Hi all, hope this finds you happy and well. It's overcast and kind of cool here in Costinesti... so perfect time to write another blog. I thought I would just write some observations and tidbits. There are not alot of sights here in Costinesti, just the beach and BOOBIES!! yeah for boobies! Seriously it is sort of like one big carnival on the beach, it has everything, fast food, tattoos, carnival rides, cheap beer, casinos, the whole deal AND... BOOBIES. OK moving on.
I've noticed this everywhere we've been, sidewalks are not for walking on, they are for parking on, I've looked for signs saying no parking or green P signs, nope not a thing. On the other hand I have seen cars getting tickets for what I'm guessing is being illegally parked...HUH?! WHAT? I have no idea. OK gather round people, settle down, settle down, take your seats, today we are going to ticket all the green cars, got that? the green ones, not the blue ones, that was yesterday. Hold on, hold on! remember be safe out there! ( thank you hill street blues)
So in my last post I was wondering if people would be more friendly once we got back into Romania. First a little detour, so we had hired a taxi to take us from Cahul, Moldova to Galati, Romania, about a half an hour over the border. So we call the guy in the morning and he says I'll be there in 3 minutes, honk, honk there is some dude in a late model Mercedes waving at us, not a little yellow subcompact, but a black Mercedes, Hmmmm. We get in, no talking, put your seat belt on and away we go. Pretty much silence until we get over the border and about 20 minutes into Romania, when he looks at me and smiles, points out the window and says Romania, I smile back and say Da, it's not really any less weird, but I don't think he's going to kill us now and dump our bodies on the side of the road.
OK this is where it gets fun, KGB guy drops us off at the bus station and the 1pm bus is full, so we have 3 hours till the next bus at 315pm. OK I'm not sure if we had signs on us saying we just came from Moldova or what, but these next few things happened over the next couple of days. While waiting for the bus, the guy next to us starts talking to me in romanian, which means he's talking and I'm nodding my head... something about are you north Korean, do you work here? and we are going to Mangalia. The conversation lasts alot longer with more nodding. We are at the bus station, but actually it's all locked up and everything around it looks pretty much shut down. So looking for a toilet, Carrie asks the woman who seems to be in charge of the Constanta bus and is just sitting in a car on the side of the road, where the toilet is. She gets out of the car, waves Carrie to follow her, takes her around the corner to a local bar, gets her to pay the bartender to use the toilet, checks to make sure there is no one is in there, there is, gives him the romanian what for and then tells Carrie to go ahead. This happened the next day, we were walking down a side street in Constanta, when we came upon a small store, so I went in to buy a coke zero, I couldn't find a cold one, but wasn't really worried, we had a fridge in the room. So I'm lined up at the counter, and the woman behind the counter comes around, puts her hand on my coke, and proceeds to a back fridge to get me a cold one, I almost cried. So yes people have been very friendly here...well except for Mama here in Costinesti, we used her kitchen this morning, that didn't seem to make her a happy girl! I can hardly wait till I use it this afternoon to make a salad...I might wait till tomorrow.
That's all I got for now, we have to sit down and figure out where we're going next. Love and warm thoughts from Costinesti.
Carrie and Glen
Saturday, August 23, 2014
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
Romania
Hello everyone, well it's been a rather busy couple of weeks and there is lots to get to. So it seems we start these things this way now, so here we go...I'm sitting in the gazebo outside of Kate's place in Cahul , Moldova, who thought you would ever use the words gazebo and Moldova in the same sentence. Anyways that's where I'm writing this from and as always it's stinking hot, again I think I mentioned this before, I brought too many clothes.
OK so we have taken trains all over Romania and we have worked out a system..we look online and figure out if there are trains where we want to go, on the days we want to go and write it all down before we get to the train station to board our next train. Then we go to the ticket window and buy tickets for our next leg of the trip. This is for 2 reasons, one, it cuts down on the amount of verbal communication that needs to take place and second, we obviously DO NOT know how to pronounce the names of the towns that we want to go to, stupid americans.
Let me give you a brief run down of where we have been, you should get a map out for this, I'll wait....Ok so from Oradea we went to Timisoara for 2 days, Timisoara is the birthplace of Romanian independence and the name of a beer. Then it was off for 3 days in Sibiu, I think the guide book called it the most cultural city in Romania or something like that, It's definitely had the most tourists so far and the most new looking buildings. From there we headed off to Sighisoara, try saying that to the girl at the ticket counter, for 3 days. This is the birthplace of Dracula, I'll talk more about Vlad later. So from there we headed to Brasov for 5 glorious days, OK some of you may think I'm talking out of my ass here and more precisely...whining, but after travelling here and there for awhile, it gets exhausting and we need a break. It gives us a chance to do laundry, catch up on the mundane stuff like bills and correspondence. For us it also gives us a chance to cook for ourselves, eat a little bit healthier, don't get me wrong, eating out is great but after a while you just want to eat some comfort food. From there we headed off to Moldova, but before I get to that, I of course wanted to talk about a few things.
