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| Bucharest, the capital of Romania. This picture makes it look 100x better than it actually is. |
So, I’d been planning this trip for ages.
I’ve always wanted to see Romania, because of Transylvania and, more recently,
Vlad Tepes. Anyone who’s familiar with east European history knows all about
the Impaler of Wallachia and how his fate was intertwined with Mehmet II, the
infamous Fall of Constantinople and the Order of the Dragon.
What I hadn’t anticipated, though, was how
anti-Romanian almost everyone seemed to be. I was fresh out of my West
Europe/Iberia bout, and during that trip I had gotten the first few clues that
Romania was not that popular among the class of EU. In England, it’s even more
obvious – people actually grimace and look like they’ve stepped into something
if the word “Romanian” is even mentioned. There’s lots of politics involved,
mostly immigrants and the NHS and the like – just check out Dailymail – but I
can’t really comment on that since I’m not British.
Anyway, we were pretty much sneered at
every time we tried to buy Romanian leis/leus/RONS (I still can’t tell the
difference between these three? RONS makes me think of Weasley is our king). At
this point, we were kind of fed up with all the hate we were getting. I’m very
ostensibly Asian, not Romanian or Roma, my name doesn’t end in -escu, I won’t
be pulling a Carmen on you, and I’m not here to claim free benefits or
healthcare.
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| Romanian leis/leus/RONS. |
I suppose I should also talk a bit about
our itinerary. We’d initially planned to do this mini round trip – Bucharest,
Brasov, Sinaia, Sibiu, Cluj, Sighisoara and the Iron Gates (which border
Serbia), then back to the capital. And I’d really been counting on visiting
Poenari Fortress and Snagov Monastery, both of which are musts for any serious
Vlad fan. Unfortunately, we had only 6 days, so I had to whittle it down
considerably. After seeing some of their more well known castles (Bran, Peles
etc.), I don’t think I’m too upset about the ones I didn’t get to see, but I do
feel a tinge of regret when I think of missing out on the Danube. Add to that
the fact that Romania has a lot of room for improvement when it comes to
general transport. The Iron Gates is practically unreachable if you’re two
Asian girls who left their international driving licences at home..
Did I mention that the Romanian online
railway website is really tricky? So you have cfr.ro, where you plan your trip,
and then there’s an entirely different website
(https://bilete.cfrcalatori.ro/vanzare/loginuser.aspx) where you do the actual
booking. Which took us ages to find.
We got around by trains mostly, which
connect the major cities/towns quite well. Secondary means of transport were
buses/coaches and taxis. We were especially careful with taxis, since we had
been heavily warned about them by all the locals, and I do mean ALL of the
locals that we encountered. Not to mention the whole hoard of taxi horrorstories floating around the web! However, we had a pretty good experience with
their taxi drivers on the whole, and it really does work out very cheap (if
you’re not being conned/scammed, that is) so it’s worth giving a shot, though
you should always exercise your vigilance, let them know you’re not someone to
be messed with. Do not get into the taxi if you think the cabby looks sketchy,
eg. tattooed within an inch of his life, smoking like a chimney, reeking of
pot, glittering in the sun and sprouting fangs..
I know I’m jumping around a bit here, but I
wanted to lay the groundwork, and anyone who’s planned their own getaway in
countries they’ve never been before knows that the preparation process is just
as important as, if not more than, the actual trip. But I digress. One of the
main defining parameters for this trip was something that happened literally
right after we got off the plane. I am not exaggerating in the slightest when I
say that it was a deeply traumatising and very disturbing experience, and
effectively ruined, or at least soured, the rest of the trip for us.
Well, we’d just reached the Henri Coanda,
otherwise known as Otopeni airport, safe and sound (so far), via one of the big
three low cost carriers. I’d found that bus no. 780 could take us from the
airport straight to the city centre, which would cost us 4.5 lei. We bought a
little blue card at the coack kiosk right outside the terminal, which the seller
said was what we needed for the bus, and were informed that this was the Oyster
of Bucharest and that it was loaded with two journeys. We went on the bus and
beeped it through – at this stage all was completely normal – and felt very
pleased with ourselves. Little did we know what horrors were in store for us!
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| The ticket that started it all |
The trip lasted for about an hour, and near
the end of the journey was when things got very unpleasant. A woman in plain
clothes (we initially thought that she was a civilian) came up to us and
demanded to see our bus tickets. I smelled a rat immediately, but we did as she
said. She then beeped both of our cards on some sort of app on her cellphone.
Mine went through okay, but my friend’s showed red. The woman then informed us
(in rather broken English) that my friend’s card was invalid, and that she would
have to pay a fine of 50 lei.
We were gobsmacked. My friend immediately
produced the receipt given to us when we’d purchased our bus cards, and told
the woman that this was proof that we’d bought our card fair and square and we
weren’t trying to cheat her etc. No can do, the woman said. Another blogger who had the same experience as we did had it completely right when he described the
woman as “ruefully/gleefully demanding our money.” I then demanded to see the
woman’s ID card. Of course, it was all in Romanian, and the woman kept
insisting that this ticket checking scamming was her job. I said that I
couldn’t read Romanian, and that it could be anything. She chose to ignore this
comment. I said that we were approaching our stop and would she please let us leave.
