Our trip to
Romania
Back to Summer, 2002
OK, so, let me start off by
saying that I really need to listen to András. He really does know what
he's talking about. So, Hódmezövásárhely is not far from Romania. I
had heard many different things about Romania and wanted to go and see what it
was like for myself. So, András and I planned to go. As we were
getting ready, he said, "Sharon, why don't we pack some sandwiches to eat for
lunch?" I said that I wanted to experience Romania. We were only
going for 1 day and clearly they have food there. It just made sense to
eat there. So, András said ok, and we were off.
First, we drove down to Romania
at the Nagylak border. It took about 30 minutes to get through, which is
fine. They were checking passports and cars, so it wasn't a problem,
plus I was excited about going (and to be honest,
to get another stamp in my passport.). So, we crossed the border.
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Here's my stamp. We
crossed the border and András exchanged some money to Romanian Lei.
The exchange was about $1 - 33,000 Romanian lei. OK, now, just a note
about the exchange rate. Things cost about 100,000 or 500,000 or
1,000,000. Now, what is the point of saying something is 1,000,000
anything when that's not really worth anything? Well, worth about $30.
Just drop some of the zeros. I guess they just like being about to say
that everyone is a millionaire.
Now, this will be important
later, but, there was a LONG line of trucks waiting to go through customs at the
border. I would say that there were trucks for literally miles.
Just remember this part for later.
We were off to Arad, which is
the first main town that we hit in Romania. It's about 1 hour into
Romania. So, we were driving. I'm looked around and there
wasn't very much to look at. But I ws still excited about being
there. On
the side of the road, there were numerous people selling crafts. I
wanted to stop and see the things and András said that we could stop on the
way back. Which was fine with me.
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We finally got to Arad. We
were driving around trying to find a place to park and there was some traffic so
we were
going and stopping. People came up to the car and spoke to András in
Romanian, he gave them a blank stare, then they asked for money in Hungarian and
András said no. Then they tried to wash our windows, but traffic moved and
so did we. I told András that he should pretend that he speaks English and
say he can't understand them. So, we practiced, "Sorry, I only speak
English"
Diagram of Arad |
We found a spot and the parking
meters. We tried to figure out how to pay for parking. Now we are
smart people and we've parked cars before and paid for parking but we couldn't
figure it out at all. There was even a button that said "English" so I
pushed it hoping for some instructions. It just said "Pay now".
Well, there was nowhere to put money. Finally a meter reader came along.
She spoke a little English and we found out that we had to buy a pre-paid card
from her and then use that card in the machine. OK, so parking was 6,000
lei an hour (completely reasonable), but the minimum card was for 170,000 lei.
What the??@#$$% is that all about? So the minimum we can buy is a card for
a little over 28 hours! Again What the #$%#$%#$ !!! We were only
planning to spend a few hours there, ok, so the parking people are ripping us
off, what else is new. I took a deep breath and we were off shopping.
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We went into this mall and all of
the prices were crazy like 500,000 or 1,334,540. I couldn't deal with all
of the math to convert things, plus we were hungry, so we decided to go to
lunch. We found a restaurant that looked nice and clean (not as easy as
you would think). We went in. It was the worst food. We could
barely eat it. I was kind of wishing that we had brought the sandwiches
that András had suggested. Thank goodness he isn't an "I told you so" kind
of person.
So, lunch was over and we
continued to shop. All of the stores were completely ripping us off.
They wanted to charge WAY too much money for bad quality merchandise. We
came up to a supermarket and András had wanted to buy cheese. So, we went
in and we went to the cheese counter. There was a woman working there,
standing around, we stood in front of the counter. She was not going to
make the first move to help us. So, finally we just asked for the cheeses
that we wanted. The market was close to where we parked the car so we
crossed the street to the parking (see diagram above).
When we got into the parking lot,
there were 2 policemen. They waved us over, so we went to them. They
asked for our passports. They looked at András's first. They were
talking in Romanian and said, "Blah, blah, blah, Hungary, blah, blah..." then
looked at mine. They smiled, then said "Blah, blah, America, blah, blah,
Bucharest, blah, blah, American embassy, blah, blah" So, they only spoke
Romanian and a little Hungarian. They said to András that we were in BIG
trouble. Apparently they are very strict about jaywalking. We just
crossed the street (there were some signs around, but all in Romanian).
We'd apparently broken the law and they were going to take us to Bucharest,
something, something. Unless........ we gave them money.
What??? Then they said instead of money, they wanted beer. So András said
that we would all go out for a beer. They said no, they wanted beer for
ONLY them. Not us. We were going to buy the beer and I asked
if we could put the cheese in the car first. They said yes and we went to
the car. We went back to them and their boss pulled up. So, they
waved us on. We were free!
Well, to say that I was done with
Arad is an understatement. Everyone was trying to rip us off. So, we
got back in the car and were driving through the town to get out. There
was still traffic and when we would stop, people would come up to the car and
ask for money in Romanian, we looked at them with the blank stares. Then
they would ask in Hungarian and András would say, "Sorry, I don't understand."
