on the road: package in Piatra Neamt

On Thursday, we got a notice that we had a package to pick up in Piatra Neamt.  The notice said that we HAD to be there Friday between 8:30A and 12 noon to pick it up.  The postal system in Romania definitely likes control – you can only do certain things on certain days for a very minimal amount of time. So we knew we needed a way to get there, someone with Romanian better than ours (to help us navigate for the first time), and a sense of adventure after a long week.  Luckily, our pal Ted lives there and so we had a person to see as well.

Early Friday morning, we headed to the autogara (bus station), bought our tickets, and boarded a kitschy microbus to Piatra.  It was my second microbus ride and it wasn’t bad, despite the hour.  The driver had decorated his bus as a shrine to Steaua (a soccer team) and the Virgin Mary.  It was quite the combination of iconography.

Once in Piatra, we met up with Ted and headed to the vama (customs house) to pick up peanut butter and ranch seasoning (Thanks, Marcia!).  The customs folks laughed at our package contents.  Then we meandered around town, checking out Ted’s digs, the “mall,” the piata, and shops here and there.  We even got a library card at the Piatra English library.  (You know you’ve relocated somewhere when you have a library card.)

Piatra is definitely a bigger town.  It has a McDonald’s but it retains the sleepiness of being a town at the foot of the mountains.  It has a nice park, beautiful churches, and a few universities. We’re looking forward to taking the gondola to the top of the nearby mountain on another jaunt.  I’m sure it will be a town that we visit often during our time here.

Then we headed to the autogara and came home.  It was a great day.  Simple, but good.  And now we “know how” to do yet another Romanian task – pick up a package.  Amazing how the simple things at first seem daunting in a new culture. We’re crossing them off our list, one at a time!

The start to a great weekend.