Romania, At Last!

What a comedy of errors, escaping Budapest. After a pretty serious subway mishap that I won't mention here, and trying to buy tickets at the wrong window, by the time we finally purchased our train tickets for the 11:45 to Arad (where Cameron met us in Romania), it was 11:43, and we were no where near the train. We couldn't even find the train at first. When finally boarded the train we were soaked in sweat, with our hearts beating furiously, but happy to have made it. It left the station 2 minutes later, which was 2 minutes late. The train ride was fine, and we got to see plenty of country side. Our next scare came when someone took our passports and walked away (shortly after someone else had already stamped them at the previous stop). For what seemed like forever, but couldn't have been more than 25 minutes, I was playing out a new travel scenario where we our first stop would be the American Embassy. We drank together in the train station for the first time together during the trip, Cameron found us, we caught up a bit, then it was off to his apartment. It rained terribly on the way there, and our taped up luggage (they broke the zipper while inspecting it between Detroit and NY, so they just did a bad job taping it with "inspection tape") was beginning to really fall apart. But we made it, ate at a cool place, talked, and went to sleep. Ben and I both had to sleep in the floor, it was my first time. Even though it wasn't comfortable by any means, and I listened to at least two hours of Harry Potter, Book 7, it was cooler than in NY, and I eventually fell asleep.

Today we really got to see Tiisoara. We must have walked about 15 miles around town, including two very important areas: Piata Unirii (which had very expensive apartments, restaurants and bars, and everything else, the Times Square of Romania), and Victory Scqare (the coolest part of town to hang out in, and where the fall of Communism basically took place in Romania. We also walked around and ate at Lulius Mall, which is like the Troy Summerset Mall, if that were the only super-duper mall in the entire country. It's not just the biggest and most expensive mall in the country, but the entire region. Camerson told us many times how self conscious Romanians are, or leaving a favorable impression of themselves, that they hang around at the mall just to be seen, or buy one thing, then tell everyone where it came from. It's not even common for them to take extra food home from a restaurant, because they think that would make themselves look poor in the eyes of others. But as I wandered the mall, I didn't seem many people with stuff. They were actually just walking around like us. From there we did some grocery shopping at a huge and modern grocery store. With both places, I found it amazing how different and similar products were in both countries. I think the biggest difference is that stores like these would be considered more normal in the US, and within the average American's means, while hear, they are extraordinary.

Right now, Cameron is cooking us up some mici, a traditional meat dinner. Tonight we're going cubbing late into the night. Oops, dinner's served. No proofreading here.