Roaming Romania

From Varna, we road on a super ghetto train up into romania. The bathroom consisted of a hole in a room that went straight down on the tracks. gross. and, we got to spend 2 hours sitting on the border in the crazy heat trying to figure out how to open the window of our cabin because there was a serious lack of oxygen. whatever, we were just so happy to be getting out of Bulgaria. Finally we arrived in Romania.

Bucharest, Romania: the capital. ghetto. desolate. poor. desperate. mean ex commies. and apparently have some odd need to put "xerox centers" on every street corner...


We managed to haul our crap from the train station into a supermarket to get dinner (aka whatever weird canned things they sell in romania) and then onto the metro and eventually to our hotel. Sadly, our hotel gave away our room as we naively thought things (i.e our train) would run on time and we would get to Romania by 3 when in reality, we slid in around 10 at night. Luckily, they had another room we could have that we quickly realized could probably double as the hotel's sauna. Laura and i spent the entire night waking up ever half hour to one of us yelling to the other some form of "this must be what hell feels like". We were nearing a low point.

Our day in Bucharest was spent trekking all over the city. We just wandered around and took in all the architecture from the former soviet country. On occasion, we got lost in which case we would wander in to a store or tourist agency and meekly approach whatever person we saw too ask them in our sweetest voice if they could maybe help us. This was usually followed by the person we asked rolling their eyes at us, schooing us away with their hand, and them looking down/returning to doing nothing because obviously if you just dont look at us we will disappear. cool.

so on a side note, i had been having this toothache since i ate all that turkish delight in istanbul. it had been getting progressively worse to the point where shooting pains pulsed through my entire head and i would randomly start bawling because it hurt so bad. laura we really concerned and i was running out of painkillers, so we decided to consulate the ever-dependable parents. now, you would think it would be fairly easy to make an international call, but no, it took us 3 hours to do it. we bought the wrong type of phone cards because no one could tell us what to get. everyone would tell us to go different places to make the call ("go to newstand", "stand at red post office", "no, you don't make international calls in romania")...basically it was terrible. finally, we were about to have a breakdown when laura decides that we are marching into the really nice Hilton hotel we found, pretending we are guests, and sweet talking the concierge into explaining to us what exactly we had to do. somehow, despite our rather frightening appearance and me with tears streaming down my face while my hand is clenched to my jaw, we managed to get through to the parents who helped me conclude that i needed to see a dentist ASAP because i needed a root canal. nevermind that we,of course, are in one of the most ghetto countries we'd been planning on going to. nevermind that bucharest was extremely scary, dirty and the idea of having some dude with a drill have his way with my tooth sounded only slightly worse than our sauna of a hotel room, i couldn't deal with the pain any longer so we started to try and research dentists. After many internet cafe trips and such, it seemed like our best bet was to take a train north to the small city of cluj where there were some german dentists and such.

so we packed up our bags, threw on clothes that were really disgusting from our previous travels, and hiked to the train station. at this point, we were dripping in sweat (we pretty much hadn't stopped sweating since bulgaria), our feet were black either from the sun or dirt (most likely dirt) and we pretty much just looked scary. but not to worry, people would still stare at us because we stick our like sore thumbs and laura would respond to the stares with her own glare that said "whats your problem? dont look at us and if you do, im going to wipe my sweat on you". so yah, we jumped on the train for the 8 hour ride north. On the train might have been our low point, as it was so hot we were just dripping with sweat until this romanian girl in the seat next to me looked really concerned, busted out a pack of baby wipes, and proceeded to wipe sweat off my back and told us to take as many wipes as we needed. i tried to graciously thank her while i fanned myself with a small, ripped up cardboard box of my painkillers for my tooth. it was bad, real bad.

but things got better. we arrived in cluj after having an interesting chat with a romanian girl on the train. You can feel the pull of two world in this country; one where people are excited to be a part of the eu and move forward with technology/economy/etc and then the pull to hold on to their simpler lives in the country and the foundation of their culture. you can tell people are really torn so it will interesting to see what happens to romania in the next few years. also, we forget how recently it was communist. that was such a huge part of people's lives not that long ago, it is still in recent memory for many. after asking the girl on the train about what things were like when romania was communist she replied with "i dont know if it was better or not. then, we had money but no choices...only 2 kinds of cigarettes. now we have many choices, and coke and pepsi and fanta. but no money. i just dont know"

romania has completely won us over. the northern part of the country is gorgeous and the people are so genuine, warm, and take you in as one of the family. once we arrived in cluj, we went about finding a dentist. we wandered to his office where i walked in, he put me in a chair that had a video screen about 8inches from my face blasting crazy eastern european music videos. i tried to explain to him over the noise what the problem is with my tooth while he is smiling crazily at me, using his drill as a microphone and singing along to the music. finally, he tellls me not to worry and starts drilling away. all i can do is hope it works out. my tooth is definitely feeling much better, and im going back to see him in a week. our time in cluj was well spent, especially because we got to do laundry and got to meet Laura's cousin who lives there! It was so nice to see a familiar face.

While in cluj, we found ourselves confronted with the same scenario several times when we would interact with a romanian. It consisted of the following:
Laura and I: smile. "Hi"
romanian: looks at us weirdly and starts to chuckle. turns to whatever romanian is closest to them. they look at eachother. both are then laughing.
Laura and I: politely laugh also. "why are you laughing at us"
romanians: "we were just wondering. what are you two doing here? WHY are you here"

basically, people think we are really weird. but they are very curious and extremely nice. we left cluj to come to this little town of brasov which is nestled in the hills. it is exactly how you would imagine romania...thatched rooves, cute buildings, etc. its a ski town in the winter and just a breath of fresh air for us. we are going to stay here for the week. there are lots of castles in the area, including Draculas castle! we are really excited to see all the stuff, drink some good wine, and just hang out in one place for more than a night.

sorry this was so long. hope everything is well at home. happy summer! we will write more about romania soon.