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Published: April 19th 2007
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That is where the real adventure started.
day3/Easter monday arrived at 9am in Chisinau (or Kisinew in Russian) - first challenge: to find a working cash machine - couldn't find one (tried 2 different cards at approx. 6 cash machines) - walked with luggage towards city centre - finally were lucky and found an open bank branch which gave us a cash advance (really lucky!) - first destination: McDonald's (still the very best adress for clean toilets) - had a cup of coffee and then started exploring ithe sights of Chisinau (theatre, government building, presidential palace, asf.) - around 2 o'clock we started to become hungry and were thinking about a place where to have lunch - our first choice (jewish restaurant) was unfortunately closed - went to another place (not far) - had very nice lunch there, but it wasn't cheap (something if you manage to spend almost €10/each in Chisinau for lunch, but it was Easter monday and many places were closed) - newly strenghtened we headed for the bus station, changing more money on the way - once we got to bus terminal we were told that this wasn't the right bus station for
Odessa - took us a while to work out where we had to go - managed to work it out on map and walked there - I was becoming very quiet as my shoulders were hurting pretty badly while walking there - we bought tickets and then were told that our bus would leave around 6pm (at the time it was around 4pm) - sat down and just waited for time to go by (founds nice seats in a small building, even had a toilet there - although not very nice, but well ...) - at 6pm we hoped on the bus - now my travel partner went quiet, he was seriously concerned about this bus ride to Odessa (through Transnistria) and one could see it on his face - guess he regretted a lot at that point that he had agreed to come on this trip
day5-leaving Moldova/Chisinau
we arrived in Chisinau around 1.30-2 o'clock in the afternoon - we thought we would get off at the bus terminal where we had left 2days earlier (easiest; as we didn't know where the bus would stop) - but my travel partner recognised a building and knew that
we were closer to the center if we would get off immediately at that traffic light (together with another passenger; but we had luggage - was a rush) - we got off and then realised that we hadn't taken a picture of the drivers :O( - we then realised that we also had no time to have lunch, but should first work out where our bus leaves from (the plan was to catch a Eurolines bus to Brasov) - another quick stop at McDonald's (same reason as 1st time & to work out on the map where the Eurolines office was) - we discovered a travel agency across the road and as we couldn't work out where the street in which the Eurolines office was was we decided to ask there - the 3 girls there were very helpful and showed us on the map - what I noticed: all of them had new flat screen monitors and all seemed to have a constant internet connection (you could even book flights to Sydney from there - and their agenda was an Austrian Airlines one😊 - we went straight to the Eurolines office and found it - it's was very small
AND the guy who was running it told us that there were no busses to Romania operated by them :O(
another adventure began *shock* - he told us that there are other busses which leave from another bus terminal then the one we had just come in from Odessa - we left worried about what to do now - we finally decided to go back to the station and take the over-night train again (back to Bucharest) - on the way there we passed the outlet of the famous wine producer Cricova - we went in and spent all our Moldovan Lei on 4 bottles of wine (2 white, 2 red) - then we took a bus (#3 - the info we had obtained in the wine shop) to the station - when we got there we had to find out that we had missed the overnight train by about 20min - again: *stress* What to do now? - we realised that we had no choice but to go to the other bus terminal - we asked how much a taxi would be and the guy dared to reply 300 Moldovan LEI or something ridiculous - we refused - and he then made the mistake of telling us that the maxi-cab would be 3 LEI each (we were glad we had obtained another little piece of information for which we couldn't ask) - finding the right maxi-cab in the right direction turned out to be a major obstacle - but luck stayed with us - I asked a woman accompanied by a teenager about how to get to the bus terminal and that woman then asked another man who had been standing beside her (waiting for a bus or maxi-cab) - that man told her that we needed cab #120 from this side of the road - she then told me and waited until we had spotted one - she even helped us to halt it - once we were on that cab and heading for the right bus station we felt a little better, but the taxi took forever and time was passing - *worried* - in the end we arrived at the bus terminal and we realised that we had to get off - when approaching the first plattform we felt good as it turned out that this was the bus to Brasov -
BUT then the
driver informed us that he is already full :O( - we then entered the hall and found out that there is another bus to Sibiu (even better for us) and a bus to Bucharest -
BUT the real problem we faced now was that we had no more cash on us to pay for the tickets (all we had were a few €s and a 20pounds; latter was enough, but the exchange was closed and the ladies behind the desk refused to accept pounds - only €s or US$) - we were really down as staying a night in Chisinau would screw up our further travel plans and there was nothing to do here - we spoke to a few people, but no-body was willing to change the money - then one of the guys suggested that we should try to pay the driver (instead of tickets) - it turned out he also tried to get on the Bucharest bus and helped us convince the driver to take the pounds and make a little profit through that - *lucky us!!*- we felt good having someone on the bus to translate everything we needed to know for us - when we
left we were happy that we made it; just, but we had managed to leave Chisinau that night - at that stage we didn't know yet what we had to expect at the border (Moldova/Romania) - another unique experience
passing the Moldovan-Romanian border on a Moldovan bus - another unique experience
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