Bucharest

We took a night train from Chisinau, Moldova, to Bucharest, Romania. (Not to be confused with Budapest, Hungary.) and it's pronounced: Book-ah-rest. Long ooooo sound. Not like in book. Wow. This is why I don't write dictionaries.

Right. Train.

It wasn't too horrible. As soon as we stepped on, I felt as if I stepped into an Agatha Christie novel, and Hercule Poirot would be in the cabin next to ours. Everything looked uber vintage from the 40's or so, with original everything. And not in the up-kept way. And whoa, bonus, our window doesn't open. 

The train left at 4:35pm and arrived at 6am. And the driver/conductor?/(i was homeschooled) must have been Estonian because cars were almost passing us. Overall the ride didn't actually feel too long. What took forever was the border officials on both sides. For some reason they thought it was really weird that two American tourists went to Moldova for two days. You and me both, dude. No one I know at home even knew what a Moldova was until I explained. Nevermind why one would go to visit.

Side note: they say Estonia is the most recovered and prospurous country, from Soviet ruling. Yes. I can completely see that. And I would put Moldova as one of the worst. It's poor and shows immensely. But then random contrast with a huge five story shopping mall...it was strange to walk around and notice all the stores were pretty much empty. 

End side note.

But all was well, and we actually got stamps in our passports! One for exiting Moldova and one for entering Romania! This made us happy and receive yet more quizzical looks from the officers. We hadn't get one for Estonia or Belgium, and want as many as possible because they look cool filling up the pages. I mean, who wouldn't?

When our train pulled into the station 10 minutes early, we woke up pretty fast, threw everything into our bags, and motored out of there. (I've just been really wanting to use that word for a week now, sorry.) Now it's hard to adjust to yet another new country and language on a normal day. Now add: On four hours of sleep, and at 6 in the morning, AND while it's literally pouring buckets of water on your head and 30 pound pack.

Fast forward to 35 minutes later when finally some police officers (after asking three other people around the station) are able to tell us where we can buy our bus ticket.

An hour or so later we arrive at the hostel, completely soaked to the bone (which makes our packs 35 pounds with all that water weight. I love creating dramatic sympathy from you guys.) only to find the door locked. We had checked and they do have a 24 hour reception. Our dismay starts to roll off in waves.

...two minutes later I try PUSHING on the door and then feel very stupid when it opens right up. 

There is a bathroom inside the room, I'm happy to report! That just kind of made my day. And there is a shower in that same room too. *fistpump* and it's just a two bed room. Once again though, we have only seen one other guest in this four story hostel. I swear all the backpackers are avoiding us. Phineas and Ferb's grandfather (from previous hostel) is staying at another,more in the city; we had asked. He took a baxi, not a train. But we may see him around.

We did laundry: 

And the carrots at the grocery store here in Bucharest proclaiming their identity in eight different languages:

Some last cool views of Chisinau before we left:

Our train!

It's supposed to be sunny tomorrow. Hopefully. We want to explore!

Thrifting

While venturing out to the train station today we stumbled upon a huge flea market thing. It was along a whole block, and about five rows. I didn't really take pictures because its not touristy at all and  I didn't want to bring attention to myself, but I have a couple on my camera. Tessa has a few on her iPhone that I'll post below. From silverware to used socks to watches to a bucket of nails, and don't forget the vintage My Little Pony thing, we were entertained for hours walking along and looking at everything.

So if the 80s went to Estonia (hm I don't think I ended up blogging about that before.) well then the 70s moved to Moldova. Talk about vintage clothes and stuff from that era. Tessa found a billion things she could potentially sell on her Etsy shop and it's all so cheap.

We haggled this down a bit with broken Russian and English. Was about $6. Now I'll really fit in when we get to Romania. People might think I'm the gypsy! 

And I also couldn't help but get some old paper money. Two of them are old Soviet Russian and one is Moldovan.  All for about $1.20. They're not in good condition or anything, but I collect it all the same. And bank notes are light, which is a bonus.

We wanted to buy everything. Tessa and I figured we could live off this place...not that we would want to live here. But it's so cheap for us, it's almost sad. 

Tessa thinks there will be huge garage sales/flea markets like this in Romania as well. Now we regret bringing any clothes at all, so we could authenticate our wardrobe here...alas...not enough room on our backs!

You can get the gist of it pretty well from those two pictures, actually.

~~

Also! Slightly related. We're finally at a hostel that's legit, and there are books here! We found the only two English ones (as opposed to none before this) and grabbed them for the road. Sun Tzu's The Art of War, and a collection of essays by Umberto Eco. It's been a month since I've read a paper book...I need my fix!! :)

Moldova

Well. We made it with fewer mishaps than normal, which was nice. We are now in Moldova's capital, Chisinau. They speak Russian here. Once again. And all Tessa can remember in Russian is "dog" and "thank you" so it's gonna be super fun.

On the other hand, when we withdrew money at the ATM, we got 500 (their money) which is only like $60. So I feel really rich now. And everything is really cheap here, which is why we picked this route to Romania.

When we finally found the bus to our hotel from the hostel, it was on this rather dingy looking thing that we dubbed a baxi.

The ride cost about 50 US cents so yay there. The other guy who was on the baxi with us happened to be going to the same hostel, and he spoke Russian! He is from Sweden and spoke really good English. He was able to communicate with the driver, where to take us. Then after we got off the stop (Tessa had vague directions from the hostel site) we wandered around using Gustav's phone GPS and finally found the place.

Our reservation was originally for a private room with only our two beds, but once we got here and thought about how we've been glampacking antisocialites...we changed the reservation (which required just telling the guy at the front desk who's our age, that we wanted to change.) and now we are in a 10 room dorm! 

*update. Everyone left this evening, so we are all alone in here...well, we tried.

Front desk:

Now the mall (Malldova...how incredibly punny) is only around the corner from our hostel, so we can shop easily! 

Here's Tessa's post upon arriving:

We only stay here two nights, and we overheard a conversation at the front desk that a bus to Bucharest is only $20 and I'm really liking that price..aaand we just heard that the bus is actually a 12 hour baxi ride...train it is then! I need a bathroom sometime in 12 hours, thank you very much.

And guys, you should google earth these places I'm mentioning, because they're even new names to me. It might give you some bearings to where in the world I am. :)

I've been gone almost an entire month now, what's up with you people at home?