We got to the Budapest train
station on the night of Tuesday the 29th and hopped on our train
forty minutes before departure, which thankfully gave us some reprieve from the
blistering cold weather that Budapest was now experiencing; a complete 180 from
the summer weather that we had encountered when we arrived in Budapest ten days
earlier. Within five minutes of being on the train a conductor came by and
sternly told me to get my feet off the seat across from me before briskly
walking off. We were literally the only two people in the entire train car at
that point and the seat across from me was so worn and disgusting that it
looked like it had been dragged through a public restroom, but I should have
known better, being semi-accustomed to the Eastern European culture which
strongly looks down upon the placement of feet on anything people may sit on.
The second train conductor came by
to ask for our tickets a little bit later and after figuring out that we wanted
to go to Sighisoara in Transylvania, moved us to the correct train car,
informing us that the car we were in would’ve stopped at the Hungarian border.
Thank god! While relocating Margot and me, the train conductor noticed a pack
of wild Australian backpackers roaming through a train car who didn’t look like
they knew what they were doing either so he stopped to inform them that they
were in the wrong train car as well. One fella from the group was named Mitch
and started talking to Margot and me as we were getting walked down the
platform by the conductor, informing us that he was from California and was
traveling with six Australians to Transylvania for Halloween.
Mitch invited us to join them in
their cabin and we were promptly introduced to Paul, whom they all called Barry
for some reason, Elliot, Riha, Steph, Matt, and Tia. About ten minutes into the
train ride, Mitch stood up and declared that we were going to the Bar Car,
igniting the Australians into a Bar Car chant. We were taught this game called
Bunnies (I’ll teach you when we get back) and drank the bar out of Riesling. In
the middle of the night we started discussing ditching our Halloween plans and
instead joining them for Halloween, but didn’t come to a conclusion before
everyone passed out for the night.
So when we woke up at 5 AM in
Deva, Margot and I made a split second decision to indeed ditch our shitty
Halloween plans and join forces with the Australians. However, the second that
we got off that train we set off a chain of events that would lead to possibly
the worst day of my life. After stumbling through the puddle-infested, dark,
filthy streets of Deva overrun with stray dogs and crumbling buildings, I
realized that I was in fucking Romania. I have a similar moment every time I
enter a new country: when I arrived in London and the first day walked past
Westminster Abbey and Big Ben to the River Thames, when I arrived in Brussels
and the first night walked into the middle of the Grand Square, when I arrived
in Budapest and the first night saw the lights of the city shining over the
Danube. However, all of these times left me with a huge smile and an electric
surge through my heart. When we arrived in Deva, I was staring at my shuffling
feet on the ground and prayed that maybe the rain that left these bacteria-infested
puddles would come back, bringing with it a death-inflicting lightning strike
to my heart.
We ended up waiting out the
opening of a McDonalds in a gas station and at 8 AM, with our bellies full of
Romanian McMuffins and French Fries, entered the train station to discover that
the train to Sibiu, our destination, wasn’t leaving until 2 PM. We met a really
nice local girl who spoke perfect English and helped us figure out which train
we could now catch to Sibiu. She was coming back to visit her family since she works
eleven months out of the year on a boat that travels the Rhine and Danube. She
was awesome and came up with these crazy stories that we had to figure out by
asking her only yes or no questions, which helped pass the time. We finally
caught our train to Sibiu, but not before witnessing a pack of wild horses trot
right through the Deva train station, attracting zero attention from all the
locals, which I took as an implication that this event was common and maybe
even expected.
During our ride to Sibiu, we were
forced to endure a two hour stop in the middle of nowhere for absolutely no
apparent reason. But as we continued our ride from there, I noticed an
astonishing amount of construction and road work along the rail lines, which I
found hopeful for the industrial development of what I saw as an impoverished
and run-down Romania. There was also a shitload of expansive fields full of
sheep, and Margot and I spotted the Romanian sheep herders huddled unnoticed underneath
their heavy coats of sheep wool. Once we
got into Sibiu, we were introduced to the disorganization of the group,
discovering that nobody really knew where the fuck we were going except Riha,
who had an elementary idea of where the hostel was located. After wandering
aimlessly for an hour, we finally asked some locals for help and eventually
figured out where the hostel was. When
we arrived the incredibly generous and nice Dutch owner introduced himself and
gave us a tour of the place. He gave us a huge ten bed room that fit the nine
of us easily and pointed us toward a cheap local restaurant.
We immediately went into town to
alleviate the starving sensation that we were experiencing and enjoyed a
delicious Romanian meal. I enjoyed a palinka with Elliot and Matt, but since my
week in a half of Hungarian travel had left me acclimated to the taste, when I
related my enjoyment with the taste, they looked at me with both disgust and
concern. After getting some food, we all went back to the hostel and everybody
passed out from the exhaustion of the morning’s events. Everyone except Margot
eventually got up and we all huddled together on Matt and Riha’s bunk bed to
watch The Campaign (the movie) together. After the movie I went out to grab
some food with Mitch, Barry, Matt, and Tia. Once we had diverted from the
directions and wandered aimlessly through the cold Romanian streets, we
eventually made it to the Little Town Square, which was particularly beautiful
under the night’s lights. Here we grabbed some dinner and a drink before
heading back home and resuming to our sleeping state.
