Romanian trains are slow.. I mean really slow. We're probably going about 15 miles per hour right now, and have been for about 20 minutes.. not kidding. I'm currently on a 17 hour train to Vienna where I will then get a ticket to Salzburg! The train ride started off with nothing but a view of white, flat land and overcast skies.. but now we are going through some mountains!! *LOVE* It's incredibly beautiful with all the snow on the trees.. A view of white and brown. I'm soo happy I am getting to see some Romanian mountains, even though I did not get to go to Brasov or other areas with mountains.
Bucuresti was good! I spent 2.5 days here.. I came on a train with 2 guys I met through couchsurfing! One from Canada, Mabruk, and another from Germany, Khan. It was fun being on the train with friends:) A Romanian girl heard us speaking English, and ended up hanging out with us too! Her name was Diana (dee-on-a) and she lived in America for a bit! When you cross the Moldovan/Romanian border, it takes a lot of time, because they have to change the wheels! To explain; they lift the train up and literally remove the current wheels, and put on different ones! This is because the train track rails in the EU are a different size than the rails in Moldova. It was a long train.. and really hot! It was supposed to arrive at 6am.. well at 5am I woke up because I was soo cold and the train was turned off. I tried to just ignore it and go back to sleep so I wouldn't feel the cold anymore.. it ended up that the train was stopped for about 4 hours, because something needed fixed. Then after, I woke up around 8:30 worried that we missed the stop.. and it was hot as hell! We were dying! It's almost like because it was cold for soo long, they then pumped up the heat! It was pretty suffocating.
We arrived around 10:30 and got lunch with Diana, then said our goodbyes. I was headed to my host's place to drop my things off then I would head back into the city to meet up with Khan and Mabruk again. Khan and I walked all around. We went to the Parliament building, which was HUGE! And then wandered through Old Town a bit which was really cool. It's a part of the city where it's pretty much all walking on smaller streets through buildings with pretty architecture. There are a lot of cafes, restaurants, and pubs there as well as pretty buildings.
The next day my host got out of work early and his friend Vlad and him took me into the center. We got a Romanian form of mamaliga with cabbage wrapped around an array of pork and beef. It was delicious! Then we walked around for a few hours and went to the Bucharest Christmas Market! After, we headed back to his place because He had more couchsurfers coming!
They ended up being from America! Kim (California), Frances (South Carolina), and Robert (Chicago) are in the Peace Corps in Moldova and are on a 10 day holiday! We made their version of gluhwein; we warmed up some wine (added sugar, cinnamon, orange peel), and then headed out into the city for the night! We went to Kulturhaus, which is a multi-level pub! It was soo much fun!
What I've learned in/about Romania:
- It is bad luck to whistle in small areas (though I think this is just a taboo made up because people get annoyed with whistling).
- They like to make us wear slippers, as does the rest of Europe lol.
- There are a lot of stray dogs here :( though they are actually pretty lucky strays because everyone feeds them.
- More of them think the current=sick thing is stupid.
- They really don't like Moldova.
Aw Mann.. now I'm going through mountains that are all covered by clouds! Meanies!
<3 M
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