Ro-Mania!

My flight was non-eventful. Well, the flight part was. I called my mother from the Montreal airport to tell her I had arrived safely and would in no way miss my flight to Vienna. I saw four Middle Eastern men with huge beards, turbans and long white cloaks. She told me that there were often Middle Eastern men on her flights and while she gets wary, nothing's ever happened. Besides...I was in the international departures section. What would be the chances of them being on my same flight?

Pretty good, actually. They were in the Vienna waiting area when I got there. I started to freak out but reminded myself that the acts of 21 people did not dictate a whole population. I made sure I sat next to them and smiled at the oldest man. He smiled back. I relaxed. Then I realised I must have looked like the whore of Babylon as I was wearing a lycra tank top. Even though it was summer, I put on my sweater. When we started to board, I caught another man's eye and smiled and he smiled back and I felt fine. Besides...they had lots of carry-on luggage with them.

Before boarding my flight to Timisoara, I met some Romano-Canadians going there on vacation. They had immigrated to Canada 10 years ago but we exchanged our information. I sat next to a man from Sweden and we babbled in Swedish for the whole flight. When I got off the airplane, the Romano-Canadians were waiting for me. They also introduced me to another Romano-Canadian named (what else) Adrian. He was very nice and offered to show me around this weekend.

I met my coordinator, Calin, who is just as nice as in his emails and we went to the apartment. Romanians are even worse drivers than the Italians! I went commando by not using the seatbelt (which was broken anyways). Almost made me feel like a native!