We survived the longest train ride we have ever taken before, which was 14 hours long! We were in a 6-bed couchette room for the train ride. The ride across Hungary and Romania was fascinating and different, including being woken up at midnight by two sets of police when we crossed the border, each examining the compartment and stamping our passports. We also saw much of the countryside, and evidence of the past military history of Romania, including some of its current hardware:
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| James and Erin were not the only train passengers that day. |
Two of the people in our room were actually from Romania, so we spent a great deal of the train ride discussing differences in culture (both of them spoke English very well). The male we met, George, was interested in coming to the USA at some point to visit New York and Las Vegas, but it would require him to get a Visa and he didn't want to apply for the Visa until he was in a better place in his life (because he was afraid he would be denied). The female we met, Emma, had a very interesting career, she translated Japanese for Romanians and ended up traveling a lot for her job. Both Emma and George explained to us that Bucharest may not be the most interesting place to visit, and that that we should be very aware of gypsies because they may try to steal from us. Apparently, some of the gypsy scams are very well thought out and can include multiple people in the scam. When we arrived at the train station, we thanked them for their advice, exchanged e-mail addresses, and parted ways.
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| Emma and George, our Romanian train companions. |
We immediately headed to the train station because we had to book our departure out of Romania. The female ticket agent was a bit brusque, to say the least. But, she did help us book our next ticket – which was to Sofia, Bulgaria. To our dismay, we had to take out Romanian money in order to pay for the tickets. We have been hesitant to use our ATM card for additional money, unless absolutely necessary because we get charged a conversion fee withdrawing money. But, in this particular case, we had no choice – so we withdrew the money, paid the few, and left.
After we had booked our trip to Sofia, we needed to find the hotel. James booked a hotel that was supposed to be very close to the train station (the whole reason he booked it). When we walked outside the train station, we didn't see any sign of the hotel. We started walking one direction, towards another hotel. Along the way, a man told us we shouldn't walk down that particular street because there were gypsies down there. Because we had just recently been warned of gypsies, we stopped for a moment. The man asked us where we were going (in English of course), so we told him. He explained to us that the hotel was quite far from where we were at the time and that we should take one of the student taxi's instead of trying to walk. He explained to us that the taxi's were quite inexpensive because of the exchange rate, saying that they would cost only about 600 Lei – which is the currency here in Romania. We were caught off guard and somewhat skeptical. James wisely said he had to go the bathroom and headed for the hotel in front of us. We didn't realize it at the time, but we were being scammed, big time! The currency is different here, and 600 Lei would be about 200 US dollars. Once we entered the nearby hotel, we asked where our hotel was, and they gave us better directions, indicating that it was definitely within walking distance. We started walking toward our hotel, still a bit lost. Eventually, we found our hotel and checked in. So far, we were a bit discouraged about our visit to Romania. We both were still shocked that we had already been scammed, and moreso, by someone who “seemed” to be so nice and trying to help us find our way.
Our hotel room was very hot when we arrived, and we could not figure out how to cool it down. We ended up opening the window. The hotel did not have wireless internet, but it did have an ethernet connection, so James tried to log on while Erin washed some clothes in the sink and took a shower. Erin really wasn't feeling so well at this point, just feeling a bit exhausted from all of the train and city traveling. She tried to relax for a bit while James caught up on the internet.
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| The Hello Hotel says hello! |
Once Erin was feeling more awake, we decided to explore the city a bit. We headed down Victoria Street to see some of the main tourist attractions here in Bucharest, Romania. Our friend Emma, from the train plotted a short itinerary for us, so we followed it exactly.
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| Some, but definitely not all, of the buildings are a bit worn down. |
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| Central University Library seen from Calea Victoriei. |
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| The monument in Revolution Square - commonly referred to as potato on a stick. |
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| Fergie is surprisingly popular in Bucharest - this is one of many advertisements we saw. |
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| Standing in front of the Palace of Parliament, the second largest building in the world! |
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| A royal playground in Bucharest near the Palace of Parliament. |
Once we had reached the end of Victoria street, we discovered a mall – the Uniqa Mall. We also discovered a Carrefour grocery store – which was one of the largest grocery stores we have seen so far in Europe.
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| The Uniqua Mall, home of Carrefour - and many, many, many other shops. |
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| James made a friend at the Carrefour grocery store. |
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| We also found some American-themed candy at the Carrefour. |
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| While Bucharest is not known for vampires, Transylvania - another city in Romania is. |
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Our day was complete after we walked back to the hotel, stopping briefly for some take-away dinner of shaved chicken, before settling in for a well-earned night of sleep at the Hello! Hotel. (trust us - every time you see the hotel name, there is an exclamation point)
