Southeast Europe

Bucharest

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16 - 2017 by krzysztof_góral, on Flickr

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After 4 days of exploring Bucharest including attending a friends wedding I was ready for my trip to Moldova. I found a cheap flight to Chisinau which took about an hour (beat the 10h train). Interesting place overall, I don't have so many pictures of people because I was stared at pretty much everywhere I went (Especially at the central market place) and felt a bit self conscious. It definitely felt much poorer than Romania and the people overall seemed more depressed. The next day as soon as we crossed the border into Romania I felt like we jumped about 50 years in time. Can definitely see those EU funds in action in Romania. Anyway, picture time.

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After spending the day in Chisinau I headed back to Romania the next day. This time I took a minibus to the city of Iași, total driving time was about 6 hours (with about 2 of those hours spent crossing the border). After taking this journey I will never complain about the state of Polish roads again. I was in quite a shock at how bad the roads in Moldova are (outside of Chisinau) and as soon as we crossed the border into Romania I felt like back home again (much better quality but of course with a few bumps and holes here and there) The border guards were quite friendly, after quite an intense search through my bag looking for cigarettes the Moldovan guard let me through with a smile on his face. Most of the time was spent waiting in a long queue of cars, then getting out of the bus, taking all the bags out, waiting in another line inside the customs buildings, bag check, reloading the bus, driving 30 meters, stopping at duty free (where our driver bought about 30 packs of cigarettes and gave each passenger two to hold on to), crossing the river Prut, waiting in line again, out of the bus again, passport check inside the building on the Romanian side, loaded back into the bus again and returning the cigarettes back to our driver. He did however thank us by passing around some chocolates. All in all an interesting experience.

I have to say I was pleasantly surprised with Iași, it was an unexpected surprise. When I was telling people I was going to Romania everyone kept saying go to Cluj, go to Cluj. Cluj was very nice as well but I have to admit that Iași impressed me a bit more. Really beautiful city, lots of parks and green areas with some beautiful buildings in between. An underrated place, I definitely recommend a visit here.

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32 - 2017 by krzysztof_góral, on Flickr


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sułły;142967930 said:

By the way, I took the same route from Chisinau to Ungheni just a couple of months back. Apparently, the road is U/C, that's why it's so bad.

Click to expand...

I saw some construction crews on the latter part of the trip, the closer we got to Ungheni. But For the first half of the trip there were no signs of road works or construction crews anywhere. Maybe they just had the day off on the earlier section.

The next day after I arrived in Iași was purely a travel day. I booked a train ticket (for a very cheap 40 RON ) from Iași to Cluj which crossed the Carpathians in a little under 10 hours. The scenery along the way amazing and so worth the trip. I spent most of my time standing in the corridor with my head hanging out the window (Also in my car the doors weren't closed for part of the journey so I was able to really get some wind in my hair ) It was great to see the small towns and villages along the way and the mountainous scenery never seemed to end. From Iași to Suceava the landscape was fairly flat but still with some nice hills in the distance. About a half hour from Suceava was when the really amazing scenery began. 10 hours may seem like a really long trip but it was anything but boring (comapred to crossing Poland for 10 hours :lol

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I got into Cluj a little around 20:00. Luckily my flat was located halfway between the train station and the old town so I only had a 15-20 minute walk to the place at best. Was feeling a bit dead after the trip so I decided to grab some food and call it a night. I had two nights in Cluj so I decided that I can see more than enough the next day.

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The look of shock on the bus drivers face as he threw his hands up in the air when he hit the guy was priceless. Too bad I didn't have my camera out at the time. Luckily no one was hurt, just the entire back window was shattered into a 100 peices. :lol:

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I enjoyed my time in Cluj very much although I have to say I had one scary incident which really shook me. I was in the centre walking down the street playing around with my camera. I was about to take a picture but in the end didn't for one reason or another so i just stood in the position for a few minutes adjusting the lens. As I am doing so an angry old guy starts yelling at me in Hungarian (thinking I am taking a picture of him). I don't really speak Hungarian or Romanian so I just kept repeating to him "no photo" hoping he would get it and knock it off. He keeps yelling at me while walking towards me when he grabs my hand while making a fist with his other one. I wasn't about to hit a 70 year old man in public but his grip was weak enough that I was able to free myself after a few seconds. I backed away and he was still going towards me while the people he was walking with were yelling something to him. I just continued on in the opposite direction looking back periodically and he was starting at me with the fist in his hand yelling some random shit. I've never been touched by a stranger before on the street, I've been told to not take a picture of something before but usually always in Polish or English so it was easy enough to explain away the situation but in this case I felt a bet helpless as I couldn't really communicate with the guy. I laugh at it now but I was really shaken quite a bit by this. Luckily the feeling passed quickly and I continued shooting the rest of the day.