bad roads, great friends!

Wow, I have so much to blog about I don’t know where to begin. Okay, let’s start with this: What European city has a ring road that is used not only by cars and trucks, but by horse and cart, pedestrians (no sidewalks) and prostitutes, and is dotted with dangerous surprises such as (to name a few) four lanes merging to one (for traffic in both directions – zero signage) and gargantuan, tire-busting potholes? Yes, the answer is Bucharest. The road is so ridiculously bad it is really unbelievable. I pulled out my camera to take some pictures – of the potholes, the ridiculously uneven road surfaces (there were many different kinds – dirt, concrete, asphalt, rocks, gravel etc.), the lack of signage... but of course my battery was dead. After dropping Nik off at the airport on Sunday evening, we were making our way home in a borrowed full-sized vehicle (thank goodness), when, on the ring road, a gargantuan hole-in-the-road ate one of the front tires. I really have no idea how we didn’t see this massive hole; if we had been driving our little Matiz, I think the entire car would have fallen into the abyss of missing road; either that or flipped off of the shoddy bridge we were driving over. Yipes. Anyways, so the drama that ensued was almost as equally impressive. The tire didn’t blow until we were on the highway, which was actually lucky, as it may be the only road in the entire country with a shoulder. So we pulled over and in the half-dark, Steve changed the tire, replacing the fully blown one with a weeny emergency tire that would only get us so far. Well… we opted not to reverse on the highway (people do that here), but decided to turn around at the first exit WHICH didn’t happen to be for an entire 30 kilometres. There was nowhere to turn around and there were no gas stations – nothing but black, deep empty space. Of course, we were only going 60 km/h and had traffic flying by us at 140, with people flashing lights and honking and the whole nine yards. We had our fingers crossed that the small replacement tire would get us back to the nearest gas station – otherwise we would have been stranded in the middle of nowhere (and I mean nowhere) on the speed-demon Romanian highway on a Sunday night - no thank you. Luckily, we arrived at a new-ish Petrom station, safe, sound and a little stressed, where we were met by some extremely friendly and helpful Romanians, who knew exactly which hole our Honda had fallen prey to; they said they see busted tires and frustrated people every day. When I expressed my amazement at the condition of the road (and the gargantuan pothole) the guy shrugged, smiled and said, “This is Romania.” Hmm… right.

The guy, Sorin, was really helpful and eager, and offered to take us to a tire shop. Well, Sorin was surely, in another life, an Indy 500 driver. He drove, on speedbumped city roads, 140 km/h… while techno blared and Steve and I sat white knuckled in the back of the van. At least there wasn’t snow, and we covered the 15 kilometres in approximately 30 seconds. Long story short, we got a new tire, were expedited back to the gas station, the tire was changed, we gassed up and were finally on our way back to Constanta by around 10:00. We were pretty cautious on the drive back, which was a good thing; yesterday morning we woke up to a completely flat tire, once again. The most important thing is that we were safe, and arrived home in one piece – I can’t say the same for the car, but I’m just thankful that we weren’t driving the Matiz… really.

Anyways… We had a great visit with Nik, that culminated in a legendary Saturday night at Club Wish where we actually consumed three entire bottles of vodka… not even kidding. For the first time we decided to reserve a table – which involves buying two bottles of whatever you like (not water, not beer) – and it was great. There were initially only six of us (and two bottles of vodka) – Tammy, Sherisa, Arvis, Steve, Nik and me - but we were joined by Sebastian and Agustina, and then, the party really started. We had a great time dancing and drinking and just hanging out – it was nice to actually have a place to sit down… which, in a European nightclub, is usually a luxury you have to pay for. We stayed late, partied hard and woke up on Sunday morning feeling surprisingly fine. After a greasy breakfast/lunch, we made our way to Bucharest, stopping only for Starbucks and sandwiches… and then headed for the airport. It was really great having Nik here, and, besides a few bumps (and holes) in the road, all of us had an awesome time!!

On our way over to Tammy's on Saturday night; I put some backup flats in my purse, and Steve decided he might need some backup runners... in his pockets.

At Tammy's

The girls! Tammy, me and Agustina

Friends for LIFE!