Adventures don't happen in taxis

As the group of scrappy dogs began to lope towards us and I threw my baguette at them- or perhaps to them, the motivation behind that move wasn’t clear even at the time- before my friend and I turned and ran, I took (mental) pause to ask myself ‘how did I end up here?’

It began in Florence, where we were staying for a few months. We decided to book a trip and all too aware that our internet could cut out anytime, booked the first flights we saw- Cluj Napoca and Bucharest. At the airport in Pisa we met a classmate who asked us ‘why are you going there? Are there cool beaches?’ I responded that we weren’t going to the beach, but Bucharest has probably the largest population of stray dogs in Eastern Europe. She looked at us with skepticism, but we were unfazed- we knew that we make our own fun.

We wanted to go and see a castle outside Bucharest and being aware that adventures don’t happen from the back of a taxi, we decided to walk to the bus station in the suburbs and get a bus from there. We set off on our journey, past sex shops near our hotel with an inexplicably large number of bee costumes in the windows, and down increasingly deserted and run-down streets.

We arrived at the ‘bus station,’ showed the ticket lady the name of the castle, and were waved firmly in the direction of a large van which we boarded with trepidation. We showed the driver our trusty piece of paper and prepared to get up close and personal with the locals. We were left by the driver on the side of the road beside an unmarked dirt track and no discernible bus stop, where we were greeted by a group of shirtless, exuberant and fortunately incomprehensible teenage boys. We decided there was nothing for it but to go down the path into the forest.

Thankfully, we soon reached the castle, which was beautiful and tranquil, and overlooked a flawlessly smooth lake. When we had had enough serenity, we summoned our faith and waited for another van to appear and to our glee, one eventually did drop us back in the city. It was on our walk back to the hotel that my friend decided to take pictures of a pack of stray dogs sleeping under an abandoned car.

They woke and started to amble, then lope, towards us, at which point we fled- for no good reason as things transpired, they were not following us. Perhaps my ambiguous baguette plan worked. As we realized we weren’t being chased and stopped running to start laughing, I for one was glad I was there and not just on a cool beach somewhere.