volkov

I'm in Romania now. Bucharest to be exact. just survived the 16 hour train ride from Budapest. it went pretty well actually. had a hard time sleeping on the train with all the train noises and stops and starts. no biggie. that's what they invented coffee (sorry...cafea) for right? the hostel I'm staying in tonight is interesting. the last one was very clean and quiet. apparantly this one is directly above a strip club. 8-O

it's only 11am here so it's still pretty much regular daytime stuff. I'm basically downtown so lotsa people (popoare) and businesses and all that. I shared a sleeper car with a guy from Bucharest who apparantly is making a fortune in the fish hook industry. that's right. they be making some fishing tackle here in Romania. good guy and he spoke English so we didn't have to sit there and listen to me murder the Romanian language the whole way. He doesn't have the highest opinion of Romania. he finds it a bit of a backwater. and bucharest is somehow all at once dirty(murdar), dangerous(pericol) , and expensive (scoomp). we shall see.
there are certainly some shady looking characters about and I've already been shortchanged by two cashiers. one at the metro for my ticket and the other at a convinence store. I caught the first one and gave her my best "are you seriously cheating me on a metro ticket" look. the other one I didn't realize until I was out the door. on one hand, you really don't want to stand there and count your money on the street in front of the counter, but it seems that if they know you are a foreigner...you probably should do just that. I've also had several complete strangers help me find my way to the hostel. so it's a balance. one man actually dragged me over to someone that he knew spoke english and made him hang up the phone to talk to me.

but I haven't been knocked out, abducted and sold into the sex industry yet. and i view that as an accomplishment. and one I mean to uphold.

so la revedere for now and i will try to update this in the near future.