Cheapest beer in europe has been found! ...
Trip Start
Jun 01, 2002
1
13
20
Trip End
Aug 22, 2002
Costinesti,
Romania
Friday, July 5, 2002
I finally escaped the Translyvanian clutches of Sighisoara and Brasov to head to the Black Sea coast with Anna and Sharon, two English girlies from the hostel. Night trains are always an experience. Romanian night trains especially so. The powers that be take great joy in cramming their cabins full. We shared with a fmaily of four. Nothing like a bad nights sleep of sitting upright and dribbling on self and cabin curtain under the watchful gaze of a Romanian family.
We confused Costinesti with Constanta, a major tourist spot and port a few train stops north along the coast. We eventually realised we still had forty minutes of another train ride ahead of us and jumped the next train. This was our first and only Gypsy hassle of the trip. These four girls literally forced their way into the cabin and tried to banter our watches and bracelets from us. I was starting to really lose my temper (never a good thing after a night of little sleep) but luckily another passenger came to our/their rescue. They were booted off the train with relish by the guard but didn't seem too perturbed.
Costinesti is a small town that backs onto fields of sunflowers and faces the Black Sea. We found private accomodation for two quid per night just a few meters from the town 'centre'. Imagine a strip of lurid signs, kebab shops (best kebabi outside of Turkey)and postcard stands leading down to the beach.
1. Fields of gold
At one end of thsi strip of golden sand an oil tanker is moored and rusting. Lovely.My conception of the Black Sea as a dead sea was that there would be lots of jellyfish that are taking of the waters. Didn't see many of those, but lots of little fish were eating the strange, bitey millipedes in the shallows. Still, didn't risk the seafood....
We had unwillingly been escorted about town by a lad called Florin ('It means flower, but don't call me that!) who had spotted us at Constanta. It was initially nice to have someone direct us to our abode, but he continually appeared during our time there and implied that we were incapable of looking after ourselves. (You can imagine how impressed I was about that!) Flower-boy escorted us to a local 'disco' that was fantastically cheesy, managed to avoid paying for any of the rounds (that goes against backpacker ethos)and generally drove us a bit crazy. The good thing was that he found our Aussie buddies from Romania; James, Mike and Mark, and told them where we were staying. Sanity restored.
So with Aussie lads in tow we wreaked havoc in the Constinesti nightlife. We decided that the vodka being served at the cheesy disco was in fact ethanol - it smelt like metho and sputtered a bit when we tried to light it - so after a quick turn on the dancefloor to Kylie (with all the moves I might add) we headed off to find another place to play.
That ended up being the local 16+ nightclub, where the lads befriended the locals - a super dodgy guy called Spotto and his sleazy mates. Romanians must not be used to the idea of buying rounds because every drink Mark bought for Spotto was good-naturedly refused on the grounds that Mark was trying to poison him. There was paranoia on Mark's part also. Both were convinced they were being bought Rohypnol and Rum with the intent to rob later in the night.
Nothing that exciting happened, though we practically wore a hole in the dancefloor, attracted lots of strange looks from the teeny-boppers and tried balancing glasses of Power Horse (Red Bull) and ethanol, sorry, vodka on our heads. After numerous Power Ponies and photographs with the dodgy brothers we headed home. This time without fear of being munched by Transylvanian vampires. Just of dodgy Romanian disco dudes.
