Moos in late December, not sure he's really allowed to eat this thing!

The economy is bustling in Bucharest, in forms large and small: EU money is flooding into the country since Romania joined the Union last year; the streets and markets are brimming with people running their daily errands; road crews work on projects all over the city.

These coins from Bulgaria, once ancient Thrace, remind me of those found in a collector's trove near Mangalia, on the Black Sea coast of Romania. The museum there has some of the hundreds of coins found nearby buried in a pot, placed in the ground in the 4th century AD.

Sabina, our vet, calls him "Mosu cocolosu," which rhymes nicely and means something like "old man in a cocoon."