getting there...

So, as far as getting home goes, there are two stories. Steve's team played in Piatra Neamt on Saturday night, and had an 8 hour bus ride home immediately following their 3-0 win. I’ll save the best (really the worst) for last and tell my story first. I guess it’s not too much of a story, but I took public transit to the airport, and despite being a bit stressed about figuring it all out for myself at 7:30 on a Sunday morning, it all worked out just fine. Tammy, who has been without her car for almost four months now (initially they told her it would take 10 days to fix it; since then they’ve told her lots of things, none of which has resulted in a car), offered to come and pick me up, hoping that her team would follow through on it’s latest promise to give her the car by the weekend. Of course that didn’t happen, so the president gave her a car just for the day… but told her to put some air in the tires. So, Saturday night she did just that and noticed, on Sunday morning, that the tire was looking just a little bit flat again. Back at the gas station, one of the attendants pointed out two massive bulges in the tire and told her that driving to Bucharest was not a good idea. How ridiculous is that? Her team gave her a car with an about-to-burst tire…. unreal. Her coach had offered the use of his car, so at the last minute she took him up on the offer, and took off to Bucharest with Sherisa to come and get me. We spent most of the afternoon at Bucharest’s biggest mall, and left around 5:00 – but took a different route to get out of the city. Riddled with potholes, the ring road has got to be the worst ring road in Europe… and signs for Constanta and the only highway in the country were few and far between. So… we found ourselves a bit lost, and had to ask for directions; we were told to keep going keep going and that we’d hit the highway eventually. Every now and again there was a sign for Constanta, but the next three signs would be missing the city; sometimes there were signs pointing in both directions for our destination, and distance would jump from 210kms to go to 217, back down to 160 and 15 minutes later be back up to 175. Oh, and it was pouring rain and it was pitch, pitch black. There were no lights to illuminate on-the-road pedestrians and cyclists, let alone signs. Long story short, it was a stressful, white-knuckle drive, especially with the out-of-control Romanians, who were driving as if on the Autobahn on a sunny June day. So… after a long day for all, we made it home safely… what a relief.

Steve’s story is much worse than mine. They won so quickly on Saturday night that even though they played at 4:00, they were on the bus and on their way home by 7:00… things were looking good. That is, until their bus broke down in the middle of nowhere. Without a shoulder to pull onto, the guys were just a tad stranded, literally, in the middle of the road. The Turkish driver evaluated the situation, and declared the bus kaput – the team would have to wait for a replacement to come from Bucharest, which they were told would take only 2 ½ hours (ha! ya right). They took cabs to a gas station where they waited from 9:30 until 1:30am… brutal. So, as I was getting up in Istanbul to make my way home at 7am on Sunday, Steve was just getting in the door from an all-nighter gas station, bus-ride trip from hell. Oh, and when the bus arrived in Constanta? All of the guys’ cars had been stripped of gas – someone had siphoned gas out of all of the mini Matiz cars – really incredible. So, coming home to Romania wasn’t nearly as pleasant as my vacation in Istanbul was, but, c’est la vie – things are different here, and we’ve just got to roll with the punches.

Turkish underwear – a need to clarify what’s inside?