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Published: October 20th 2007
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Our bus to Brasov was due to leave at eight in the evening so we decided to spend one last day enjoying the sights of Chisinau. We said out goodbyes to Marco as he was leaving on a different bus later on in the day. Despite having seen most of the sights in Chisinau, we still had some museums and points of interest to see. First stop was the local supermarket for breakfast which we ate sitting on the steps of the cathedral as we had done previously.
The first point of interest on our agenda was the History of Chisinau museum. It was a bit of a walk away but the road took us past all the embassies which are always interesting. We arrived at the water tower that the museum was housed in and it looked shut. We walked around the outside and additional to the doors being locked, there was no sign indicating a museum of any sort. Not disparaged by the lack of museum we carried on towards a park and lake that was in the vicinity.
The path down to the lake was rather impressive. It was obviously a massively grand entrance but had
been left to deteriorate so much that it felt like we were discovering some ancient ruins. You could picture how it was supposed to be and it would have been beautiful. At the bottom of the steps, instead of being greeted by a lake with a beach as we had been promised in Lonely Planet, we were greeted by a works site. There was no water and diggers and trucks were in the process of digging out weeds and mud from the basin of the lake. Again, you could tell that the lake would have been beautiful; it was huge and disappeared into a massive forest. The work that they were doing was quite interesting so we did walk around the outside to see if we could see anything more.
After hauling ourselves up the 226 steps to the main street we checked the map and realised we were very near to the ground of Moldova's main football team, so we decided to go and check it out. The walk to it was again very nice as it is always nice to see that the British Embassy looks way bigger and better than the American one. The football ground
just appeared out of nowhere and as we approached the main gates we realised that there was something a little amiss. There were no stands, seats or pitch and scattered everywhere were mounds of rubble and other piles of junk. We are sure that the stadium would have been impressive as the space it used to occupy was rather large, however we shall never know.
At about half three we arrived at the main bus station to purchase our tickets for the trip to Brasov. We had gotten the details yesterday so all we had to do was say the destination and time and that should have been it. The lady at the ticket office looked confused when I asked for the 8pm bus and told me that it was at six. After consulting with Rob we decided to get it anyway even though it meant arriving in Brasov at two in the morning. After we had bought the tickets, we were sitting checking everything over when we realised we didn't have a clue which platform the bus was to leave from, so Rob ran over to check. It was a good thing because the lady informed us that
Mass digging and moving
In England this would take twice as long using only a single digger and a handfull of dumper trucks. Here they had 4 diggers and a constant supply of trucks. the bus was actually due to leave from the bus station that we had arrived from which was a considerable distance from the centre. Panicking slightly at the amount of time we had to grab food, go back to the hostels and get our bags and then get all the way to the station we pretty much ran to a pizza place we had visited once already. We ordered food without even looking at the menu and wolfed it down as fast as we could and ran back to the hostel.
At the hostel Marco was just about to leave for the same bus station that we were going to, so we collared him into going with us. He was planning to get a maxi taxi, but the traffic was atrocious due to the festival and general rush hour traffic on a Friday. The owner of the hostel tried to phone a taxi for us but failed miserably, so we went and stood on a busy crossroad to try and flag a taxi, bus, or friendly passerby. Eventually a taxi stopped and told us a price that was affordable but way too high. We do know that to pander
to these tricks we are making it worse for tourists who will follow us, but we were desperate and didn't have much time. We did pay him the amount he asked unwillingly but in all honesty it was only about three pounds.
The drivers of the bus were lovely and smiled a lot which is always comforting when crossing a border with them. The bus itself wasn't too busy which is not surprising considering the time it terminated in Brasov. The crossing was a bit unnerving because of the length of time it took and the fact we had to open our luggage to show the guards. At one point the guard called Rob off the bus so we stood in front of him whilst he asked us questions in Romanian. We smiled and said as sweetly as possible "English" and the bus driver asked if there was a problem to which the guard shrugged and walked away.
The rest of the journey was uneventful other than some impromptu head banging to some music that we were listening to. They did play some films but they weren't in English so we didn't bother with them. We arrived in
Brasov at quarter past three in the morning; it was very cold and raining. We quickly withdrew some Romanian Lei and armed ourselves for battle with the taxi drivers. We were completely expecting an extortionate price due to a combination of factors. The time, the distance from the centre, the rain and the fact that we were blatantly tourists who didn't speak Romanian. I marched over to the first man and in my sternest, no shit voice I asked how much to the hostel and pointed on the map. He turned out to be lovely and not only did he not rip us off, but he pointed out the main attractions on the way to the hostel.
The girl working at the hostel had to get out of bed to serve us, but despite this she was really friendly. Everyone else is in bed, so we have dumped our things in the hallway and got ready in the bathroom in the hope that we won't wake anyone.
Night night,
Stob.
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daniel
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Hi, Can you give us an impression of your daily expenses in Chisinau: > accomodation > food > transport > divers Thank you.