From bucharest to Suceava

Melissa (another Canadian intern from Belgrade with whom I've been in contact with. We've been planning our vampire hunting expedition for quite some time) and I saw each other immediately at the station. Because my train was late, we planned on going to Suceava to do our monastery tour. We bought our tickets and hopped on the train.

We arrived in Suceava at 04:30. We decided that yes, we wanted to try to go to Moldova. We got a taxi driver to take us to the bus station. Unfortunately, it was closed, so we waited until close to 6 am for it to open. A woman tried talking to us. "Poftim?" I asked. Instead of talking slower, she talked louder. And faster. "Poftim?" I asked again. "Sjhkjdshkjdshksj". Finally I told her "I don’t speak Romanian" and she laughed and told me to never mind. I amused myself by SMSing my friends, telling them that I was in a bus station. Finally the station opened and they informed us that there were busses only twice a week and the trip took about eight hours. Ouch.
We headed to find a hotel, settling on the nearest one. We slept for a bit but both wanted showers. Of course, there was a water problem with no water at all. #^%&^%#&^%&^. We spent the morning sleeping and watching TV. When the water came back on, we showered and then headed out to explore the town.

Suceava is ugly. Suceava is boring. It made me realise once again how beautiful Timisoara is. My trusty Lonely Planet said that a visit to the citadel is the highlight of any visitor’s trip to Suceava. They were right, as it’s the most interesting thing to do there. We walked around in the rain, climbing the walls and taking lots of pictures.

The next day, we took a monastery tour. Our tour guide developed an immediate crush on Melissa, which was adorable to watch as he kept trying to alternately tease and compliment her. The monasteries were lovely and painted outside and in with scenes from the bible and are in a remarkable state of preservation. They’re collectively a UNESCO heritage site. I took plenty of pictures! Some of them has names scratched into them: from the 1700s! I guess defacing art is nothing new.

That night, we decided to go out for a drink together with Jason, a two-metre tall blond and blue eyed American we picked up along the way. Cipri, the guide, loves manele and I told him about the Bulgarian manele CD I lugged faithfully across the Balkans. He insisted we bring it to the bar and had his friend, the owner, play it. I chatted with the owner for most of the night and proceeded to get more than slightly tipsy on good Romanian beer. That night, we stayed at Jason’s hostel and the owner used to study in Sweden! All the signs in the hostel were in English, Romanian and Swedish! We chatted a bit, which is good practice for my upcoming trip back "home". Jason was also interested in going to Chisinau so it was a good plan.