So again its been much too long between posts. Sorry!
But anyway, it was great to catch up with many of you in November, only far too short. It was a bit of a shock coming back to the middle of one of the coldest winters in Europe for quite a few years (that's also what they said about last winter, but). We had a few weeks when the temperature hovered around -15 C - and quite a bit of snow too. It's warmed up now (a balmy 10 C today!), and only a few piles of snow remain. The other day, after a week of -10 C, so the ground was really cold, it started raining really lightly about 8am. As soon as the rain hit the ground, it froze solid instantly. So 8 it was a normal morning, by 8.30 every surface in Potsdam was covered with a few millimetres of the slipperiest ice I've ever seen. Cars were abandoned on the street where they stopped (a few dozen metres from where they started breaking), buses gave up and had smoko. One woman on the news fell over and broke her arm, so decided to go home because it was too dangerous, and on the way home, she fell over and broke her other arm. Ow! It thawed a bit by about 11, and most people could get to work.
But I'm getting distracted here, I'm meant to be talking about Romania. Me and my flatmate (from America USA) decided that as we were both not going home for Xmas, we should go somewhere a bit exotic, not just chill out in Potsdam. After a bit of deliberating we decided on Romania. People ask "why Romania?" and I reply "why not?". Then they often say that it's a horrible country, full of stray dogs, poverty, vampires, and bad roads. We ignored them (maybe because we'd booked tickets already) and went with an open mind (because the guide book I ordered on Amazon didn't arrive in time).
Well, we tried to go! Lots of snow all over Europe had thrown the airports into chaos. We checked if our flight to Munich was on time the night before we were meant to leave, to be greeted with a red "cancelled". Lufthansa had, I reckon, taken their phone off the hook so we found a train that would arrive in Munich 3h before our connecting flight to Bucharest. It was a 10h night train, so we had to pack really quickly and run to the train station, were we found it was 20min delayed, then 30min, then 40min, then I realised I forgot my passport! I found a taxi and asked him to speed to my flat, where I found my passport in about 15 seconds, and jumped back into the taxi so fast I broke the button on my pants! Racing back to the train station, I got a txt from Abiah saying the train was another 20min delayed. Phew! The train arrived, got a bed, woke up in the morning to the announcement that they were 2.5h delayed. Called Lufthansa (they were by now answering their phone), they booked us on a flight in the afternoon. Yay! Then they called back to say they only got one of us a ticket on that flight, the second ticket was snapped up by someone else while they booked the first one. At the airport we lined up for an hour or so and somehow both got boarding passes, and made in the Romania!
Romania in pictures:
Typical Bucharest cityscape.
An old fortress we visited. It was pretty run-down, but they'd repaired bits of it and had gift shops in these bits.
Brasov "Hollywood" sign on the hill above the cathedral.
Christmas dinner in the hostel. Note the 2.5L bottles of beer which cost less than $2!
Stray puppies!
The view from Dracula's castle.
After far too few days in Bucharest, our flight to Munich was an hour delayed, so of course we (just!!!) missed our connection in Munich. It was the last flight of the day, so we got put up in a hotel for the night. Got up at something like 5 the next morning, and made it to Berlin. Yay! We were joking that the only thing that could still go wrong is that they could lose our bags... And yup, you guessed it, as everyone else collects their bags and leaves, we are left by an empty luggage carousel. By the time we report them missing, I've well and truly missed my train to Czech Republic - but I'm gunna have to make that holiday a different story.
So in summary, Romania was awesome! I really like the people, the countryside is absolutely spectacular (must be mindblowing in summer), and the cities are no uglier than so many others. I definitely got the feeling that the people remember very vividly when life wasn't so good, so although they're still not living in luxury by our standards, they appreciate everything they have. And Lufthansa found our bags after 2 weeks!
Thanks for reading, I'd love to hear about your Christmases and stuff!
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