Day 109: To Bucharest

I woke up at six the next morning and took a train transfer and bus ride to Terminal 2 in time for my 10:30am flight. Between transferring trains I had breakfast at a restaurant near the station.

Alas, I cannot remember what this dish is called :(

The 4.5-hour flight was mostly full of Romanian families coming home from vacation. Entering the European Union was a breeze and after picking up my checked bag I took a bus to Piata Unirii, which I like to dub the Times Square of Romania.

Taking the bus to Piața Unirii

From Piața Unirii I managed to buy a ticket for the metro after some confusion. The metro stations in Romania have no automatic ticketing machines, you need to pay for a ticket at the ticket booth. But oftentimes the person in the booth will be talking on their cell phone (like in this case). Somehow you're supposed to know that you should hand them either a 5 lei note for a 2-use pass or two 10 lei notes for a 10-use pass. I didn't know this so I waited for the lady to finish her phone conversation until the officer on the opposite side of the turnstile threw me enough funny looks that I approached the ticket booth mid-conversation and asked for a ticket. Things eventually worked out, and after hopping on the wrong line and taking the scenic route to Dristor 2, rather than Dristor 1 only three stops away, I walked the rest of the way to Hostel Tina.

I had booked a single room for a few nights for only a bit more than a dorm room would have cost me in Old City, the central area of Bucharest. After moving in I took the metro back to Piața Unirii and met up with Antonio, whom I had originally met in Bangkok and lives in Bucharest. We got gyros at a restaurant in Old Town before taking a walking tour to a beer garden hidden away among some apartment units somewhere past the Central University Library.

The atmosphere was great, and beer was a bit less than half the price of a beer from a typical bar in the US. Afterwards we walked back to old town and met up with a friend of Antonio's and had some more drinks before splitting a taxi back home.