Bucharest

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I arrived early morning from Belgrade after a dismal overnight journey. Had so many scary moments. I started the journey sharing with a reasonably pleasant Romanian girl. We exchanged a few pleasantries but I didn’t realize how lucky I was to have her rather than the next Romanian that entered the cabin until after she left. When she left I thought ‘score – a cabin to myself!’. My happiness was cut short when a creepy fat Romanian bloke with a trilby hat on decided to come in. I was trying hard to sleep but every time I opened my eyes there was Mr Creepy staring intensely at me. I had to tell him in no uncertain terms to stop fucking staring at me and thankfully he left and found himself another cabin. Phew. Scary moment number 2 was a smelly gypsy woman waking me up telling me she needed me to get up. I stood my ground until the ticket man came and re-assured me that the gypsy lady needed to get something from under the seat I was lying on. I reluctantly stood up, pissed off, while she mooched around under the seat for this thing she so desperately needed at 3 in the morning. She had had all night since about 7pm to come and reclaim this unknown item but whatever. Ask no questions hear no non-sensical Romanian lies. Feeling annoyed and quite frankly a little dirty I tried to go back to sleep, but unfortunately I was now on edge, so I didn’t get back to sleep. Scary moment number three was imminent anyway. That consisted of the ticket man possibly touching me up. I’ll never know for sure but he unnecessarily sat down after checking my ticket and touched my arm. Hmmm.

I arrived in Bucharest and all I wanted to do was dump my bag at my hostel in Brasov and shower, then come back to Bucharest later on to make the most of my Interrail Pass. I followed my intentions but the train journey was soooo painfully slow. Apparently there are like 3 speeds of train in Romania. I must have been on the slowest kind. Although the scenery was nice I knew my time was restricted so I wouldn’t have minded looking at the scenery at a quicker pace.

When I returned to Bucharest late afternoon that day after an even slower train journey, I attempted to find the city centre which I never actually managed to do. I just walked round the block, through the ghetto where naked children played in the street and back to the train station. I asked a woman where the centre was by just saying ‘Centre?’ and shruggy shoulders, but she simply looked my up and down in disgust and shook her head. I was then too scared to ask anyone else in case I got a similar reaction. Aside from that lovely woman, all I got was stares and beeps from cars. Basically the men here were vile and you would think they have never seen a woman in their lives.

I was gutted that I didn’t get to see the world’s largest building and the historic centre of Bucharest because it would seem the centre is quite a way from Bucharest Nord station, but maybe I will one day return with a head to toe burka.

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