Accountant Adventures: I Thought This Was Going to be Easy

At Parcui Carol (Carol Park)

I had to wake up at 6:30am this morning!! I know for a normal person, who has a job or school, that isn’t insanely early, but for me, that is ridiculous. The weather this morning was really nice and the thermometer read 14 degrees Celsius (57 in Fahrenheit). I was really excited to be heading South to Bucharest where I hoped for the weather to be even warmer. Unfortunately upon arrival in Bucharest the temperature was only 9 degrees (48 in Fahrenheit) and dropping.

Whenever I book a hostel they email me and give me directions on how to get to the hostel and depending on the hostel they are either really descriptive or very vague. Here are the exact directions I was provided by my hostel “From the airport: The Express Bus no 783 from Airport to P-ta Unirii, then the subway for one station until the Tineretului station”. Sounded simple enough. When I landed at the airport in Bucharest I was bombarded by taxi drivers wanting to give me a ride. Here is a conversation I had with one driver:

Driver: Where are you going? I will give you the very best rate.
Shaun: No thank you.
Driver: You don’t even know what I am charging. I will give you the very best rate, I have official documentation I can show you.
Shaun: No thank you.
Driver: How will you get to where you are going if you will not be taking my cab with the very best rate?
Shaun: I’m taking a bus. Thank you but no thanks.
Driver: There are no buses here only taxi’s, I will take you for the very best rate.

I had been walking away from the airport while he was talking at me and away from him the whole time and finally he had gone far enough away from the airport entrance and retreated back to look for another person. As I was walking out to the main street to where I assumed the buses were, the “they don’t exist” line is 99.99% of the time a lie, I passed by at least 20 more taxis. At each taxi the driver would ask if I wanted a ride and I would say no. Then the next driver would ask me the same and I would again repeat no. It makes me wonder do some people eventually give in and take the 8th or even the 14th taxi?

I found a small street magazine store and asked about the bus. The woman pointed nearby to where some people were gathered. I inquired about buying a ticket from her and she sold them but wouldn’t accept my 50 LEI ($17 USD) for a 2 LEI ($.70) ticket. Nearly everywhere I have been no one wants to take “large” bills. I don’t know why the ATM’s don’t give smaller bills so they will be taken by merchants. I decided to chance not getting caught rather than spending a bunch of time finding change or buying enough from the magazine lady to get her to give me change.

When the bus came I hopped on and kept my eyes peeled for anyone that looked like transit authority. I was having a bit of a panic attack that I would get fined and hoped that I could spy transit authority getting on the bus and hop off and then take the next bus to avoid a fine. I had tried to buy a ticket and I would gladly pay the fare, if someone would give me my proper change. I rode the bus to the end and never saw my stop. The directions from the hostel had neglected to tell me the bus ran in two directions from the airport and that I needed to cross the street to catch the bus. As I rode the bus back past the airport, I kept panicking that I was going to get caught without a ticket and get a huge fine. When the bus reached its other end point without reaching my stop, I showed the bus driver where I wanted to go and he told me his bus didn’t go there and I would need to get off.

I asked at an information desk how to get where I wanted to go and was told to take a new bus to a different stop and then take the metro from there to my destination. Again I tried to purchase a ticket and was refused because I still only had the 50 LEI note. On the new bus I was still nervous of being caught and when the bus encountered massive amounts of traffic I decided to get off and walk the rest of the way. My luggage is a small day backpack and a rolling bag that I put most of my stuff in. Back in Morocco the rubber coating came off my wheels and now I only have one wheel left, the other has been ground away. In order to pull my bag I have to tilt it to one side so that it balances on the one good wheel or drag it on the ground which is starting to tear the bag apart.

I figured if I could find any subway entrance I could figure out the trains and make it to my hostel. I was able to find a metro sign but the entrance was blocked by ropes and signs I could not read in Romanian. I headed down the street to another metro in the direction that I believed my hostel to be in. When I got to the next metro station, I found that it was also closed. I later learned that the workers were on strike and as such the metro wasn’t running. I eventually found my hostel in an unmarked house in a residential zone after three hours of wandering around Bucharest with a bag with only one wheel. So much for an easy day of transit.