To get to Bucharest we needed to pass through Moldova and we booked a 2nd class train to make our journey. The train to Moldova from Odessa isn’t in the actual train station and luckily I had started to do more research on each destination and found out that it was behind the station instead. We lucked out and got the only seats in second class with a table and set up shop. The car filled up but by the third stop there was no one left except for ourselves, an older American guy (who was unfortunately acting exactly how people stereotype Americans… he expected that everyone should speak English to him and when they didn’t respond to his questions did over-elaborated eye rolls and sighs…) and one other older guy in the back… Once night graced us, we realized that the lights turned off any time we stopped (which happened pretty frequently and for extended amounts of time). Our American friend fell asleep and the older (I think he was Ukrainian or Moldavan) kept walking up the hallway and standing diagonally across from us and would just stare and close-mouthed smile at me… For LONG periods of time… It was really awkward and he kept just pacing in the darkness, stopping periodically to do the stare-thing. Evelyn tried to block him, take pictures, etc but nothing really stopped it. We entertained ourselves with random photo ops and laughing at the awkward situations we kept finding ourselves in and how for some reason I can not find a train that is a little bit enjoyable. I felt kind of bad at the end because the guy left wearing a Disney princess backpack so I don’t think he meant to be so creepy but regardless we left the train and tried to find how we were meant to get to the bus station.
An example of how we entertained ourselves….
Another goodie… haha
The lady at the train station information booth was a breath of fresh air after our attempts in Lvov (mind you in Odessa we figured out that it is easiest to just type into my iTranslate what I wanted before getting to the station so that I could just show my phone) She told us which station we needed to leave from (Moldova has 3 different bus stations at different locations in the city for international departures = confusing) so we made our way to the station and after realizing the tram wasn’t coming fast enough we grabbed a taxi and got to the station as the bus was boarding (note to travellers: online times are not necessarily accurate) half an hour earlier than the website said it was meant to be leaving. We ran in to buy tickets and a guy that had been outside followed us in and then started talking to the teller for us until they both told us to just go sit on the bus and he gave us a wrinkled receipt and threw our bags in the back compartment. It felt weird but there didn’t seem to be enough time to really second guess it and we were on the bus on our way to Bucharest! We ended up just paying for our tickets kinda secretly to one of the drivers and made our way for the border. The Romanian border bathroom stop was one of the more disgusting things I have ever had to experience…. you could smell the years of accumulated stale urine from the bus and then walked into it full on and a hole in the ground! Yippee!!! Love that in the middle of the night after already travelling since 5 pm…. We got into Bucharest and to our dismay realized we were not in the city centre and had no way of knowing how to get to our hostel from there and so settled with knowingly getting ripped off by a cab driver and getting to our hostel. We were greeted by a very sleepy but lovely guy at our hostel and we made our way to bed immediately. I can never sleep all day so I got up after a few hours and went to check out the town…
I am just as confused as you are…
Romania doesn’t have the best reputation for safety and scammers but I soon found out that wasn’t the case… The only thing I had to deal with was a little girl latching onto my arm for about three blocks trying to get me to give her money but otherwise I felt safe the whole time I meandered around. HOWEVER, what you hear about Romanian drivers is true… it is SO loud and everyone is an angry driver and parking wherever they see fit…I don’t think I could ever feel comfortable driving there (and I have driven in my fair share of different countries) I was surprised to see how established and metropolitan it was… and got back to meet Valentin, the owner of the hostel, professing his love of cheese (to which I also have an affinity for… ) and he offered to bring Evelyn and I to the local cheese stand across the way to introduce us to Romanian cheeses. I was in LOVE. I absolutely adore cheese and fresh produce and being vegetarian in Eastern Europe and having a language barrier I haven’t been able to really experience any of the local goods as much as I would’ve liked to because of those reasons. We got to taste the cheeses before buying them (Evelyn got to try the meats as well) and I was giddy with my purchases and went to grab some fresh produce from one of the produce guys. Everything was so fresh and he made sure to show me that he was choosing each vegetable and fruit of the best quality for me (he cracked a pomegranate by my ear, got me to smell my tomatoes, etc) and then after I paid and was leaving shoved some mushrooms into my bag as a gift! I actually don’t eat mushrooms ever (I am vegetarian largely because I don’t like the texture so I usually avoid meaty-textured vegetables) but felt like I had to at least try them raw since they were a present… (wasn’t horrible diced up really small and in a salad!) All of the guys who worked at the hostel turned out to be awesome as well and they told us about a local bar down the road (instead of doing the typical Old Town bar scene) that was in the basement of an old castle. We got to the bar and walked down the stairs to see that it really was a basement of an old ruin castle with two separate rooms – one had a ping pong table with a bar and the other was holding a jazz tribute night with another fully equipped bar. We drank, we danced, we laughed. We decided to quickly see what else was on the offer for the night and ran into one of the guys at the hostel who brought us to another bar which was up in a parkade and that played a Cat Empire song (my absolute favourite band ever) and then we found ourselves back at our beloved castle… It started to snow and it literally looked like sparkles falling down all around us and was just a magical way to end a magical night.
