Buna ziua (boonuh zeewa) all,
We left the Bucharest airport and hopped into a predated and prebooked car only to find that it wouldn´t start. No problem as the driver just rounded up a few people and got a push start. I had opened my door and it was dragging a full garbage bag only to closed the door softly onto one of the pushers finger. Now that is gratitude. Oops.
Well we have been in Romania a couple of days now and every new city is a bit of a puzzle for us. It doesn´t matter how much we travel there always are tentative steps away from the hostel before we get confident. The first day I GPS marked the hostel and also carried a compass. The hostel had provided a photocopy of a map that was a copy of a copy of etc so that the street names could not be resolved any more which is not exactly useful.
Bucharest reminds us very much of a south american city. It has been quite hot and it is a mix of building. Ugly concrete structures surround tired, dirty but beautiful old churches and other buildings. It seems that this city had it´s glory days and was neglected and needs a lot of money spent on it. There is just so much dirt on most of the buildings and many are in disrepair.
It does have a redeeming feature. There are a remarkable number of pretty young women. Seems that centuries of invasions and immigration from all sides have added up well. Unfortunately the terror of the dictatorship is still in their memories 20 years on and a couple of american aid workers we met said that the romanian people had said that they would not smile again for many years. Maybe but there are signs already...
We have been busy planning our Russian and China travel in the evenings and we are making slow progress. Some tough decision like where will we spend our white christmas in Russia. Also have started planning our island hopping in Croatia which should start in the next month or so and the Romania travel over the next couple of weeks. The planning has been really time consuming but hopefully it will be worth it in the end.
It has been really hot the last few days and we have been walking around the city and visiting museums. On the first day we saw the second biggest building in the world after the pentagon, the peoples palace. Some nonsense in the name as it was clearly a dictators palace. No wonder they executed him and his wife. Probably the same excess that got the royalty booted out in the first place.
Today we decided to buy our tickets to Brasov for the train tomorrow. My first attempt at communication with a native speaking Romanian. Went well enough but I always feel awkward flicking through a language book when I need to find a word. Writing on a piece of paper helped with the numbers so it was pretty easy.
We decided to try out the public transport after buying the ticket. Not exactly easy as you first have to figure out where to buy tickets. We ha a stroke of luck as a kind english speaking Romanian helped us out and we ended up with day tickets for travel and got directions to the correct place to catch the tram we wanted. Lonely planet as usual had not been to the place or not done their research correctly and just got it wrong. We also got it wrong. First attempt on the metro which should have been a tram no 20 got us somewhere and then we went back in the same direction which got me so frustrated that we walked back to the train station and started again. Second attempt got the tram 20 just had to watch a few go by until we figured it out then we got out to a dodgy looking area and looked for out connecting bus. A bus dove by and splashed our legs from a puddle from last nights thunderstorm. Just our luck. Wasn´t any sign of it so we gave up and went back to the hostel for more info. Add very annoyed David at this point. Found that we had gone one stop too far on the tram 20. Bugger.
One gripe I have with city maps is that you usually get a street map, metro map and if you are lucky bus route map seperately. If only they were on the same map...it would be awfully cluttered. We didn´t have the latter so couldn´t recover.
After sitting down and having a good look at the maps we decided not to go to the mogasoaia palace and sit on the broken 5m statue of lenon that is against the outside of the back wall. We decided to go to Snagov. The island monastery that holds the head of vlad tepes, vlad drakul or vlad the impaler. Whatever you want to call him he was the inspiration for Dracula. He used to have his enemies carefully impaled through the anus up through the back to just under the skull so that they would die a slow and painful death for up the 48hrs. Nice guy.
I have to admit that it is really stressful traveling with back of the envelope directions on multiple modes of transport in a second world country. A bit of what could possibly go wrong or perhaps can it possibly go right. Well amazingly we got three out of three transport links. Metro, tram and then minibus (maxitaxi). Really cheap transport as well. 12 lei for both of us for a 35km trip in the minibus. 2.5 lei is 1 aud so less than 5 aus dollars!
We got it correct on the way out and got to Snagov then asked the driver about the monastery and a nice lady gave the driver directions. When we got dropped off it was just the junction of two roads and they pointed it the general direction so we started walking and met another couple walking in the other direction.
Hello. Hello back in an Australian accent. Turns out they had just been to the monastery so gave us plenty of info. A couple from Sydney and one was from Raymond Terrace. Father was in the RAAF. Small world. They told us that there was not a row boat but a power boat that took people across to the island and it cost 150Lei rather than the expected 6lei. Enterprising Romanians. We got there and found the guy and I lied saying that we didn´t have that much but had 20 euros instead. Was too much really but I wanted to finish the day with at least one victory after the morning failure.
We got to the island and found out that it would cost us 20euros for taking photos inside the monastery. No way will have to find some on the internet. Lovely paintings on the inside, the grave of Vlad and on the outside a giant painted egg. We didn´t stay long as we were anxious to get back to the road and catch the bus back to the free press square in the city before dark. Romus, the enterprising romanian, even gave us a ride to the main road in his old car for free.
While waiting at the road we saw a horse drawn cart go by with a large load of mouth watering watermelon then some wierd blue steam engine sounding home made diesel farm equipment with some boys riding on it. Interesting.
The minibus didn´t take long and was driven by a Romanian boy racer who got us back in no time but it was a frightening journey. All was going well on the tram until we found it terminating. We had missed our stop so back on in the opposite direction for most of the way to the hard to see metro link. We then caught the metro to town to quickly get some food and head back to the hostel. Got the food. All well then onto the metro circle line and hmmm don´t know this station. Confusing metro had two trains with different routes on the circle line. Plenty of cursing from me. Had had enough transport blunders for one day at that point. The wasted time meant that we would be walking back from the train station to the hostel in the dark. Not really pleased about that option but it went fine and we got back without any problem.
The hostel is full but really quiet. Not a good sign. Most are out at the pub. Expect to be woken at all hours tonight. At least we can get to the bathrooms. Last night the bathrooms were occupied continuously for hours. There just were too many people.
Now that we have a handle on the city and it´s transport system we are moving on. Tomorrow is another day and we are heading for the hills and Brashov at 942am.
Least it feels like we are travelling again!!!
Bye,
David and Vanessa
