Bucharest, Romania

After 13 hours of traveling, I have now made it to Bucharest. I am very excited to be here, since this would be my first visit to an eastern European country. My classmate, a fellow German tracker, Jeff Dawson, will be traveling with me for the next ten days till we get to Germany to begin school for language training. He arrived in Bucharest two hours after I did. We met at the airport and then took a taxi to the apartment that we had reserved. The apartment was a stroke of good fortune. Adrian Rusu (another classmate) is from Romania and is in Romania at present. His friend Andrea is renting her 2 room apartment to Jeff and me for €40 per night.

Andrea met us outside the apartment to let us in. She is awesome. Jeff and I of course had lots of questions about what to do while in Bucharest, how to travel around, how to get to Istanbul etc etc… Thanks to her patience and advice we had a good start to our trip. She offered us her cell phone to use while we stayed in Bucharest, so she could communicate with us and make sure we are all right and for us to contact her and Adrian. She had some other friends join us (Adrian, another one.. not Rusu.. and Alina). Since my friend Adrian Rusu is currently not in Bucharest, she became our host, and an excellent one at that. We later went to the mall to get a SIM card for the phone as well as some food. Tried my first Romanian food. It was Polenta with cream and cheese. Was good.

With Andrea and Adrian at dinner