Ping pong in the basement of a castle..
The jazz/party room
The next day I set out to go to the Herastrau Park (the biggest park in Bucharest) and ended up being out walking in a beautiful freshly snow-covered park for hours and getting lost trying to find all the main monuments.
Romanian round-about
A beautiful statue
Magic moments in the snow
Frozen over lakes and snowy walkways
Nothing beats a beautiful clock
The Romanians love their outdoor social games – ping pong and chess? Why not?
That night was a Christmas sweater party at another wicked venue in a massive warehouse type room. So obviously before heading to anything Christmas themed we felt it necessary to hit up the Christmas market. Evelyn finally found her hat and I found yet another cheese and dough creation to adore and some equally delicious hot wine concoction with hot whisky to add to it. We were trying to find something inexpensive to make sweaters with but decided not to once we saw our new friends’ attire. The Romanian definition of a sweater party is quite a lot more tame than what we have back in Canada but nonetheless it was awesome to be in a fresh environment (mind you in all of these venues the air wasn’t actually fresh because everyone smokes inside… my clothes STILL smell, but it was worth it…)
A cut out of a sweater contest
The next morning we were heading to Constanta to go for a swim in the Black Sea. Our roommate and new friend Kechen joined us for the adventure. We all woke up kind of late and literally got to the train platform with 30 seconds to spare. We accidentally sat in first class so our tickets were way more expensive than we thought they would be but we were on our way! The views were gorgeous and we arrived a couple hours later and found a local bus heading in the beach’s direction. On the bus we asked a couple which stop to get off at which turned into a lovely and fun conversation ending with a lot of laughter and farewells. We made our way down to the beach and Evelyn and I both started to seriously question whether we could go through with it or not. Before even taking off any of our clothes, we could feel that the thermometer was not lying… it was indeed -6 degrees Celsius… Fml… why do I come up with these ideas?! There was no turning back now… as we started to get changed we accumulated a couple bystanders who obviously wanted pictures of these Canadian girls wearing santa hats running into freezing water and luckily Kechen was the sane one who offered her photography skills…. A quick swig of vodka and a look of pure terror in both of our faces we ran in until we realized there was no real drop… There was no dunking our heads in this time around… I literally couldn’t feel anything as we ran back out and awkwardly fumbled around to get dressed again before making our way to a restaurant to warm up and eat.
A swig of vodka will fix everything, right?
Contemplating if we really have the guts to follow through with this…
Alright, we are in.. OMG
We had a lovely lunch exchanging views and the differences in visa accessibility between Canadians and the Chinese. Kechen has to apply for a visa for every country she wants to visit! I realized how lucky Canadians really are with our ability to travel almost anywhere and with very few countries that we need a visa to enter. We made our way back to the train station and had purchased our less expensive, second class tickets and laughed so hard when we saw that it was the same train conductors as before. We were having a great time drinking wine and laughing (obviously) lots when one of our conductor friends came by and asked (to which the guy in our quad translated for us) if we wanted to go up to first class again… Let’s think about that… OBVIOUSLY! We got to nap comfortably on our way back to Bucharest and laid low that night, involving me attempting to make nachos and watch as many Christmas movies as possible because we were venturing to Bulgaria the next day via bus… (I kid you not.. I had ANOTHER awkward travel day… Apparently me and Eastern Europe travel to not fair well together … ) It eventually got better… but Bulgaria, here we come!
Jumping for joy after an epic adventure and ready for the next one!
The Life of Tash 