Bucuresti

I finally arrived in Bucharest after 29 hours on a Ukrainian train. Bleh. Luckily, my kupe mate was a Spanish guy returning returning to the EU after teaching in Russia for two years. Strangely, although he spoke English, he insisted on communicating with me in Russian. Wasn't sure if he did it so we wouldn't draw attention to oursleves or so that we would both be speaking our third languages with one another. Maybe his English just wasn't that great.

I got into the city around 7pm. After buying my ticket to Sofia and checking into my hostel, I wandered down to the center to have dinner at a Lonely Planet recommended joint called "La Mama." They served taditional Romanian cuisine and I had a giant glass of dry, red wine, tomato/cucumber/radish salad, grilled pork neck with romanian style potatoes that cost about $10. It was both awesome and cheap, which made it even better.

There is striking difference between Romanians and my Eastern European bretheren - on a superficial note, they are darker and oval-faced, unlike my fairer, potato-headed kin. Linguistically, Romanian is trying, since it is a romance language. I've had to dig deep into the recesses of my brain to remember those years of French and that summer in Paris that seem so long ago. Although there are many cognates with French and Spanish, there are smatterings of slavic, for instance, yes and no are "da" and "ne." It's a little confusing at first, but I've found that most people in the city speak some English, when I'm in doubt.

Today, I started at Piata Unirii, the south most square and wandered by the massive, marble Palace Parliament (notoriously the one of the largest buildings in the world - second only to the Pentagon - built by Ceacescu while the Romanian people starved), the old town area, where I saw the old Prince Palace, former home to Vlad the Impaler (the basis for Dracula) and up through more squares and main thoroughfares to the Museum of the Romanian Peasant. Generally, I have found Romanians to be relaxed and friendly, prefering to spend their days lazily chain-smoking at cafes during the day, and eating late (and smoking more) at night, rather than frantically racing through life. Notably, they smile, a far cry from the FSU.

Anyway, my train to Sofia leaves around 7:30 this evening, so I only have a few hours of wandering left. Looking forward to Bulgaria, since it has a lot of Turkish cultural influences, plus, they use a cyrillic alphabet, so communication should be less of a chore.

More later.