And just when we thought that things couldn’t get any worse, they did. A bunch
of pot-bellied, middle-aged men came and surrounded us, and demanded our 50
lei. And the other passengers just sat there and looked away, and did nothing,
which I found equally disturbing.
I tried to go past the woman, but she
grabbed me forcefully and flung me back. You’re staying here, she said. We’re
going to the police station. The police station? I said, in defiant relief.
Good. That’s where I WANT to go. Because we’ll go there and I’ll tell them what
you’ve done here today, since what you’re doing is obviously very wrong.
That took the wind out of her sails, and
she paused for a moment before saying, OK. If you want to go to the police
station, that’s 150 lei.
At this point, one of the locals finally
(thank you) decided to intervene. He and the woman started arguing forcefully,
half in Romanian, half in broken English. Basically he was telling them that we
had bought and paid for the tickets, and how were we supposed to know that one
of them was invalid, and that it wasn’t our fault that the ticket didn’t work –
that was the seller’s fault. He also mentioned the fact that we were tourists
and didn’t understand Romanian, and that since we’d obviously PAID for the tickets,
we weren’t at fault. And this was what the Woman said:
“What do you mean, she (pointing at me)
can’t speak Romanian? She CAN speak Romanian, all right.”
I repudiated this ridiculous claim
immediately, and noticed our bus stop going past. I turned back to the Woman
and her cronies, and demanded that they let me go. In answer, they packed
around us even closer. I tried to get past them, but they threw me back
fiercely. Something inside me snapped, and I launched myself back at them
desperately. I am still not quite sure how exactly I managed it, but I somehow
got through all those compact, sweaty pot bellies and flailing limbs, and
half-fell off the bus, which had stopped at another stop. Again, the passer-bys
just stood there and didn’t help us. When I’d picked myself up from the curb,
the bus was driving away and I could hear my friend screaming. I can’t
articulate the horror I felt in that moment; at this point, I felt that the
people here were capable of anything, and I was sure that I’d never see her
again.
Next to me, the local boy (who had also
gotten off, although I hadn’t noticed at the time) was on the phone. He told me
that he was calling the police, and that those people did this to tourists all
the time – the day before, he said, they’d forced an American to give them 50
USD. He suggested that we go after the bus, since my friend was still on it,
and I followed him in a sort of half-daze. The bus had drawn up about ten
minutes walk from the stop we’d “gotten” off – and my friend was still trapped
inside, with the woman. The driver and some of the pot bellies were outside,
milling about and smoking. I immediately drew back, but the boy told me that they
wouldn’t do anything to me. Says you, I thought, the memory of the tussle still
horribly fresh in my mind, but I followed him nonetheless.
The two of us stood outside the bus, and I
shouted some words of encouragement to my friend, while the pot bellies glared
at us. After about 20 minutes of stalemate (the police still hadn’t showed up)
the doors opened and my friend came out. The pot bellies got onto the bus,
which drove away, and I yelled after them, but of course they didn’t stop. The
boy shrugged and said that they weren’t sticking around for the police. I asked
him suspiciously if the police were to be trusted, which he assured me they
were. My friend was all right – very shellshocked and distressed, obviously,
but intact. She hadn’t given them any money, and we waited there till the
police came. They talked a bit with the boy, looked over our passports and
asked us what we were doing in Romania, and gave us incredulous looks when we
said we were here as tourists – “Touring? Here? Alone? In Romania? You girls
are brave horrendously stupid.” (We were going to get a lot of this in the days
to come.) They offered us a ride to the hostel, which we gratefully accepted.
Before we left, I thanked the local boy, who said that he hated the bus
scammers and that they were giving the city a bad name (amen to that!), and
that he was just doing what was right.
The police saw us safely into our hostel,
and instructed us to keep safe (easier said than done) and call 112 if we ever
needed help again. It was still rather early on in the day at that point –
about 2pm – but the two of us were still so traumatised by the whole incident
that we simply flopped on our beds after we’d checked in, and stayed there for
the rest of the afternoon, talking about what had happened. We were seriously
debating whether or not to book the next flight back to London. I told my
friend what a Romanian acquaintance of mine had said when he heard I was going
to Bucharest – “You are going to Bucuresti? It is not safe there. I am worried
for you, I wish I was going with you.” As well as all of the annoying “I
toooooold you so” guff when I told him what had transpired. Even the local
Romanians don’t like their capital – another thing we were going to hear a lot
of in the days to come. No smoke without fire.
(A/N: Am flying over the English channel
right now and it is simply magnificent. It’s a sunny, clear day and the sea is
turquoise. As always, it takes my breath away, seeing how close UK is to the
Continent. I feel like I could swim over there. Britain, the empire upon which
the sun never sets.)
Some of the hostel’s other guests showed up
– a Romanian girl from Brasov, and a lovely Slovenian couple. We told them
about our nasty run-in, and they were wonderfully sympathetic. They also effectively
talked us out of going back to London, assuring us that central Romania, where
they’d just come from, was perfectly safe. They then invited us to explore the
city with them, which we accepted with pleasure. We ended up having a lovely
evening and fantastic dinner – Romanian food is among the best I’ve tasted in
my life, and I’m East Asian. I might actually consider coming back, just for
the food. More to come.
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| A statue of Romulus and Remus in the city square |
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