Bucharest

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After being in small places for the last wee while, Bucharest was a definite contrast. It's a sizeable city, complete with traffic, dirt and stray dogs - yes, Bucharest is known for it's 'community dog' problem.

Our train journey to get there turned a wee bit complicated, as the train was late arriving by two hours, then after 20 mins travelling it stopped for another 2 1/2 hours in the middle of nowhere! Grrr. Arriving at the border town of Ruse, I jumped off to get the onward tickets as we'd been instructed by the train people in VT. However, we didn't know how long the train stopped for, and then the ticket office was closed as it was now so late! Luckily we'd been chatting to a friendly local guy on the train who did some fast talking and convinced the lady to open up and sell me the tickets (which apparently they should have sold us in VT, they aren't supposed to sell them in Ruse). So after being lectured in Bulgarian by the ticket lady, and then yelled at by the customs guy on the platform as I wasn't supposed to get off the train at all, I was quite pleased to get over the border and into Romania safely. We even crossed the Danube on the way - my geographical knowledge is not that great, as evidenced by the fact I didn't know the Danube went that far! Always learning...

We arrived at night to steady rain and flooded streets, but eventually found our hostel and a good night's sleep helped us see a different side to our first stop in Romania in the morning.

As we only had the morning here, we made the most of it by wandering the streets to get an idea of what the town was like. The older part of town is slowly being restored and cleaned up, so it was quite a good time to be there, seeing the restored version next to the way they've been for so many years. And good for buying and eating delicious cheese pastries.

Near the University there are memorials to the people who were killed during the demonstrations in 1989. Not for democracy or independence like so many other places, but simply for food (which does all come down to the government policies in the end) as at the time the majority of the food produced was being exported to make the country look good on the world stage. Go figure.

There is an interesting mix of grand, communist style architecture and older styles, it's a funny combination. And along with the many stray dogs (to which my kind travel buddies were going to sacrifice me if in need, as I've had my rabies shot and they hadn't) there is a plethora of abandoned cars on the streets, looking like they've been parked there but given away by the totally flat tires. Some have been there so long they've sunk into the ashphalt!

So a good place to look around, but as other travellers have said it's more a place to travel through on the way to other parts of the country. We've been spoiled by so many lovely smaller towns I think. Roll on the next stop!

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