writing on the train yesterday...

So this is a bunch of drivel i wrote yesterday on our 11 or so hour trip on the train yesterday...

We're now on the train to Budapest and I just realized it's going to be a monster sized leg of our trip... probably ~ 11-12 hours on the train... I figure it's a good time to write up the next blog as as any, if not a good time to just write random crap because I have around 10 hours of train time and 6 or so hours of battery life on the netbook.
I checked the exchange rate of the Hungarian Florint and it's $1 - 226 florint. $5000 in my account would show 1.3Mil. Florint, so that would be quite funny to see (if only I had $5000). I hope the atm machine gives my balance on the reciept so I can feel rich for once...lol. Speaking of money, we've done incredibly well thus far with spending very little. Our travel had been paid for months ahead of time so other than the occasional reservation fee on the train, we've paid nothing for travel. The buses in Constanta were free and other than the trains that's the only other way we've run around other than walking and having Liviu and Bogden taxi us around for a couple days in Bucharest. We filled up his Ford Fiesta for around $40, but that was well worth not having the hassle of figuring out Bucharest on our own. Gas was around $8 a gallon when we figured it out... no more bitching about gas prices for me, if I can stay under $4 I'm pretty sure I'll be happy for ae while, gas is expensive EVERYWHERE on this continent from what I've been told.
Our train was around an hour late into the station so that made our already insanely long train ride a bit longer to deal with...bleh. We should make it to Budapest around 7pm but judging by the delays we've encountered to this point, I imagine it'll be closer to 9pm when we get there. Let's hope we don't have to get through too much of the town to get to our hostel... The brochure for the place in Budapest mentioned that it shouldn't cost more than 10 Euro from the train station to the hostel. This is a good thing to know since it's a good idea to haggle with taxi drivers prior to getting in the car because if you don't, the common scam is to charge you an insane amount more than it's supposed to be. As more than one guide book I've read said, it's usually the first scam that most people visiting Europe run into.

We've already ran into a few of them in our time on the road and I'm actually thinking about getting a wallet just to see if any of these bastards are quick enough to pick my pocket... seriously, I'd actually like to see just how sneaky they are. Other than that, we've felt relatively safe, Hell, Anthony went to get some beer the other night in the projects around midnight...haha. He got back and said that it was probably not a good idea to do that again. I guess it helps that he's about twice the size of most Romanians...lol.

The country side of Romania is a lot like Oregon at times, and in some cases like Florida. Right now I have a view of some big hills about 20 miles away with fields full of grass/hay just off the tracks. The countryside is spotted with small farms, many of them couldn't possibly have electricity. Every structure looks old and somewhat run down, people are always outside, and it seems every house has at least a cow and a horse tied up outside. Some of the folks are even lucky enough to have a goat or two. We passed a little old guy the other day who had a donkey on a rope behind him, and the tail of the donkey had a couple goats tied to it.

While I have the time... let's talk about drinks. The Romanian people have it right, beer costs less than coke or orange juice in almost every place you go. I've been drinking big bottles of water or orange Fanta on occasion when I wasn't drinking beer... the Fanta is about 4 Lei and a bottle or can of beer starts at around 3 Lei in stores. A 330ml can of pepsi at a restaurant this morning cost me 4 lei, that's for a 12 ounce can... just like ours back in the US. Beer at the same restaurant cost 4.5 lei for a 500ml glass on draft. It's not the best beer in the world, but it's the equivalent of a coors light as far as I'm concerned. I'm still fine drinking it when it's what I have to work with. The water comes carbonate more times than not... so it's been a learning experience when it comes to buying water... the word (Plata) means flat. It's usually in parenthesis just like that on a bottle if it is indeed a bottle of flat water. After the first day and buying the mineral water more than once or twice, I kind of didn't mind it and would maybe venture to say that I liked it a bit... it just didn't seem to quench the thirst so much.

We passed a horse buggy being pulled with only 3 wheels...lol. That poor horse. Just after that we just passed a couple "water towers" that look like a silo at Chernobyl...lol. Hopefully I'm not glowing green later on.
Something else that I've seen that I thought was cool... You know how in the US when you pass a school, there's a basketball court around it... in front, behind, on the side... somewhere around it. Well here it's like that with football courts (street soccer) as the typical American would see it. The goals are a bit smaller, and I've yet to see one with nets, but they're just in front of every school I've seen. I will admit though, I have seen at least two basketball goals up so far.

Every little town we pass through is noticeable from a good ways off due to all of them having one big church in the middle of them. They all have one big pointy spire on them and have mostly been white. They stand out quite a bit since most other buildings are a shade of tan or brown.

Romania is stuck in the 90's when it comes to music, some 80's and a little new stuff, but it seems everyone is all about the 90's music. At first we thought it was just kinda funny how the music was a throwback in a place or two, but then we started noticing it everywhere we went. With the occasional Romanian song thrown in, we had a soundtrack straight out of my school age years.
So, that's been Romania for the most part... now we're off to Bucharest and I figure that's about all I can write about our first country. We met a few cool people, had a few good, and not so good beers and food... more pizza than we really should have, but mostly because we didn't really know what a lot of food was and the two of us being somewhat picky eaters kind of kicks the "try everything" approach that some people could do while abroad. I feel like a kid when I order food because I'd LOVE a picture menu, the problem with that though... the food we've seen in pictures looked like something we wouldn't even want so that's not exactly helped too much. One place had a menu that looked ok while reading it, but then looking at the pics of everything made me not even think I'd want that... and that sux.

Would I come back? If I were really looking for a woman to marry and had money enough to come out here for a long time, heck yes. With that aside, it was a cool experience and I wouldn't mind passing through on another trip some time but as we leave Romania, I'm glad that we're going somewhere else... so I guess that's a yes and a maybe/maybe not rolled into one answer.