"Brava America!"

Trip Start May 06, 2007

166

Trip End Jul 24, 2008

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Flag of Romania Bucharest, Romania
Tuesday, November 27, 2007

When I arrived at the train station at 12pm to catch the train to Bucharest, I was greeted with the news that as of a few days ago, that train no longer exists. The next train was 2.5 hrs away and I didn't really want to wait, so I left the train station and boarded a minibus. The minibuses take a little bit longer but cost about the same as the train so I'd still end up in Bucharest earlier. The scenery on the ride was nice at first while we were still in the mountains, but then got boring once we reached flat ground. A few times during the ride, the bus had to slow down and swerve around a horse and cart moving slowly up the road. About halfway through the ride, the guy sitting next to me said something to me in Romanian. I responded with my typical "I'm sorry, but I don't speak Romanian". His girlfriend on his other side then piped up, "We didn't think so, but we weren't sure. Where are you from?", starting a conversation that lasted the rest of the ride. She spoke really good English. He could understand almost everything, but wasn't comfortable speaking in English. They were both very friendly and very interested in how I could travel to different places. They want to travel, but have a lot of difficulties with both visas and money for travel. Now that Romania is part of the EU, they can go to all the other EU countries and are very excited about the thought of the trips they can take if they ever have the money.

When I arrived in Bucharest I discovered that what I had heard from other travelers was correct - it's not a pretty city and there isn't all that much to do. Since my only option to get to Belgrade, Serbia was a night train, I decided to only spend one night and 1.5 days in Bucharest since I figured I could easily accomplish everything I wanted to do during that time. I visited the Peasant museum, the Parliament building, and the Jewish museum, in addition to walking around the city and looking at some of the other sites. The Peasant museum was an interesting collection of folk costumes and art, including a communist section in the basement. The Parliament building is the second largest government building (after the US Pentagon) and the third largest building in the world. It was really big. I also went to the Jewish museum, housed in an old synagogue, which has artifacts, documents, and photos of the Jewish community's history in Romania. Even though it's a free museum, each visitor gets a tour by one of the grandmother-like women who work there. In the middle of telling me information about one of the displays, she asked me, "Is your hair wet?". I responded that yes, it was still a little wet, and proceeded to be lectured about the dangers of going out with wet hair. I did a really good job of not laughing and she eventually got back to the tour.

That afternoon I had another funny encounter. When buying a pretzel from a small, grey-haired, old woman outside the train station, she tried to start a conversation with me. It was rather difficult since she didn't speak any English and I only knew how to say thank you in Romanian (plus a few other random words that are similar to Spanish), but I eventually figured out that she was asking where I was from. When I responded America, she raised her fist in the air and said loudly, "Brava America! Brava America!" I wasn't sure how to respond to that, so I just said thank you and walked away. On the whole though, the Romanians are the nicest people I've encountered so far in my travels. Even when they don't speak any English, they've tried really hard to understand what I'm asking and help me figure things out. They also seem the most open to conversation when they do speak English and much more openly friendly than any of the other countries I've traveled to thus far.