There are 3 different kinds of trains in Romania; Regio, this train stops everywhere, there are no different classes and is ridiculously cheap, think $6US per 100 miles. Irregio stops at big towns, has 2 different classes and seat assignments, which are more like suggestions really and is twice as much and then there is Intercity, which stops only in major cities, but otherwise like Irregio in every other way.But to be honest, paying for the better class cars doesn't really seem to mean better quality or cleaner, just seat assignments. OK a slight detour into poo land...trains here don't even pretend that the contents of their toilets go anywhere but straight onto the tracks, some may flush, but when you do you can see the tracks going by. the worst is sitting in the train station waiting for your train and somebody in another train flushes right in front of you, close your eyes and listen, now shiver.
It's been a while since I've lived in small apartments, but still, these apartments are small and obviously things have evolved to be the most space efficient as possible. There has been a fair amount of washing machines in bathrooms or kitchens, fold out beds etc. but for me the cutting edge of space efficiency has come in the washrooms. So I have a space of about 4x5, how do I fit a sink, a toilet and a shower in this space? First the walls are all frosted glass and the floor is tiled with a drain in it, then you put up a movable glass panel that can swing in front of the toilet when you take a shower. So when you take a shower, water does get all over the bathroom, hence the glass and tile, and you do have to wipe that up when your done of course. The best however is, if you want to save time, you can leave the glass panel against the wall while you are on the toilet AND take a shower at the same time...I love travelling.
Ok onto Vlad, let's face it, it's a marketing tool, so why not use it? So he was born in Sighisoara, and you can actually go in the house where he was born, or I guess more appropriately, eat there, as it's a restaurant now. He actually only lived there for 4 years. He was at a castle in a Brasov for about 10 months. Actually the longest place he stayed where we have been is in jail while he was in Budapest, 10 years. Hmm.. that seemed like a fairly boring piece of bloggishness, oh well enjoy!
Onto Moldova, we decided to take the overnight train from Brasov to Chisinau, in total about 15 hours on the train with a 2 hour layover in Plioesti to change trains. Our biggest question was what was going to happen when we hit the border? And at 4 AM we found out, first the Romanian guys come on, take your passports, someone asks the usual questions and then when it seems they might not be giving you your passports back, they come back with them, stamped. OK lights out, train moves for maybe 5 minutes and stops again. OK Moldova time, someone comes on and asks the usual questions, looks under the beds and THEN! this guy with a laptop comes on and scans our passports right there! WHAT the hell is happening? stamp and away you go, enjoy your stay. OK I could go on and on, but I'm not going to, let's just say a couple of things, poorest country in eastern europe, not enough drinkable water, inefficiencies everywhere, but the goverment decides to invest in wireless passport control technology that even Romania doesn't use, for all those tourists coming to visit? There are no tourists here. Even when we were booking tickets to go to Moldova, the girl at the ticket counter in the train station in Sighisoara was like..umm really! nobody wants to go to Moldova, I've never done that before.
OK so we get past the border and go back to sleep for about 15 minutes and then it sounds like they are adding train cars or something, and really this goes on for quite awhile, but neither of us wanted to get up to see what was going on. What was going on was they were changing the wheels on our train cars because the tracks in Moldova are a different gauge than? the rest of the world ? I don't know. Anyways 3 more hours on the train and BOOM we are in Chisinau and Kate is on the train platform waiting for us. We spent a couple of days in Chisinau and then Max came to meet us and went up to Balti for a couple of Peace corps functions. I really enjoyed meeting Kate's friends and co volunteers, I came away thinking, none of these things they are doing, or trying to do, is by any stretch of the imagination easy, I wonder if I could do this? probably not. So now we are in Cahul with Kate, it seems like a fairly nice small town, not the friendliest people ever, I'm not sure if that is because people identify with Russia more here than the US, or they are just not very friendly. We plan on moving onto the Romanian Black Sea coast after this, it will be interesting to see if they are more friendly there.
OK well I think that does it for me for now, best wishes and warm thoughts everyone from Cahul, Moldova
Love Carrie and Glen
OK so we have taken trains all over Romania and we have worked out a system..we look online and figure out if there are trains where we want to go, on the days we want to go and write it all down before we get to the train station to board our next train. Then we go to the ticket window and buy tickets for our next leg of the trip. This is for 2 reasons, one, it cuts down on the amount of verbal communication that needs to take place and second, we obviously DO NOT know how to pronounce the names of the towns that we want to go to, stupid americans.
