The day before I left Romania started out a little hectic, as we were surprised because some things Maddy had ordered were incorrectly going to show up on the day as we were leaving. So before leaving town we had to run around town a bit to straighten it all out. We then finally headed towards Bucharest an hour or so late. We stopped along the way for some bread-bowl soup in Bușteni at a place we’d eaten before. When we got into Bucharest Maddy did some shopping at Ikea for her apartment which turned into a much more involved process than we were expecting.
Like on the last trip, I had to get up very early to get my flight out. I was surprised that there was a mob of people at the airport at 4 am when I arrived. I finally got through the lines and made my flight with no problem. On the way back I changed planes in Amsterdam (another first for countries). It was interesting that exiting our plane on the flight from Bucharest we had to show IDs at the end of the jetway before even entering the terminal. Also on the flight out, they required extra security checks for people coming from Bucharest before boarding. I don’t know whether they don’t trust Romanians, or possibly the Romanian security screening process.
Even though the trip back takes just as long as going there, it didn’t seem as bad because I arrived back in California on the afternoon of the day I left (since I recaptured the 10 hour time change). I didn’t seem to suffer as much as the last time I did this. I thank my good strategic choice of seats with good aisle access.
Overall this was a very nice trip. There wasn’t quite as much running about the countryside as in the spring, but I got to see a lot of interesting things. I was able to get a deeper experience of the typical Romanian lifestyle on this trip. I also got to experience lots of snowy mountain environments, and it was nice just to have a relatively relaxing time absorbing the holiday season in another country. It was a very pleasant experience and I’m glad I did it. Even though I stayed there 3 weeks, the time seemed to have passed quickly when it was time to leave. This is definitely the way I need to travel though, because I really need days to recoup when I travel this many time zones.