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Published: January 25th 2012
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We arrived in Bucharest via the train from Brasov, and followed our instructions from the metro to our hostel. We decided to stay out of the city centre this time due to the protesting. We stayed in an old soviet block building area of the city. We have seen these areas in many of the eastern European cities we have been to but never stayed in one, its amazing at how large they are and how many people they stuff in there. The best part was trying to find our hostel as they all look exactly the same and are numbered in a confusing manner, for example our hostel was building EB302A-C. We found it, caught the tiny creaky elevator up and later found out that we were only 50kgs off the maximum weight.
(Mikaela would like me to add that the elevator actually looked like a box hung by string –and that I decided to stop and start all the way up to the apartment, unsure exactly which level we needed to be on – we later found out from the hostel owner that if stopped too many times the elevator freezes and it takes at least a day or two before anyone will come out to fix it)
Our host was fantastic, offering us tea and food at all times and warding us off going into the city after 6pm. Our first night we just went for a walk down the main street of our suburb, had dinner and went off to bed as the riots in the city centre were getting a bit intense.
The next day was our one and only full day in Bucharest. It was hard to choose exactly what to do with so little time. We decided to go to the village museum, which is an open air display of original houses, cottages and churches from different time periods and regions of Romania. I will just say it was excellent and we ended up spending more then half the day there and if we had time we would have easily spent a whole day walking around viewing the amazing specimens. We hope to go to the one is Oslo later in the year after seeing this.
We spent the rest of the day walking the city (and buying a new camera). As we were leaving the protests had started up so
Arcul de Triumf
Mikaela with her suevenier we took a couple of photos and moved on to our hostel. We used the cooking facilities to prepare a feast (pasta and salad).
The next day had come and it was finally time to head back to Georgia, which would be a ten hour journey for us. This however did not transpire. We caught our plane to Istanbul had an eight hour layover plus a two hour delay on the tarmac. After the delay the plane took off and made it to Tbilisi, decided to circle for an hour and then after looking out the window decided it would turn around and fly an hour back into Turkey due to weather conditions in Tbilisi. By this point we were all very exhausted and loosing patience. It was interesting to see that when we had to turn around all the passengers (majority Georgian) were just laughing and not too worried by the situation. I think this was a good show what we have come to love about Georgian character and lifestyle. They never get worried about anything, you rarely see them stress out and it really is a wonderful thing.
After another four or so hours we made
Village museum
This church was over 300 years old it back to Tbilisi which was covered in snow (there was no snow when we left). At about lunch we made our way to the Marshrutka station to find our lift home. As reading Georgian is still hard for us it was complicated finding the right bus to take, luckily our driver (who happens to be our neighbour in the village) saw us looking lost, came over took our bags off us and told us to get in. It was a beautiful trip as the country side was now covered in snow, and we slept half the way. We returned to Shilda which now had around three feet of snow, no electricity and no water.
Our family were elated to see us and Mikaela was carried off the bus by our host father and grandfather. We ate a huge meal, drunk a lot of wine toasted to Georgia and Australia, the church, friends and family, Mim, Alex and Julia, Bella and Luke, the School and anything else we could think of and then went to sleep. It was a great trip but we are happy to be home!
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