The city of traffic
The road to Bucharest is magnificent: well paved and built like an interstate. We make great time towards the city, but we aren’t exactly sure what we are hurtling towards. The AirBnB reservation is not confirmed yet, Javier’s friend from his grad school days may or may not join us for dinner, and we have no idea what to do otherwise.
During the little planning we did back in California we saw that there are shooting ranges in Bucharest that let you shoot all sorts of weird weapons that are illegal in the US. I’ve shot AK-47s before, but not Uzi’s and the shooting ranges even advertise some guns that I don’t even recognize. Unfortunately we learn that night that they book up weeks in advance and are designed for large groups so we won’t be able to shoot exotic weapons while intoxicated.
About a mile outside of the city we come to a standstill on the highway. I assume there’s been an accident ahead. Javier, who has been sleeping, briefly wakes up to grumble, “What an asshole.” I ask him what he’s talking about. He just says, “Hmmm? Yeah,” then goes back to sleep. It’s not an accident, we’re just stuck in traffic now. Bucharest has a population of 2.5 million people and they must all own cars and drive them at the same time. We travelled 50 miles from Targoviste in 45 minutes. It takes us another hour and a half to make it the next three miles into the city center where we think our AirBnB is.
The city is fascinating to look at. As we drive in there are tons of shanty towns around industrial factories that slowly give way to apartment buildings with commercial storefronts and fast food restaurants. We drive past a military fighter jet on display in a park, I’m not sure what it is but it looks like the offspring of an F-14 that had sex with a Harrier. We drive past a a large park with a mansion in it that Javier identifies as Ceausescu’s former residence. As we continue the buildings shift from Soviet style apartment blocks to Classical style government buildings. Ceausescu built a MASSIVE Parliament building and other administrative buildings we pass as we approach the city center are simply beautiful. We park in front of a very modern looking library (also a Ceausescu project) and try to go find wifi to settle our AirBnB situation and link up with Javier’s friend.
The only real pedestrian traffic friendly place we see is “Hotel Royale” so we head over there. The building is tall and narrow with empty lots on all sides of the block it occupies, which is weird because all the buildings in this part of town look very nice and space appears to be at a premium.
Inside is a small lobby with some tables next to a bar. There is only one open table, the rest are occupied by large portly oily men in leather jackets smoking and drinking coffee. We take the open table and start trying to connect to wifi but can’t get on. There are two options, one for hotel guests and one for the bar. The bar option is getting us nowhere. Javier goes up to the front desk and bullshits his way into convincing the receptionist that he’s a guest of the hotel and he gets the guest password.
Once we’re connected we learn our AirBnB offer was not accepted. It’s already 8pm at night and I’m starting to freak out that we’ll be homeless for the night. Though based on recent nights it’s not out of the question that we’ll pull an all nighter and don’t really need a hotel room anyway. The Hotel Royale is all booked up, but before we decide to try their partner hotel (the drabby and run down looking International a few blocks down the road). Javier calls his friend, Clara, and thankfully she cuts out the confusion by offering to meet us at Hotel Royale. When she arrives with her husband a few minutes later she is a little surprised we are at the Royale, apparently it’s where the Secret Service equivalent stay in Bucharest. She takes us instead to the Double Tree down the road where we get some awesome rooms - and free cookies! Based on the quality of the building it seems brand new and our rooms are very nice and reasonably priced.
We just drop off our bags before heading out for dinner with Clara. She takes us to a very popular Romanian restaurant called Caru ce Bere in a very Western style neighborhood that must be an expat haven. On the walk over through more downtown neighborhoods we pass more gorgeous architecture, including the former National Bank and the Theater.
The restaurant is packed, with only room available outside. It’s pretty cold, but the restaurant provides long white fleece blankets for outdoor diners and it’s actually a cool ambience once we get settled. Clara does the ordering for us, which is blessedly more pork based dishes. All sorts of sausages and pork chops. We order special Romanian spirit called Tuica, it’s a plum spirit but must be brandy distilled in some way. For dessert we order these awesome giant donuts covered in jam, more brandy, and sour cream. I’m stuffed after the dinner but the donuts are simply amazing and I eat some of Javier’s too.
Clara is simply amazing, multiple degrees, professor, and her intellect is only matched by her looks. Her husband hit the jackpot, and he’s really accomplished as well. We spend the night just talking about Romania, traditions, watching the restaurant’s occasional ballroom dance demonstration, giving money to the random kids that come around the table selling flowers (we literally gave the same kid money on three separate occasions), and a Charlie Chaplin dressed street performer comes around with parakeets that I snap photos with giving me kisses - he tops it off with a “fortune” that Clara translates for me as “this is an important year, but watch out for the alcohol and remember to call your mother.” Clara explains it’s the same fortune for everyone.
After dinner wraps up around midnight I’m in prime spirit and ready to hit the town, but we need to stop by the hotel room first to change and charge our phones. Javier needs to check email and possible interview requests so we agree to meet in the lobby in twenty minutes. After a day of driving, brandy, and heavy pork dinner I decide to just get off my feet for the twenty minutes and lay down. I wake up seven hours later.
