on Thursday evening however, we were welcomed by Bogdan. A friendly guy, but no Ramona!
Bogdan asked us to come up with something of a playlist for his show. He was very much into classic rock and I tried a little bit to cater to that. Art, totally oblivious to it all, selected recent dance tracks and house music. I believe Bogdan wasn't all that disappointed by us leaving later on. By then, luckily, Ramona had stopped by, unfortunately only to say hi. During the show, Art and myself told of one of the games we played at the building site, naming a number of actors from the same movie, where others then had to guess the name of the movie. Only briefly explaining it, Bogdan interrupted quickly: 'Ah, we play that game for ages, it is called Mima!'
When we stopped by on Friday morning once more, he didn't invite us to go on air again. Probably being very reluctant of having to play the music we then would choose for the show.
After dinner at the Principessa, we went dancing in one of Beius' three (!) discos, the Nicholas.
Music maestro
The disco we went to after dinner, the Nicholas, was quite good. It was a cinema-turned-club, where many of the seats in the arena had been left, making for a very awkard set up that allowed almost everyone in the club to look at everyone else. Surprisingly, almost everyone was dressed very well. Considering Beius is a very, very small town, I found this remarkable. On the other hand, to the local youngsters, clubbing the night away in Nicholas might be the only way to escape from Beius a little.
The music was a strange combination of Romanian Europop, Turkish beats and mainstream house. Not all that bad and luckily not being played at a very high sound level. Meanwhile, Data was turned down by a former miss Beius, our Chinese Wing Chun champion Wong was scored by a blond dance-Goddess, Taas snogged Habitat's representative for Eastern Europe and Art came closer and closer to finally getting close with Amalia.
One of the carpenters also working on the house introduced Jimbo and myself to two girls dancing away the night. Both were quite young, but only the blond Goddess spoke some English. The other girl, some 6ft2 tall, could only be viewed from a distance, looking up. Jimbo and I briefly talked to the Goddess (just like the radio DJ she was called Ramona), but from the moment Wong joined the discussion, she only had eyes for the Chinese, totally ignoring us in the process, although at the end of the evening, they had only exchanged addresses.
Art, on the other hand, had a very successful evening. Although it all ended at Amalia's front door. When Art finally came home at 5:00am, he told me that she was still living with her parents, making it impossible for them to enter the house. In stead they did some of their stuff right in front of the main entrance to the house. Art, seeing the light once, Amalia a grand 5 times. When Art finally came home, the smile on his face almost fell off it.
Part of our group went home after Nicholas closed. Some, however, went to some private bar at an undisclosed location somewhere in Beius. Among them Taas and Kelly, Habitat's representative for Eastern Europe. What exactly happened is a mystery to most of us, although they definitely had a snog. Taas's first in over six years! Go Taas! Practice he needed, and on Saturday we pushed him into going out with our tour guide of the House of the People in Bucharest.