(in English) and then they would say, "Ah, English. Give me money!"
Crazy.
So, we're driving out of the town
and we see the people standing on the side of the road selling their crafts.
So, we stop to see what they had. The first place we stopped, there were 2
women selling beautiful tablecloths that they had made. We bought one and
moved on.
The next stop was at this gas
station and there were about 10 groups of people set up selling wood crafts.
When we stopped the car, there were women running at us with their arms filled
with crafts, trying to sell them to us. We explained that we wanted to
look around first. Now, the way it seemed to work is that every group had
at least 2 people (one to stay at their section and the other to take their
things and run after customers). So we're looking around and András wanted
to buy a wooden bird. *Note - some of these people were selling cups and a
pitcher made of wood with no coating inside. hmmm, wouldn't that be hard
to clean? Ok, back to the story. So, András saw the bird that he
wanted and he started to talk to the woman who was selling this bird.
While he was talking, all of the other people were coming at me with their
birds. I told them to talk to András, he's the one choosing the bird.
So, he bargained with the woman and we got the bird, plus a giant wood vase.
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As you can see it is a VERY
large bird. Thank goodness the wings come off. So we were
walking away and we're carrying our buys and the others would not give up.
They were still literally chasing us with their birds. We were
explaining that we bought a bird and did not need another one.
Didn't matter. They chased us to the car and we got in and they were
still knocking on the windows, lowering their prices. Thank goodness
it was time to go. Now I had to go to the bathroom, and we were at a
gas station/ rest area, but I was afraid these people would chase me into
the bathroom and I figured that we would see another one down the road.
So we left. |
We were driving for a bit and no
bathrooms, but then we saw a bar. All bars have to have bathrooms, right?
So we stopped. I got out and went inside and walked around looking for the
bathroom, then I went outside in the back and there was a little house back
there with the bathrooms. Ok, I went in and there was just a piece of wood
with a whole in the middle! I ran out screaming. I would have to find
something else.
I was done with my day in Romania
and it was really time to go, so we proceeded to the border back to Hungary.
About 3 miles before we hit the border, we saw a line of trucks. (Remember
we saw the same in the beginning). We figured that it was a different
process for commercial trucks than passenger cars, so we passed them. Then
we started to see cars, but people waved us on. So we went on. We
get up to the front and realize that it was a line for everyone and we would
have to go all the way to the back. András looked at me and said that he
didn't think we would get out of Romania that night. What?????
I couldn't believe we were stuck there. I just wanted to go back to
Hungary and be out of Romania. I didn't think that was asking too much!
I needed to think of a plan. Well, I couldn't figure out a way to get out
of the country, so we needed an alternative.
There was a hotel that seemed
nice and clean. I said to András that we should check it out and if it was
clean and there was a bar, we would just stay the night and leave the next
morning. Fine. We went into the hotel and it was clean and there was
a bar, perfect!!! We went to the front desk and asked about rooms.
They had rooms. I could feel the relief easing through my body. We
asked how much the rooms were. She said, "1 million lei". I was
worried until we figured out that it was about $33. I took out my credit
card and the woman said, "Oh we don't take credit cards, only Romanian lei."
NNNNOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We were leaving that horrible place, why
would I have 1 million lei on me? We didn't even have that much cash on us
either because we had spent it buying the tablecloth and the bird.
The woman at the front desk said
that we should try the gas stations. Fine. We went and they said
that they did not have a cash machine and there was nothing for us to do.
Impossible. How could I own this money and I couldn't get to it. We
walked to all of the gas stations there and everyone said the same. They
said the closest cash machine was in Arad. (The town that we left that was
an hour away). Then we saw money exchange bungalows. We went there
and I took out my credit card. The woman shook her head and said they
didn't take credit cards. We went to the next bungalow and they had a Visa
sign in the window. Hurray!!!! We were going to get money. I
took out my credit card (Visa) and the woman shook her head no. What????
I pointed to the Visa sign. She shook her head again. We were out of
places. Then we saw a restaurant. We went there. They were no
help and I was starting to freak out a bit.
András found this guy who worked
for the border patrol and started to talk to him. He explained our
situation and everything we've gone through. The guy said to András that
he would help us. He walked us back to our car. We followed in the
car as he walked us through the line all the way up to the border patrol.
Now, we were going really slow and sometimes had to stop for this guy to do
something and we had angry people screaming at us. They had been waiting
for hours and we were now getting in front of them. They wanted to kill
us.
We got all the way up to the
front and we thanked the man profusely. Then he said that he expected some
payment. So András gave him 5 Euros. The guy said it wasn't enough.
So András gave him 5 more Euro. The guy was still not happy. András
said to him that he explained our situation and we had no cash on us. That
was all of our money. The guy accepted that answer, but said that he
would get our addresses from our passports and would know if we went back to
Romania. He expected a "visit" from us.
So, we made it out of Romania and
I wanted to kiss the ground in Hungary but we had to drive quickly because there
were all of the people back in line that wanted to kill us. We drove and
drove and finally made it back to Vásárhely!
Back to Summer, 2002