AKA The Butthead Taxi Driver from Brasov!
We had just spend a fantastic day hiking up to Mt Tampa in Brasov and visiting he Black Church, Syngogue, and gates to the city, the White Tower and a quick lunch in town. We were catching the InterCity Express train (German Railways) to Bucharest and looking forward to dinner on the train, stretching out, wifi, catching up on blogs, etc. The pension ordered us a taxi and we went to the prescribed location to be picked up (our hotel was located in a private cobblestone pedestrian pathway only and no access to cars). We got in the taxi and were told not to pay more than 10 lei ($2.50). The taxi driver asked where we were going to we told him. Then he jokingly said, "Why are you taking the train?" I can take you"... So we negotiated a price which would be about $35 for each of us. Figuring the train alone would cost us about $35-$40, plus the taxi to the train station and another taxi on the other side in Bucharest to our hotel, and I got him down to a low price, Beth acquiesced. She was disappointed not to take the train (our only possible train ride our entire trip), but we went for it. Well, in hindsite, I will say this was a BAD decision.
First, on the positive side, we did make great time to Bucharest city limits (hold that thought a moment), we saw some interesting sights along the way including affluent mountain ski resorts, the town of Sinaia, where the President of Romania is from, and some nuclear power plants and abandoned factories left by the Soviets in the 1970's. Clearly we would have missed these memorable sights by train!!
So we arrived to the Bucharest city limits around 7:10pm amid stopped traffic. Bucharest is laid out similar to Paris with a lot of roundabouts and 2-lane roads leading into the city, but about 2 million people all trying to get to the same place at the same time. They also must have learned to drive in Italy!! After 45" of stop/go traffic, we finally arrived inside the city and it was clear the driver did not have a clue where he was going. He wanted to drop us at the airport (which was 17km outside the city), but we refused. He had no GPS, refused to call the hotel for directions or look at the maps we had. He kept stopping the car, exiting, and asking for directions. Unfortunately, he was stopping in slum areas, and asking Romanian drug dealers or mechanics for directions instead of stopping at gas stations or bona find companies. After 3.5 hours in the taxi, both Beth and I had to pee, badly. We asked him to stop several times, but he said "no, not possible". At one point, when he pulled over in a slum area, we saw a McDonalds and almost fled the car in search of a toilet. We were looking for places to stop, but found no hotels. I saw a few Western Unions and was wondering if they had toilets. Interesting to note, Bucharest does not have any public portable toilets! Finally after 4 hours, as he was driving around in circles, I insisted he stop at a BP gas station, which he did. He asked for directions (for the 4th time) but still he would have asked another 6 times before we were finally dropped off near (not even on the street) of the hotel at 8:45pm, 4 1/2 hours since beginning. We had been to all the outer limits of the city, all the entrances to the autoroutes and passed the Parliament 4 times. We felt we knew the city very well! I think Gheorges (our driver) was so happy to see us go, and will probably NEVER Offer to take a passenger to Bucharest ever again!!
Moral of the Story: sometimes it is better to stick to the plan!
Not sure if you can read this, but the autoroute (Expressway), showed rest stops but all the possible places were blank. The only possible option may have been a parking lot, but that too, was strikes through with a big black "X". It was like a ghost town rest stop. Pretty humorous.
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