Romania

Saturday evening on August 22 Scott and I boarded a night train; on our list of destinations, Bucharest, Romania, and Thessalonica, Greece. Scientifically speaking, this portion of our European travels was important. Each destination held a “holy relic,” if you will, of the human fossil world.

Whatever golden ticket of science this part of the trip was supposed to be, I was not looking forward to the long train rides. Bucharest, and Thessalonica are neither close to each other nor close to Vienna. Once again all the private sleeping cars were booked on our train from Vienna to Bucharest, so we traveled 19 hours on a train in a four person couchette. I could not wait to get off that train! We “roomed” with two very nice Romanians who did not speak English, and did not stop talking, except to sleep (thank goodness). The air conditioning on the train was very poor, and passport control woke us up twice in the 3:00 a.m. hour. It was not the best night, morning and early afternoon I’ve ever spent on a train. We arrived in Bucharest at around 3:00 p.m. on Sunday, and went directly to our hotel to shower!

After lots of R & R in our great hotel room, Monday brought a brighter outlook. We had a late start to the morning waiting for someone from The Institute of Speology to meet us, which was just fine with us. A note about The Institute of Speology: it holds the “sacred” skull called Oase, the building that houses it is hidden among back streets and junk piles (the mailmen can’t even find it), and the guys that work there are serious “cavers!” They are absolutely passionate about the research they do, and they have NO MONEY to do it! Dr. Constantine, who started the institute, told us that he recently was awarded a grant of 1,000,000 Euros for his research, but because of the world wide financial crisis he was told he won’t receive a penny of it. We liked hanging out with them; they were good guys.

For lunch they took us to a great local restaurant. We knew nothing about Romania, so we asked what was good there. The suggestion we were given was Moldovan Stew, a traditional Romanian dish. Dr. Constantine did however give us the disclaimer, “I don’t know if you’ll like it, but they make it properly here.” That was good enough for us, so we each ordered one. So, it turned out …that the stew was made of sausage and internal organs of some animal of which only liver was identifiable. The other two items on the plate were a healthy portion of the best polenta I’ve ever tasted and a fried egg. Despite the mystery meat it was good! I ate most of mine, and Scott cleaned his plate. I have to tip my hat to the Romanians for making something yummy out of something so yucky!

Once we were finished at the institute, we hauled all our stuff back to the hotel and decided to eat at McDonalds for dinner. Yes, McDonalds…one adventurous meal was enough for me, so it was time for something predictable. We also picked up some lunch here before getting on another long train ride to Thessalonica the next day.

(Sorry for the lack of pics on this post. The pic of Scott working in Romania is one of the only pic worth sharing; I have another one with Scott smiling...that's about it.)