Javier did not rest, and returns to the hotel at about the same time I’m waking up. I’ve planned our route for the day, we have a six hour drive ahead of us back to Chisinau, with border crossings averaging about 45 minutes each time, the occasional bathroom and food break and the traffic out of the city and a rental car return time of 6pm I backplan our return and conclude we need to be leaving no later than 10am. It’s currently 7am and I have no faith that Javier is going to be ready by then.
I start what is now a subjectively familiar wakeup process: knock on his door, wait a few seconds, knock again louder. He comes to the door, I tell him we need to leave at 10, and that it’s 9 already (ok, not true but after six days of waking up Javier I know how the drill works). He says he’ll be ready. I clean up and go downstairs to walk around the city some more, drink some coffee and try to find a breakfast place doing something interesting. It’s lightly raining so I don’t walk too far, just up and Bulevardul Unirii that our hotel sits on which appears to be Bucharest’s equivalent to Broadway or Champs Elysees. There’s a really pretty canal running along the street and were it not for the rain it would be a gorgeous morning constitutional. I find some great coffee, but breakfast is either not a Bucharest thing or I just don’t know where to look. There is a McDonalds next to a massive shopping mall but I can’t bring myself to get a McGriddle in Bucharest.
I get back to the hotel at 9 and knock on Javier’s door again, nothing. I call his room instead and he wakes up. I tell him it’s 9:30 and we need to roll out. I get some mumbly grumblings in return. I go back to his door and knock and he gets out of bed and answers the door. By now I know that this time he’s actually awake, and after a quick shower he should be ready to roll.
Up to this point I’m assuming he fell asleep last night as well, so at 10:15 when he meets me in the lobby I’m a little pissed. We’re off the time table and the trip hasn’t even started yet. Javier needs coffee so we go a local shop, have a little pastry breakfast and get going at 10:30. Traffic is bad, but not as bad as the night prior trying to get into the city. Javier kills the traffic monotony by telling me about his night. Apparently he knocked on my door but realized I was out and so hit the bars on his own. Generally he said the people were awesome, and really generous. After running up a substantial tab, his credit card wouldn’t process (a pretty common occurrence this trip, despite the travel notices we put on the cards) but his newfound Romanian friends were cool enough to treat him and pick up his tab.
Once out of the city we pick up the highway and start making good time, Javier having helped navigate out of the city decides to catch up on sleep at this point. Despite our late start we may actually make this happen. Then the friction starts. Friction is a Clausewitz term for the progress of war, that the simplest of things become exceedingly difficult in armed conflict. A new application for Clausewitz: traveling with a hungover Javier on Romanian roads.
We start getting stuck behind trucks and slow drivers with frustrating frequency. Each slow vehicle we manage to pass feels like a minor victory, but every half hour or so Javier wakes up and needs to stop for either water, food, a bathroom, or update on interviews so for every 10 slow vehicles we pass we inevitably acquire another 15 with each stop. I begin speeding beyond the limits of our Corolla and even the Romanian roads start to feel like Moldovan ones under the strained little engine. Still, we make up for lost time and at 3:30 with an estimated 2 hours left of driving I think that we may just make it in time. All we need is to keep the border crossing down to 30 minutes. It would be a personal record for us at this point, but I think we know the process well enough that we can make it happen.
We pass through Husi again, just outside the border, and Javier asks if we can stop for a quick bite. I could go for a sandwich or something so we pull over to a little cafe. I tell Javier we have five minutes tops, and I’ll stay with the car while he runs in to get a sandwich for me and him. He runs in, but 10 minutes later I’m still waiting. I go inside to witness a magnificent breakdown in mutual cooperation and passive aggression. Javier is sitting comfortably in the cafe with not one, but two beers. Before I can say anything, he tells me one of the beers is for me, and that one of the two pizzas he has ordered is for me as well.
I could protest, haul him fireman carry style outside to the car, maybe knock him out with one of the beer bottles so that there are no more delays. It’s possible, though increasingly unlikely, that if we do the border crossing in 20 minutes and then magically drive through Moldovan broken asphalt to Chisinau we can make it happen.
But this is Last Spring Break, why am I stressing out like this? And dammit, a beer and pizza sounds downright amazing right now. We can always return the car tomorrow. So I say nothing other than thanks, toast Javier and eat my pizza in peace. I assume the first indication Javier has that I was very close to beating him unconscious is whenever he reads this here.
We take a slow drive back to Chisinau, naturally we screw up the border crossing by trying to leave Romania without going through customs. In my defense the passport officer told me, “Ok you go now.” Had he explained, “Ok, you go to customs now,” all would have been fine. Instead, we once again were the hapless Americans, driving the wrong way down the border control roads trying to correct our error, having random officials yell at us until we found the right location for customs.
When we finally get back to Chisinau at 9pm I tell myself, “You know, it’s not that big a deal we didn’t turn the car in tonight.” Oh how I would regret the next morning that I did not strictly enforce the timeline and knock Javier out when I had the chance.