Bucharest to Milan

Right now I write to you from the comfort of the hotel in Milan. It might not be posted until we're back in California, though. Although it's been a lot of fun traveling through hostels, there is a certain level of comfort that you get a hotel that you can't get at a hostel. The beds aren't creaky, nor are we in a dorm room with 8 other people or sharing a bathroom with the entire hostel. It's nice. I even used my Italian when we were checking into the hotel. Yay!

In any case, today wasn't too eventful. Checkout at our hostel wasn't until 12, so we woke up, had breakfast, cleaned up our stuff, checked out and then kind of hung out using the computers there until 1. I had to part ways with the Old Navy flip flops that have saved me from the ground of many gross overnight trains and many hostels/hostel showers.

The person working at the front desk called a taxi for us. The taxi ride wasn't really too long (maybe 25 minutes) and we got to see some nicer areas of Bucharest. A lot of parks and a triumphal arc I didn't know existed. Okay.

Turns out we got to the airport way too early. We were probably there around 2-ish and they weren't going to check anyone in through Easy Jet until 3:30. So, we had lunch and sat around until they let us through. Checking in was hell. Easy Jet is anything but easy and the woman working at the desk clearly and unjustifiably hated us. So did this random guy who looked like Fred Armisan, who, after we were told to go pay to check in one of our bags at this desk somewhere across the airport and come back, insisted that we had to stand in the giant line to drop the bag back off. Somehow I think standing in the line defeats the purpose of having the easy bag drop off desk, but that's just me. Also, the guy working at the drop off desk later got mad at people trying to cut in from the check in line to the drop off line, so Fred Armisan man was just being stupid.

Getting through security was also fun. The guy at the security gate clearly judged us and the amount of stuff we had in our carry on bag, which backed us up a few minutes. This did give us time to notice the boxes of items that got confiscated from people going through security. There were a LOT of guns in those boxes. Oh Bucharest.

Oh, also, we had purchased a bag of these baked garlic bread chips when we were in Brasov. We were supposed to eat them with the rest of the salami we bought in Brasov, but that plan got destroyed when we discovered our salami stash was covered in Nutella. In any case, we brought it along with us to the airport to eat while we were waiting for the plane, but someone stole our bag of chips. Not our wallets. Not the camera or the tablet or our passports or anything else of consequence. Someone stole our bag of garlic flavored chips. It was heartbreaking, but I guess worse things could have been stolen. We were very sad about this, but when we had to use up our remaining 14 lei and found a vending machine that sold them.

The flight wasn't too eventful. I think Mia sat near crying babies and next to an awkward smelly couple. I really just read and watched Dr. Who.

When we got to Milan, we had to wait around for my bag to come in through baggage claim. This was an adventure. Everyone coming from Bucharest managed to locate their bags except for some older women, Mia's smelly neighbors, and me. We went to lost baggage to go try to resolve the problem and the other two groups had already been stressing about it. Based on my limited Italian, this is how their conversation went:

Passengers: Our bags are missing.
Guy at desk: Where are your tickets? Are you together?
Passengers: No. Why would we be together?
Guy at desk: well I need to deal with one person at a time.
Passengers: Well our bags from Bucharest aren't here. (one woman started going on a rant about how maybe things would be better if they spoke Italian and not English at the Bucharest airport)
Guy desk: Did you check carousel 5?
Passengers: Why? The rest of the bags from Bucharest came from carousel 3.
Guy at desk: Obviously you should have checked carousel 5.

Turns out, the bags were at carousel 5. The other passengers (and Mia) all ran at the bags as if that would have made a difference. I was just happy I got my bag.

We left the baggage claim area and found a bus to take us to the main terminal (I used my Italian to find this bus too). We checked into our hotel (which is literally at the airport), watched some soccer news for a while, and then went out in search of food. The food at the hotel was obscenely expensive, especially coming from a county like Romania, so we ventured into the airport to find food. Most things were closed or looked disgusting.  We ended up getting kebabs. It was that or McDonalds.

We went back to the hotel, used the computers for a while and went back to our rooms.

