Travel

Traveling is always an experience, but traveling Eastern Europe is THE experience. Let me just share about my last European traveling experience. Basic outline: tiny, little bus from Skopje to Sofia, sketchy overnight train for ten hours to Bucarest, sweet double-decker train into Galati. The outline of our experience. We crossed out of Macedonia, into Bulgaria, out of Bulgaria, and into Romania within 24 hours. Each boarder crossing meant getting checked out by one country on to get checked in by another country two minutes down the road.That is a lot of stopping and starting! Hearing phrases such as: "American peoples?" or "Its a Turkish toilet...down over the hill," "Don't worry, everyone in Bulgaria will try to take your money," and "Galati? Why are you going to Galati. No one goes there," gave us memories we will never forget, and made every step of our journey interesting. Of course I cannot leave out the fact that I got yelled at by a clearly angry Bulgarian woman, but I had no idea what she was obviously unhappy about. On the other hand, we met helpful people who translated for us, or who helped us exchange currencies or buy tickets, and a few even gave us directions. We met a little old man who was so proud of the tiny, ancient church he worked in that he let us walk through it for free. He even gave us a little tour switching back and forth between Bulgarian and German...so of course we followed exactly what he was saying. We saw groups of guys playing djembes and didgeridoos in parks, and standing around surrounding intense games of chess. We rode on trams and trains and bought tickets attempting to use languages we didn't know. We sat across from a sweet, middle aged Bulgarian woman and watched as she cringed away from her seatmate (a 28 year old man covered in tattoos, drinking beer, and talking about his favorite hardcore bands). We had the joy of sleeping in seats on an overnight train which was definitely built during the communist era, smelled like urine, and bumped and creaked more than an old rocking chair. We were shocked when our entire train car -with the exception of ourselves- emptied out at two in the morning. We were woken up abruptly multiple times for passport checks and ticket checks in every country, and each time we were not really sure what was happening. We discovered the importance of a well packed pack, brushed our teeth in a park, and found out more about Romania's bitter history. All in all, quite a grand adventure I must say :)