NEW BLOG!?!?!

So the other day I was reading a blog I like and I decided to click to follow and was asked to sign in with my email. Turns out I had once upon a time signed up here but then decided to go fail at blogging at wordpress instead. Anyways now upon further inspection I think I like blogging here more, much more control. Luckily I have no readers so I don't have to worry about losing anyone with the switch. Anyways, without further ado, my new blog. (P.S. I just copy and pasted my old entry)

A few years ago I went on a backpacking trip to Europe. I had met two girls Kate and Stacy and we had somehow got it in our heads that we should head to Romania, so we did. Seeing as we had lots of time and almost no money and we took the most roundabout way possible. We were in Vilnius (Lithuania) and wanted to get to Sighisoara (Romania) so we took a train to Riga (Latvia) a plane to Vienna (Austria) and then a 36 hour bus (although googlemaps says it's only a 9 hour drive) to Timisoara and then another 6 hour bus to Sighisoara. I think the story should really begin on the bus ride.

We pile onto this crammed Greyhound style bus to begin our 36 hour journey. I sat with Kate and Stacy had two seats to herself right in front of us. Pretty quickly we all fell asleep. We woke up when the bus driver slapped Stacy across the face, I think this was the first negative omen about our trip to Romania. None of us spoke any Romanian so we weren't exactly sure as to why Stacy was slapped but it seemed to have something to do with her feet being on the seat beside her. Although the slap alone would have probably sufficed to keep all of us awake for the rest of the bus ride the driver then picked up the speaker and started speaking in Romanian while pointing at us, the rest of the bus laughed, we all vowed not to sleep. While on this bus ride I made friends with the man across the aisle from me, he didn't speak much English but did manage to get across that he didn't understand why we were travelling to Romania alone and that it probably was not safe. This was not the most reassuring thing to be told.

Our bus arrived in Timisoara around 9am, before we left we had checked and seen that there should be a bus from Timisoara to Sighisoara at 2pm so we had a while to wait. Luckily we had saved some of our bus food, including a source of protein, peanut butter! I went in first to get tickets for the 2 pm bus, then Kate, then Stacy. Unfortunately for reasons that none of us have ever figured out the ladies at the ticket counter would not sell a ticket to Stacy. They just kept telling her there was no bus. It went something like this:

I go in

Me: I'd like to buy a ticket to Sighisoara.

Ticket Lady: Okay it's 264, 000 lei (conversion was about 33, 000 lei to 1 euro).

Kate goes in

Kate: I'd like to buy a ticket to Sighisoara.

Ticket Lady: Okay it's 264, 000 lei.

Stacy goes in

Stacy: I'd like to buy a ticket to Sighisoara.

Ticket Lady: Sorry, there is no bus.

Stacy and I go in

Stacy: I'd like to buy a ticket to Signisoara.

Ticket Lady: There is no bus.

Me: But I have a ticket to Sighisoara.

Ticket lady mumbles

Me: What?

Ticket Lady: What?

Me: What?

Ticket Lady: Sorry bad english. No bus.

The ticket ladies were wise to our ploy when Kate or I tried to buy a second ticket and would not sell us an extra. Stacy was pretty fed up at this point (having already been slapped on the first bus and now denied entry to the second), unfortunately we didn't really have many (any) options. Eventually we bribed someone wondering by to buy Stacy a ticket. Everything was settled, we all slept a little and waited for 2 pm. At 2 pm the bus did not arrive. At 3 pm the bus did not arrive. At 4 pm the ticket office closed and the ticket lady told us that the bus would come, we just had to wait, and left (I should mention we were the only one's waiting for the bus). Sometime around sunset we all started freaking out that we had no where to sleep and were quickly running out of food and were going to die alone in the cold in Romania. Then a white minivan pulled up. In Canada I call these van's RapeVans, you know the scary one's with blacked out windows that always seem to be conspicuously parked on sketchy streets or in alleys. A gruff man got out and informed us that this was the bus to Sighisoara. At this point the decision looked like this:

Sketchy Bus Station

• Cons: Dark out, cold out, not much food, probably will be robbed and killed in bus station parking lot.
• Pros: Not a rape van.

Rape Van

• Pros: Might take us to Sighisoara, heated.
• Cons: Might be a rape van.

I think our want for warmth must've won out because we decided to get in the van. Luckily for us this was the right decision (I don't like thinking about what would have occured with the wrong decision) and we arrived in Sighisoara safe and sound and found our hostel and went to sleep.

Okay that feels like a lot of blogging for now. A lot more stuff happened in Sighisoara and leaving was almost as much trouble as getting there but this feels long and really I should get back to the work I was procrastinating from doing. If anyone ever actually reads this I hope you are not offended by anything. Romania was awesome and fun (and terrifying) so don't let my stupid cheap travel throw you off. When you pay the equivalent of 8 euro's for an 8 hour trip you get what you pay for. Anyways, that's it for now.