Six cities in 12 days, Bucharest: Tourism with a punch. An ill-tempered city picking up pace away from old habits.

Airport

The first leg of the trip was through Tarom: Roman Airlines. Landed in the Henri Coanda airport (which is used for all international flights), run down and a bit shabby.

Getting around

Given one day in Bucharest, the first thing I considered was the time of flights, in and out, in order to book the right hotel. Looking at Regia Autonom? de Transport Bucure?ti website, found the bus that takes me to the city center. Since I was leaving early the next morning, I booked a hotel on the main road closest to the airport. Turned out to be a good decision. Took the advice of many travelers and booked an Uber to the city. On the way back I rode the bus, stopped almost right in front of the hotel.

I realized from my trips that Uber has a different interface for each country, in Bucharest you can choose to share rides, in Turkey it must be a Taxi.

Currency

The rule is: always travel with an global currency like USD or EUR. Romania still uses Romanian leu, buy it at the airport, it is quite cheap, almost same as trading price. I also exchanged the remaining of it on the way out at the airport. I forgot about some 50 Lie, had to exchange them in Brussels, and as you might have guessed, it was twice as expensive.

People

The language is Romanian, obviously, but it sounded like an unaccented version of Italian, with a couple of unusual sounds. English was spoken and understood, but the people were unwelcoming. Most of my encounters with Romanians gave me the impression that they are always mad! Like seriously, short tempered, and quick to dismiss!

My encounter with the passport control officer was unusual. When I answered any of her questions, she promoted: show me! So I had to prove my exit ticket, and my hotel ticket, luckily I had them ready on my mobile, offline. That wasn’t the case in any other airport.

Once in Gatwick airport, the officer wanted me to tell her exactly how I got my “other passport,” stating something ridiculous as: “I am asking because I am interested in getting one myself!” So I told her, go check their website.

Hot-tempered nation

My second encounter was with the hotel lady, who insisted on giving me directions for the shuttle bus over the phone. She said when you go out, go left — or right, I could not care less — and wait there. There was a much easier way: Wait at stand B! They had four stands, all numbered!. I missed the first shuttle, and the second one I was wondering if it were the right one, ended up an hour late. She practically reproached me when I called second time: “You don’t listen!” she said!

Third encounter was Uber driver, who said nothing when I said hello! Fine by me. When he dropped me off, he dumped me off in the middle of a two-lane road! Which made me chuckle. Humans will tend to get things done with the least amount of effort, this is a universal law.

The juice

The sights that interested me and I went for, were mainly the Village Museum, and the Museum of Old Maps. They did not fail to impress. The Village Museum is large, so you need to dedicate some time for it.

The maps museum is 3 stories high, though the oldest map drawn upside down by Mohammed Al Idrisi, and the map of the Atlantic ocean in 1513 by Piri Reis, in Arabic, were not in it, bummer!

Bucharest’s Champs-élysées is nothing like the Parisian Champs-élysées. It’s a weird figure sitting in the middle of a wide roundabout, with noway to cross over to, or climb. If you go to Bucharest, you can skip that. It was on the way between the Village and the Maps museum.

The downtown in every city is a must, it is tainted with culture, and real people’s lives. Romania has just left communism behind, but the traces in its people are still hanging in. I bought shawerma from a Lebanese place. Lebanese are fun-loving people, and quite loud. Not in Bucharest! I was served with a frown!

When I wanted to know how to buy a bus ticket, I walked around for an hour, asked many people, using English, or Google Translate, I got dismissed once, and given vague directions in another instance. Finally found the small kiosk with the angry dude that sold the tickets, he never instructed me to wait on the other side. I had to guess few minutes before the bus arrived that I was on the wrong side. Asked him again, he gestured his hand in open space and said: you have to wait over there! Damn dude! Couldn’t you be more specific! Half an hour later, I found the stop. Another half an hour, rode the bus.

At one point, I did not know whether to buzz the driver or not, because I did not see anyone buzz. But I did not want to take chances. When I got close to the station, I tapped on the shoulder of the guy who was wrapping his hand around the buzzer, and told him I wanted to press the buzzer. He did not seem to like it, I could tell by the tone of his angry voice throwing Romanian at me! I shrugged and smiled. Though I believed the clever thing to do was to respond in Arabic! Eh! Anywayz!

If I had more then one day, I would have went a bit further to see one of those marvelous Transylvanian castles.

The juice of this trip was seeing the airplanes land quietly, from the window of the my hotel room.

Next week…

Was it worth it to take a low carrier and land an hour away from Brussels? Is the Manneken Pis something worth seeing? What kind of train ticket to buy? I’ll see you next week.