The Three Stooges go to Romania
[So far, I haven’t written about any family or friends coming out because this is a journal about the Peace Corps experience. But, Orangie insisted.]
The train was going to be 3 hours late; so, I was going to be late and two of my best buddies were going to be waiting in Bucharest. The last thing I wanted was to strand two good friends in the middle of Romania. So, I put on my big boy pants and worked on a solution. A bus was the next obvious solution. Nothing, for the rest of the day. Last resort was to try and hitch a ride to Romania and figure out a way to get to the capital.
Within 20 minutes, I had found a guy willing to drive me to ‘the border.’ And, from there, I could walk across, get everything stamped, and then hop on a bus to Bucharest. Sounds great. The guy and I are cruising along – mostly talking about if I could get him a visa to America – and listening to ‘80s glam rock. Classy. Pretty soon, we come to a bridge and shortly thereafter, I see a sign that says ‘Romania’ dead-center of the bridge. My first thought is, ‘he isn’t going to spot here, is here?’ Sure enough, he points to the sign, says border and stops the car.
After an unnerving walk across the Danube, I reach the customs officer who is shocked to see me. He asks me – first in Romanian and then Bulgarian – ‘what are you doing?’ I explain and he says you can’t walk across the bridge. After a few minutes, I just am looking at him with a well-I-just-did face and he just sighs and stamps my passport. I am official in Romania.
Scanning the horizon, there is only one town to head for (to this day, I don’t know its name). After 20-30 minutes, I am in the center and wander my way to the bus station. From there it is an easy ride to the Capital and after an hour of wandering I am at the meeting point. I was there at 16.00 – the agreed upon meeting time.
I lost my passport. I can’t get on the plane. I guess I will try to get a new one tomorrow. There is no reason to email Moe, he will be meeting up with Larry soon enough and will know the whole story.
I missed my connecting flight from Frankfurt to Bucharest. After spending 12 hours sleeping on a airport floor, I catch my flight. It gets in late in Bucharest and I only brought the phone number of the meeting point. No name, no address. After sharing drinks with some guys on the plane, they offer to drive me to the city center.
The city center is sketchy – a pack of dogs and a pack of Roma folk have been following me for awhile. Realizing that I am not going to get anything done tonight, I get a random hotel and crash for a few hours.
Moe Howard.
I wake up the next day and head straight for an internet café – one of them has to have emailed me by now. The only new message is Curly relaying his tale of passport idiocy and that Larry had gotten on a plane of Frankfurt; so, ‘he has got to be looking for ya, man.’
Larry Fine.
I get an email from Moe and call a number of some contacts he gave me. Once I met up with them, they took me to the train station – where Moe was waiting.
Moe Howard.
I was waiting in the train station when I saw Larry walk up with some other folk. From about 40 yards out, I ran through the crowded terminal, got to Larry and slugged him in the stomach.
[I can’t do the Stooge deal anymore; so, I will just hammer out the rest normally.]
Once Todd and I met up, we decided to go to take a one day trip out of Bucharest with the friends. One of those friends is a Peace Corps Volunteer in Romania and we just let him get the tickets. We were off to Transylvania and spent most of the ride in the cafeteria car catching up over some beer. Four hours later, we were at the former abode of Vlad the Impaler [aka Dracula].
It was pretty solid – here are some pictures:
The next day, we headed back to Bucharest to pick up Curl…I mean Orangie. He had some how managed to get all the passport stuff done in a day and had made his flight.
All three of us reunited pretty much meant the end of being tourists and the start of chaos. [read: us in pubs throwing punches at each other]. The next day we headed to Bulgaria and made it to my town after over 5 hours of trains. Once in my apartment, all we did was eat, drink and hang out. Seriously – I tried to set up the touristy stuff, but I should have known better. This is a Spring Break crowd. Three days later we were on a bus and I sent them off to Bucharest. The next few days were spend drinking water, sleeping, and stretching out the shoulder, gut, and thigh bruises.
And, that was that.
--Mark.
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