excursion: exploring bucuresti

So this past Saturday, we put on our big-kid pants and headed out to explore public transportation to and in Bucuresti.  We had an agenda — buy sheets, pillows, and towels.  David had an additional agenda — eat Swedish meatballs in Romania, so IKEA became our destination of choice.  And who am I to complain about that.  We know that we will be in Buc mutliple times during service, so there wasn’t a huge need to be cultural this go round.  We just wanted to take our time to figure things out.

The train ride from Targoviste to Buc was good, old hat, been there, done that.  But once outside the gara (train station) we had NO clue what to do.  David had called IKEA and knew which buses to take and we had done some basic research to know how those buses would be labeled. Our darling Peace Corps Volunteer Leader, Tori, told us that to get to Baneasa, our first stop, was a quick walk and there wasn’t a need to bus it anywhere.  So we tried our best Romanian on the lady at the information desk; I was sweet as pie to the lady working at the magazine stand.  They told us what bus to take, but refused flat out to give us any information on walking there.  We figured our Romanian stank, so we opted to bus it regardless.

We accomplished buying our bus tickets and were on top of things enough to buy our return tickets too.  We’re such a team.  We hopped on the bus and a 40-minute bus ride later, we’re at Baneasa.  Glad we didn’t try to walk it. As we got off a nun and a German couple got off the bus too (sounds like the beginning of a good joke, I know).  They were looking for a nearby airport.  They assumed we knew what we were doing and asked us for help getting there, which of course we couldn’t give.  So I approached a group of Romanian construction workers cautiously and was super surprised at how helpful they were and that they did not laugh at my Romanian.  And after we helped them find their way, IKEA appeared misty in the distance and the wafting smell of Swedish meatballs hit our nostrils and we were content to walk towards our mecca.

And so we arrived and enjoyed Swedish meatballs in IKEA in Romania. Crazy, huh? We had free refills of fountain soda, which is relatively unheard of anywhere in Europe.  And we were fericiti (happy) and shopped and easily found our way back to Targoviste to finish our final week of training. A frivolous yet completely enjoyable trip for a PC kid.