Larry spent 56 days in Romania during the months of Jan-Mar 2001. This was not a vacation, nor a working vacation, it was work, pure and simple. A routine of hotel-plant-restaurant-hotel day after day, seemingly never ending. The high point, besides the satisfaction of a job well done, was the camaraderie of the multi national crew working on the project, and the friendliness and kindness that the Romanian engineers displayed to their Russian, German and American colleagues.

The low point came when Larry was bitten by a dog.

Romania's dog problem is a legacy of Nicolae Ceauscescu, Romania's infamous Communist dictator who was executed in 1989. In the late 1970's, Ceauscescu cleared large tracts in the center of Bucharest to make way for his palace. Homeowners who were displaced and moved into apartments, were forced to abandon their pet dogs. Romanians are dog lovers, and fed the strays whenever possible, and the feral population exploded to where it is now estimated to be 300,000 in Bucharest alone, and growing by 15 percent a year. The dog packs are not vicious, but are a smelly, dirty, noisy nuisance. However, it is estimated that 23,000 Romanians - and one American - are bitten per year .

The mayor of Bucharest recently announced a crackdown on this problem. All strays would be rounded up and destroyed. Immediately, dog-lover Brigette Bardot jetted into Bucharest to hug a dog and protest Mayor's Basescu's edict. A compromise was reached. The mayor's dog catchers will round up and delouse the strays. The Bardot foundation will donate 150,000 USD to sterilize the strays and have set up an office in Bucharest to oversee the operation. The clean, neutered dogs will then be released to live out natural lives.

Overlooked in this brouhaha are the several thousand homeless street children, many of whom sleep in the city's sewers.

The dog problem in Galati is not as immense as that in Bucharest, but packs of these feral dogs are common. A large gang of dogs live on the grounds of the plant, and are fed by the workers. Food left over from lunch is brought out and fed to the dogs. There was one lunch of tough, rubbery liver, 90% of which ended up in dog tummies.

This picture shows one of the American engineers, guarding his sandwich from a hungry little dog.


Larry was walking between the lunch room and the plant when he was bitten. Several dogs were lying in wait and mistook him for one of their feeders and became a little excited. Larry immediately went to the plant infirmary where the wound was cleaned and he was given a tetanus injection. There is no worry abut rabies. He was assured that there has not been a case of rabies in Galati for over 5 years.



One young bitch, fondly named "Lady" by the American engineers, had given birth to a litter of pups just before Larry arrived on site, and they were fat, energetic little dogs when he left, nearly outstripping their mother.
When his friends in Pittsburgh heard about Lady and her pups, they offered to pack some doggie biscuits in Larry's luggage, which Larry declined, saying: " I really don't want to get involved with those dogs."