Bucharest (the post)

We were quite sad to leave Brasov. We really liked it there and we had grown quite attached to the good kebab place that we went to the night before. The check out time at our hostel was noon, which is relatively late by hostel standards. When I had originally planned this trip out, I thought the 10:30 train would be the best bet because it would allow us to get some sightseeing in at Bucharest. Because of the late check out, however, we decided to prolong our departure from Brasov a little.

We woke up around 10 and started cleaning up the room for check out. We had breakfast and Mia ran around unsuccessfully trying to find that Bruce cat she had grown so fond of over the past few days. We couldn't find him. I had seen him earlier when I stopped by the kitchen to grab our bag of sandwich bags, but he was nowhere to be seen after that :( Mia's still upset about this.

After eating, we decided that we'd get some kebabs for the road and went back to the kebab restaurant. We went back, finished packing up our stuff, and went to reception to check out and to ask if they could call a taxi for us. By the time we used the restroom and got our stuff outside  (which really wasn't that long), the taxi driver had been there long enough to want to drive away and leave. We had to run after him to stop him. That made the taxi drive over to the train station kind of awkward. He was also annoyed with me when I asked him what the taxi fare was at the end of the ride. Coincidentally, we also learned that we got hard core ripped off by the taxi driver who took us to the hostel on Wednesday. The guy today charged 6 lei (about 2 dollars). The guy on Wednesday charged 20 (about 6-7 dollars). In the grand scheme of things, it's really not that much, but I was annoyed.

Anyway, we got to the train station, made reservations on the 12:40 train and went upstairs. Just like any other Eastern European train, this one was late. About twenty minutes, which I guess is better than it could have been. Other than that, the train ride back to Bucharest was relatively uneventful. We were in a train compartment with pretty nice people. It wasn't abysmally gross. There weren't old people sitting in our seats that we would feel bad to kick out. The train conductors didn't decide that our tickets were invalid. Not bad at all.

Once we made it to Bucharest, we made our way over to the Metro station to get to the general area of our hostel. The hostel was relatively easy to find because it's between two major streets. Once we were there, we had to wait in the reception for a while for someone to decide to pay attention to us (they were too busy playing around on facebook). We got our stuff down and tried to rearrange our bags for our flight to Milan. Once that was done, we set out for some sightseeing.

So the guidebooks said as much as did our friend James from England, but Bucharest really isn't an exciting city. There's really nothing particularly thrilling about it. It's super urban and loud, but doesn't have any of the charm or personality that other major European cities have.  We walked through one street for a while and took pictures of building that looked like they might be important. Later, while we were eating dinner, I was informed by my Triposo app that we had seen most of the big sites of the city on the walk. Okay. It was kind of a sketchy street too. The only reason we realized it was a big street was because it had all of the upscale designer stores like the Gucci store.

In any case, we stopped for dinner (at Pizza Hut where they do have functional WiFi) and then regrouped and tried to figure out our plan. The big thing to see in Bucharest is the Palace of the Parliament/People's House. It's one of the biggest administrative buildings in the world. We decided to wind around our route a little so we could see one of the city's parks too. The Palace of the Parliament was pretty impressive. It was huge and imposing and almost looked more like the Venetian than the building that Romania's parliament works in. There is a park sitting in front of it, so Mia and I got some ice cream and sat around observing the giant building. I think that was the highlight of Mia's trip to Bucharest. We took Metro back to the hostel from there.

One thing I noticed that was missing from our short tour of Bucharest were stray dogs. Apparently Bucharest has had a problem with stray dogs that run amuck through the city. We had seen a lot on the outskirts of town, including a few that were walking along the train tracks a la Homeward Bound, but we really didn't see many walking around the city as I had expected.

Also, while we were checking our email and facebook on the hostel computers, we happened to be on CNN and notice the news on Hurricane Irene. At first, we didn't mind it too much until we also saw that it was going to hit New York. As in the city we're connecting through to get to SF in a couple of days. This was kind of a problem, so we contacted home to see if they had heard anything about it. Turns out our flight had been canceled (thanks for telling us American Airlines), so Umma rerouted our trip through London for us. Otherwise, I suppose we would have been stranded in Milan as super smelly backpackers.

Anyway, tomorrow it's on to Milan, where we will be staying in airport hotel. I hope the beds are soft. Hostels are more fun, but all of the creaky beds with bad pillows tend to wear you down after a while.