Just Too Friggin’ Old

  

The overnight bus to Bucharest, Romania wasn’t quite overnight. It dropped me off in the city center long before sunrise and Bucharest is not a 24 hour town that I was finding. I definitely was not rested because the first thing I really remember was being the first customer at coffee shop on an otherwise dark and lonely street. My google tracking seems to have stopped tracking after Kosovo so I am building the day’s activities from memory and the help of Google street view. I am pretty sure the coffee shop was the one conveniently named “the Coffee Shop“. I nursed a coffee (no free refills in Europe) into daybreak and thoroughly enjoyed watching Bucharest wake up.

I had reserved a room at the “Smart Rooms” guest house that google says is only a couple kilometers away (23 minutes for the non-metric readers). I knew that by the time I got lost and un-lost a couple of times, the room would be ready. With Maps.Me glowing on my fully charged phone in hand, I headed out into the chilly Bucharest morning.   Surprisingly, everything went according to Google, 23 minutes later I found myself at the front gate of the guest house just as predicted. Or at least I was hoping it was the front gate. I was in a very residential neighborhood staring at a gate with no sign indicating that I had arrived. I pushed the buzzer to no response for a few minutes. By

now the coffee rental was nearly up and was packing its bags to move out soon. So I headed down the road looking for a fast food place with a restroom and internet   I ended up another kilometer down the road at the train station. Everything I needed in one place. I fired off a note to the guest house and settled in for a coffee (I never learn) while I waited for a response.

It took a while but I got a response. It turns out that it is an unhosted guest house so there is only someone on site during the check-in hours. I headed back and checked into a very nice studio apartment. The manager gave me directions to the old town area that is the big draw for tourists. It was past lunch time now so I took her advice and headed in that direction.

I strolled around the old town district, had some lunch but it was another case of you’ve seen one European old town, you’ve seen them all. I was pretty tired from the 2 days of bus riding so I headed back to the room for a rest. I am not a good napper even if I am tired so I lounged around until it got dark before I headed back to the old town. From the looks of things, the old town doubles as Europe’s Bachelor/Bachelorette party destination weekend Du Jour. Young pretty people walking the streets, coaxing people into their

respective bars, restaurants and strip clubs that are packed into a few blocks by the river. I walked around a bit, had a couple of beers and the local meat specialty, Mici, Little garlic sausages that I could eat until my arteries fully clogged. My party days are long past and I was more interested in taking advantage of sleeping fully horizontally in a room all to myself.  I walked a couple more loops around the district just in case I still had some oomph but before I knew it, I found myself on find my way back to the guesthouse in the dark.

I just stayed the one night in Bucharest . It looked like a really nice place and I hope to spend more time there some day but I had more pressing places to be. I got a good night’s sleep and headed back to the train for the ride to Transylvania to see the purported castle of Dracula.