Travel (mis)Adventures

We made it out of Tecuci, despite the fact that the train station was under water and it was questionable if trains would be running to the area at all. We ended up having to take a taxi to a nearby town called Focasani. Luckily the night before we were planning to leave we met Daniel, a conservative driving, English speaking, limited smoking, taxi driver who was willing to deprive himself of sleep and return with his taxi in a few short hours to take us to Focasani. However, on the way Daniel passed a slow moving van and was immediately pulled over by a police officer. What we didn't know at the time was that if Daniel had gotten a ticket he would have lost his license, and thus his job for three months. He was able to talk his way out of the ticket and deliver us to the train station with time to spare. We were pleasantly surprised to see the next train to Bucharest was sooner than we expected and was one of the "nice" trains. We went to wait on the platform #2 as our tickets indicated. Moments later a train labeled "Bucharest" pulled up to platform #3. We grabbed our backpacks and began sprinting down the stairs, through the basement tunnels, back up the stairs (much more slowly), and hurled ourselves onto the train just as it pulled away. Unlike Italy Kenny actually made it onto this train.

Our second impression of Bucharest was better than our first. We think the daylight and six weeks of acclimatization probably helped. We were able to see the People's Palace, the second largest building in the world after the Pentagon. On our way there we encountered a public rally to protest a new law dealing with football. We were just glad to see that it wasn't a protest against our dear government.

We spent the rest of the day wondering around and enjoying the sights but are really looking forward to seeing Budapest. I think it will be a nice change from Romania. We have heard that it is one of the more spectacular cities in Eastern Europe and that it is very travel friendly.