After spending the morning going to the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam, S.R. and I headed to the airport to catch our flight out to Romania. We hopped the Airport Express train, got our luggage from the storage lockers and checked in. When I was booking the ticket, I figured that I’d look at Romania on another trip and booked an immediate flight out for the same day. However when I got to Schpol, S.R. and I were able to change our return flights to get a full two days in Bucharest. After the ticketing desk, we wondered around duty free, then to the gate.
Arrival in Bucharest:
Pilot- “Welcome to Bucharest, Romania, the temperature here is *long pause* umm…about the same as Amsterdam and the time is 1 hour ahead.”
NOT TRUE! The temperature in Amsterdam was about 15-17 degrees C, but Bucharest was a full 29-30C! I must have looked like an idiot with a thick jacket on, dehydrated, sweating like a pig, and trying to communicate to the immigrations officers who probably thought I was a crazy drug smuggler.
So S.R. and I get into a local taxi, ride into town, and start looking for an internet cafe. We didn’t get a chance to grab the confirmation information from our emails earlier, so we had to check online for our reservation number. That is when disaster struck! Our reservation order was taken, but not accepted by the website! Therefore we were forced to do a bit of tap dancing…of walking between hotels looking for a room. We settled on a mediocre 4* hotel for 240 USD a night, a complete rip-off, but at least it had a cold shower!
After getting situated, we were able to wonder around aimlessly looking for dinner. After asking a few nice and a few not so nice people, we finally made it to a mall since that was the only thing really open at that time. After eating, we just headed back to the hotel, changed money, and Ko’d a little after midnight.
Jetlag sets in:
I woke up after sleeping for 5 hours…with nowhere to go. Apparently Bucharest is not an early waking city. Nothing was open until 8:30 or 9am and those were just the cafe’s and the markets started a bit after that. Wondering around the hotel, I found an excellent coffee shop. It reminded me of the many coffee shops in Taipei, Taiwan, good music, fashionable furniture/decor, some light air conditioning, and rocking coffee. Figuring I had some time, I ordered an iced coffee and sat around looking at the people.
I noticed a good division of wealth. Many of the clientele of this coffee shop had a more than decent amount of income in a country, where the per capita income was ~2000 USD, and weren’t shy in spending it. They constantly tried to show off their newly found wealth, sometimes in a gaudy way, but mostly tried to act cosmopolitan…and not doing a very good job of it. S.R. and I tried our best to help out the local economy by injecting a healthy dose of USD.
However, looking around I could see that many aren’t adapting very well and still lived in near squalor in Soviet style apartments.
What probably surprised me most was going out clubbing. Romanians love to party. Great house music, great trance music…. and completely devoid of rap and hip hop! Thank God! It was so peaceful…even at 5am! It is probably the only city in the world that I had been to where a 1000+ a capacity club only had 3 very bored looking bouncers. Everyone was having fun, smiling, and dancing the night away.
The largest building in Romania, the parliment building. It took about 1 hour to walk around the perimeter.
Weird Observation:
Every cab in Romania seemed to play only electronic music OR Lionel Richie-esque easy listening songs. I’ve learned to be able to rock both.
Cultural Clash:
As I heard the partying in Bucharest was good, I asked the younger front desk manager (female) that we wanted to see Romanian nightclubs, see the locals, and wanted to know where the best nightclubs were. She instantly started blushing and replied, “I don’t know” and called over a male coworker and started to converse in Romanian. One turned into two, two into three, three into four and finally they replied that they all don’t go to nightclubs and really wouldn’t be able to recommend any. Exasperated because I heard that everyone goes, I asked what younger Romanians go to at night, and they replied, “We go to Discos and dance or pubs for beer.” Confused, I asked what the difference was between a disco and a nightclub.
The reply was classic and quite embarrassing, “Nightclubs are were you go pay, see, and play with naked girls and discos are where we go dancing.” 
I had a great time in Romania, and if given the opportunity, I’d go back for another few days to visit the countryside. After a quick 48+ hours in Romania, S.R. and I were on our way back to Amsterdam to go to Stockholm, Sweden.
I spent a little over $3USD buying the following in a bakery:
Gotta love Romanian Beer!
Next entry….Stockholm, Sweden!