On Halloween, we got up and set
out to the bus station to embark on another train adventure to Hunedoara, which
involved a two hour train ride back to Deva, followed by another train, which I
can only assume was part of the turtle-speed train system, up to Hunedoara. In
addition to the train moving at a snail’s pace, Margot and I were forced to
stand for an hour in the one hundred seat train car in order to make room for
the four other people on the train because we hadn’t purchased reservation
tickets to go with our Eurail passes.
Once we got into Hunedoara, we
walked through the streets attracting more attention than a sheep herder not
wearing a sheep skin. Traveling with seven other people is a completely
different experience than traveling with just the two of us. You stick out … a
lot! This is probably why one of the local kids came up to Steph and after
unsuccessfully trying to scam her into giving him money, grabbed her iPad and
started running. I had asked for directions to the hotel from a local, and
while I led us to the hotel, half of the group decided to set up base on the
side of the road for some reason and wait for us to come back and get them once
we had found the hotel. So while half of us were checking into the hotel,
Elliot, Barry, and Steph were just chilling on the side of the road being
harassed by the kid that ended up snagging Steph’s iPad. Elliot immediately
dropped his bag and took after the little shit, who we estimated to be about
twelve years old. Well, his little legs just couldn’t move fast enough and when
he felt Elliot closing in on him, he threw down the iPad in an attempt to
escape, but Elliot didn’t fucking care and ran right past the iPad in hot
pursuit of the kid. But when he finally caught the twelve year old kid, he
didn’t really know what to do except yell at him, in a tongue that the kid
understood none of, that what he had just done, “was very very bad!” So Steph ended
up getting her iPad back and everything was fine, but Margot and I were
becoming increasingly aware of the woes of travelling in a big group,
especially a big group of loud Australians and that made the possibility of
blending in unattainable.
When we got to the hotel, which
was costing us an alarming eleven dollars a night, we discovered that it was an
awesome place. We had an amazing view over the entire city, a huge gazebo and
pool, plus our two rooms were connected by a wooden balcony. It was totally
worth the dismal amount of money we had to spend on it. After checking out the rooms
we went downstairs, where we proceeded to eat, drink, and render a table cloth
completely useless over the span of three hours. We also learned how to play this
game called Pim, Pam, Pohm which is in dire need of an introduction to American
society.
After we finished our dinner and
drinking, which cost less than ten dollars, we all got dressed up to go to the
Hunedoara Castle where there was supposedly a Halloween party going on.
We
showed up to this awesome moat-contained castle, and Mitch began bullshitting
our way into the party. Once we got in however, the burly security guards
realized we weren’t part of the tour group that had rented the castle out for
the party and began the long process of kicking us out. Nobody at the castle
knew English very well, so arguing with the security guards proved to be quite
difficult, that is until Margot discovered that one of them spoke Spanish. She
chatted with the security guard for a while until all of a sudden, he was best
friends with all of us. We still had to leave the party, but the security
guards ended up taking pictures with us in front of the castle and even called
us a taxi to take us to a local bar.
After a lot of absinthe and a fair
share of vodka, I was behind the bar discussing Romanian and U.S. politics with
the bar tender as he kept handing me free drinks. Everyone eventually made it
back to the hotel and we all woke up with pounding headaches.
On the morning of November 1st,
we split off from our friends, wishing them all good luck with their travels. Margot
and I took a bus to the train station in Deva, making it three times in the
past three days that we had been there, and got on the train to Bucharest. If
you had a map of Romania laid out in front of you at this point you would be
wondering, ‘why did Margot and Everett go from Budapest, which is north of
Romania, to Sibiu, then back up to Hunedoara, and then the following day go to
Bucharest, which is in southern Romania?’ I do not fucking know!
