Bucharest, Romania

I arrived early in the morning to Bucarest after a long night train from Varna, Bulgaria. Because I was meeting a friend we decided it would be easiest to meet at a hotel. Well, after getting directions from several people about where the hotel was I got on a metro and headed toward “where it was” I asked taxi drivers and policemen where the street was and the hotel, none of them sounded very sure with their answers and I ended up across town walking in circles trying to find this hotel that no one knew about. I saw a lady on a street corner, she looked like she spoke English I held a picture of the address up to her and asked her where it was. She reconfirmed “hotel” yes I said, then she said something like “pokey poke?” I didn’t understand so I asked “what?” she replied …”sex?” this is when I realized I made a terrible mistake and apparently I had asked a prostitute for directions to a hotel, good work Steven, I quickly scurried away from her and continued roaming the city until I finally decided to call the hotel and get better directions from them, turns out it is a fairly new hotel, hence why taxi drivers and policemen dont know about it.

The hotel was very nice on the inside, I was a little worried when I first got there because there was no real  street in front of the hotel, only mud and a few rocks.  I immediately took a shower and nap and of course washed my clothes in the shower. Speaking of which, they do not use shower curtains in some of these places, water just gets all over the bathroom floor, its pretty silly.

After my much needed nap I headed down the street to see the mall and a few other things in walking distance from my hotel, I was very impressed with the mall, it was about 4 stories with a blowing alley, a movie theater, and all sorts of stores.

I wandered down the street further until I ran into a what looked like, war monument. It had two guards at the front standing near a flame.

Walking back to my hotel I was very hungry and of course wanted to try something the locals were eating and well I didnt speak any Romanian, and the only thing I could pronounce was “hamburger”, it was pretty good, not quite as good as the ones in Bulgaria thou. Across the street from my hotel was a market where I bought a lemon. I just wanted a lemon.

Me and my lemon

The next day we met up with our couch surfers and ate some traditional Romanian food, which was a combination of beef, pork and lamb, and of course french fries, it was amazing! After talking with our new friends for a while they directed us to the bus and ushered us on. I kept asking, “hey what do we do about bus tickets?” he said, ah its Romania and he said hurry get on. Turns out, at the stop we were supposed to get off at, a ticket lady boarded and went directly to us. LAME. I of course fought her for as long as I could and was able to get the ticket reduced from 100 to 50, which after I did some math wasn’t too bad. But still it sucks. So just know that you cant buy tickets on the bus nor at the bus stops, they are spread out who knows where in little shacks. LAME. After we got off we walked around the capital city a bit irked by the poor bus system, but it was great seeing the old buildings and the parks and fountains, the city was really quite nice to explore. We also went to “one of the largest buildings in the world” It was the parliament building of Romania. It was big, but im not sure if it really is in the top 3.

(Arch similar to the one in France)

Parliament

That night our couch surfers took us out on the town where we got to try some of the local brew and food, very good food. In the early afternoon we headed to the train station to hop aboard a train to Brasov, Romania.