My impression of Bucharest after admittedly a brief stay is that it is a recovering democracy. We have traveled to several former communist block countries since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1991. The first place was Prague 6 months after the fall when we saw a place bruised and battered - struggling to become a democracy. Last year we visited again and Prague and the Czech Republic are a thriving example of a new republic. We have visited many Eastern European capitals

Our trip to Bucharest was uneventful - just a long day of travel. We took a cab from the airport as it was after 7pm by the time we got through customs and retrieved our bags. It would be dark soon enough and the challenge of finding a hotel on a street with a strange name in an unfamiliar city could be difficult. As it was the cab dropped us about a half block from the hotel on a street that was all torn-up. A lot of Bucharest is in a state of repair - more so than new c