The train journey from Hunedoara
was quoted on the internet to have been a six hour journey, however we must
have accidentally gotten on the turtle-speed train system again and it ended up
taking us ten hours to get into Bucharest. At about the four hour mark, this
weird guy across the aisle from us, who tucked his shirt in under his
underpants and spoke not a single word of English, gave us some candy. We were
so hungry at this point that Margot decided to indulge in some of the candy,
which sparked a desire in this guy to start giving us a bunch of really weird
shit. After the candy, he gave us Romanian gum, some Euro change, and two
broken bracelets from France. Trying not to be rude we showed a rudimentary
interest in the gifts, but it just added fuel to the flame. After a while he
jumped up, waving his finger in the air like he had just thought of some great
idea. He pulled down one of his duffel bags, but after digging around in it
came out empty handed. Undeterred, he traded the duffel bag out for the other
one, from which, after digging around for a while, he successfully pulled a
filthy old tennis ball and triumphantly plopped down on the table in front of
us. After nudging it around the table for lack of any better idea of what to do
with it, he pulled the bag down again and started digging inside. While we were
holding in our laughter, his hand eventually emerged with a cheap plastic
container of cologne, which he proceeded to use to drench Margot’s cleavage. Thankfully,
he got off the train at hour seven, leaving Margot and I with our faces
squished up against the window, where we would exclaim with anticipation, “that
MUST be Bucharest,” whenever we saw a patch of lights approaching in the
distance. But it was never that Romanian capital that we were so eagerly wanted
to see, instead it was factories, small cities, Sighisoara. Yup, we ran into
Sighisoara, our original destination, at around hour seven; which meant that
had we neglected to get off the train at 5 AM in Deva two days prior, we could
have slept until eleven or noon on that train, plus our train ride into
Bucharest would’ve only been three hours on the 1st instead of
ten.
As we sat there with steam erupting
from our heads, we finally arrived in Bucharest at midnight. Having not eaten
anything except the Romanian guy’s chocolate all day, we were starving and
needed some sort of dinner before venturing out into the sketchiest of all
sketchy cities. So we went to the only restaurant that was open: a KFC, bringing
the number of times I’ve eaten at an American establishment during our trip to
five, a number which I’m ashamed of. However, while we were eating our
delicious Romanian chicken, the manager decided that it was closing time and
casually flipped the lights off on us. In the pitch dark we scrambled to grab
our stuff and get out the door, accidentally leaving Margot’s purse behind in
the chaos. Luckily she noticed this as we were walking away and successfully
pleaded with the manager to let her back in to grab her purse.
As we walked through the train
station to get to the taxi stand, we were approached by this overly friendly
guy that wanted to give us a ride to our hotel in his personal, non-metered car
for only 30 lei. After telling him we had no money, he brought us to an ATM
machine, where coincidentally neither Margot’s nor my credit cards were
working. At this point, he told us that he was going to go wait right over
there by the door and to come get him when we were ready to go. As we went
through all of our cards trying to find one that would make this ATM give us
some money, we came to the obvious and mutual agreement that we were not going
to go anywhere with this fucking guy. Instead we told him thanks but no thanks
on our way out to the taxi stand.
We walked up the first taxi and
asked him how far to this location, to which he responded, “City Hotel?
Twenty-five lei.” However, after we survived his insane ride to the hotel in
which all rules of the ride were ignored and probably purposefully broken, he
turned to us and pointed at me while saying, “One person, twenty-five lei. Two
person, fifty lei.” Dumbfounded, I rolled my eyes at him muttering, “I don’t
even fucking care, I just want to go to bed,” as I handed him his precious
twenty-five more lei.
We
checked into our hotel, went upstairs, and as it was already two AM at this
point, we immediately went to bed. However, even this proved to be too much to
ask for, as a pack of stray dogs began barking ferociously right outside of our
window. At this point, the mixture of the dogs and the immense itching
sensation that Margot was experiencing prompted her to sit up and close the
window. Afterwards she headed to the bathroom and discovered four huge swollen
bites on her hands and face. Having seen the results of bed bug bites on my
friend Royal, whom I met during my stay in Oslo, I came to the conclusion that
Margot had just contracted bed bugs. Let me preempt the rest of this by letting
all of you who will come into contact with Margot when she gets home know that
my diagnosis was in fact wrong and Margot did not get bed bugs; she’s instead
carrying around some other unknown mysterious Romanian bug.
So we marched down to reception
and explained to the lady there, who had no clue what bed bugs even were, that
we wanted to be moved to a different room. She obliged and moved us a couple
floors to a room in which a giant water leak on the ceiling was dripping water
directly onto my bed. Scared to go to bed, we researched bed bugs and Skyped my
family until around five AM. At this point, our bed bug research had coerced us
into putting our entire luggage in the shower, isolate all our possibly
contaminated bed bug clothing, and sleep with the lights on.
To make matters
even worse, at seven AM, the crew that was remodeling the floor right above us
(hence the water leak) began to go to work. Although I have no physical
evidence to back this up, I’m pretty sure that they were using a jack hammer to
fix whatever problem they were experiencing up there, because the noise was so
deafening that Margot and I couldn’t even hear each other curse and cry about our
unfortunate luck.
After lying awake watching the
nasty yellow Bucharest water drip onto my bed and trying to recount which of
Dante’s seven layers of hell I was currently experiencing, we finally got
dressed and went downstairs. Our taxi ride to the airport doubled as a tour
through the impoverished streets of Bucharest, which was more than a little
depressing after seeing the relative prosperity that Romania’s neighboring
Eastern European countries were experiencing. To top off our stay in Romania,
the security line at the Bucharest airport was attempting to make its way
literally out the door of the building and our flight ended up being delayed an
hour in a half. Miraculously our plane finally left the ground and we were able
to kiss Romania goodbye for good.
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