Once the air raid sirens went quiet, it was just another normal travel day. Time to get out of Ukraine and move on down the highway. I was heading to Bucharest, Romania. It’s the next biggest city in the area. There are some more Black Sea Beach resort towns in approximately the same direction but definitely no reason to be at the beach this time of the year.
I have been to Bucharest before but just for a couple nights. Back then, it seemed busy enough to keep me occupied for a few days. As I googled my options on the bus between naps, the results were pretty thin.
Thin enough that it was pretty clear why I had to extend my Ukraine stay a day. There wasn’t enough going on in Bucharest to find enough passengers to cover the cost of sending a van there everyday.
Europe has instituted a new Visa program where a visitor can only stay in the Schengen zone 90 days in 180. The Schengen countries are most of the Euro countries. It’s a bit limiting for long term visitors like me. One of the reasons I have been hanging out in these little traveled countries is that they haven’t signed onto the program. I have an opportunity to spend a couple weeks at the the end of this trip in Mallorca, Spain. The dates are just past the 90 day so I need to stop the clock on the 90 days rule. It’s a good thing that these countries are the cheapest in Europe, pretty interesting and right next to each other. It shouldn’t be too hard since I only need 10 days plus some buffer. The downside of traveling in and out of the non Schengen is that passports need to get stamped at each border. Romania is in the Schengen zone so the 90 day clock would start ticking again.
Passenger vans arent optimal for long teavel days. Besides the general state of worn out that they are usually in, I havent had one with wifi or even charging points yet. On an 8 to 10 hour trip, a charged phone really helps to pass the time.
The upside of van travel is there are fewer people to get through border control at one time. The border crossings are different sometimes someone comes to collect the passports and disappears. Othertimes, everyone has to get off the bus and stand in line to get looked over to make sure they dont give off the undesireable vibe. Sometimes you have to get your luggage x-rayed and searched for contraband. Luckily dirty laundry isn’t on the contraband list yet. Even with just 7 people, it took 2.5 hours to get through the 4 passport control offices we had to stop at; Leaving Ukraine, entering Moldova, leaving Moldova 5 minutes later, and entering Romania. All within a half mile of each other. A big full bus would have taken forever.
The rest of the ride to Bucharest was flatter than Kansas. It was a good ride to practice sleeping sitting straight up.
The bus arrived after dark, dropping it’s riders off on the side of a main street somewhere in Bucharest. I think they didn’t want to pay for a spot at the bus station.
I had a general idea about where the bus would let us off so got a nearby rental apartment somewhere between vertical naps. I always regret trying to find my room in a foreign country in the dark after a long day of travel. The room was walking distance on booking.com but a couple wrong turns later, it turned into a mile’s hike with my backpack on through the the dark quiet streets of Bucharest. I am used to it and have learned to pack lightly. as checked in and heading back out to look for dinner.
Boy, I was in a food desert. A residential section of town and nothing was open. Nothing but a couple dingy convenience stores. I had to walk a half mile before I found a quiet Indian restaurant. It was pretty odd that with all these apartment blocks, there weren’t more dining options. All I needed was something to get me through to breakfast and Indian filled the bill.
I went back to the room with just one wrong turn and got a good night’s sleep uninterrupted by air raid sirens.
Photos so far are linked to on the photography page
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