Let me give you a brief run down of where we have been, you should get a map out for this, I'll wait....Ok so from Oradea we went to Timisoara for 2 days, Timisoara is the birthplace of Romanian independence and the name of a beer. Then it was off for 3 days in Sibiu, I think the guide book called it the most cultural city in Romania or something like that, It's definitely had the most tourists so far and the most new looking buildings. From there we headed off to Sighisoara, try saying that to the girl at the ticket counter, for 3 days. This is the birthplace of Dracula, I'll talk more about Vlad later. So from there we headed to Brasov for 5 glorious days, OK some of you may think I'm talking out of my ass here and more precisely...whining, but after travelling here and there for awhile, it gets exhausting and we need a break. It gives us a chance to do laundry, catch up on the mundane stuff like bills and correspondence. For us it also gives us a chance to cook for ourselves, eat a little bit healthier, don't get me wrong, eating out is great but after a while you just want to eat some comfort food. From there we headed off to Moldova, but before I get to that, I of course wanted to talk about a few things.
There are 3 different kinds of trains in Romania; Regio, this train stops everywhere, there are no different classes and is ridiculously cheap, think $6US per 100 miles. Irregio stops at big towns, has 2 different classes and seat assignments, which are more like suggestions really and is twice as much and then there is Intercity, which stops only in major cities, but otherwise like Irregio in every other way.But to be honest, paying for the better class cars doesn't really seem to mean better quality or cleaner, just seat assignments. OK a slight detour into poo land...trains here don't even pretend that the contents of their toilets go anywhere but straight onto the tracks, some may flush, but when you do you can see the tracks going by. the worst is sitting in the train station waiting for your train and somebody in another train flushes right in front of you, close your eyes and listen, now shiver.
It's been a while since I've lived in small apartments, but still, these apartments are small and obviously things have evolved to be the most space efficient as possible. There has been a fair amount of washing machines in bathrooms or kitchens, fold out beds etc. but for me the cutting edge of space efficiency has come in the washrooms. So I have a space of about 4x5, how do I fit a sink, a toilet and a shower in this space? First the walls are all frosted glass and the floor is tiled with a drain in it, then you put up a movable glass panel that can swing in front of the toilet when you take a shower. So when you take a shower, water does get all over the bathroom, hence the glass and tile, and you do have to wipe that up when your done of course. The best however is, if you want to save time, you can leave the glass panel against the wall while you are on the toilet AND take a shower at the same time...I love travelling.
Ok onto Vlad, let's face it, it's a marketing tool, so why not use it? So he was born in Sighisoara, and you can actually go in the house where he was born, or I guess more appropriately, eat there, as it's a restaurant now. He actually only lived there for 4 years. He was at a castle in a Brasov for about 10 months. Actually the longest place he stayed where we have been is in jail while he was in Budapest, 10 years. Hmm.. that seemed like a fairly boring piece of bloggishness, oh well enjoy!
Onto Moldova, we decided to take the overnight train from Brasov to Chisinau, in total about 15 hours on the train with a 2 hour layover in Plioesti to change trains. Our biggest question was what was going to happen when we hit the border? And at 4 AM we found out, first the Romanian guys come on, take your passports, someone asks the usual questions and then when it seems they might not be giving you your passports back, they come back with them, stamped. OK lights out, train moves for maybe 5 minutes and stops again. OK Moldova time, someone comes on and asks the usual questions, looks under the beds and THEN! this guy with a laptop comes on and scans our passports right there! WHAT the hell is happening? stamp and away you go, enjoy your stay. OK I could go on and on, but I'm not going to, let's just say a couple of things, poorest country in eastern europe, not enough drinkable water, inefficiencies everywhere, but the goverment decides to invest in wireless passport control technology that even Romania doesn't use, for all those tourists coming to visit? There are no tourists here. Even when we were booking tickets to go to Moldova, the girl at the ticket counter in the train station in Sighisoara was like..umm really! nobody wants to go to Moldova, I've never done that before.
OK so we get past the border and go back to sleep for about 15 minutes and then it sounds like they are adding train cars or something, and really this goes on for quite awhile, but neither of us wanted to get up to see what was going on. What was going on was they were changing the wheels on our train cars because the tracks in Moldova are a different gauge than? the rest of the world ? I don't know. Anyways 3 more hours on the train and BOOM we are in Chisinau and Kate is on the train platform waiting for us. We spent a couple of days in Chisinau and then Max came to meet us and went up to Balti for a couple of Peace corps functions. I really enjoyed meeting Kate's friends and co volunteers, I came away thinking, none of these things they are doing, or trying to do, is by any stretch of the imagination easy, I wonder if I could do this? probably not. So now we are in Cahul with Kate, it seems like a fairly nice small town, not the friendliest people ever, I'm not sure if that is because people identify with Russia more here than the US, or they are just not very friendly. We plan on moving onto the Romanian Black Sea coast after this, it will be interesting to see if they are more friendly there.
OK well I think that does it for me for now, best wishes and warm thoughts everyone from Cahul, Moldova
Love Carrie and Glen
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