29/5/09 Romania

I met up with Heidi and I got a replacement for my ID card and we printed out our stuff for our holidays. Then we went down to Ponti’s Café on Marylebone High when we saw a sign for tea and a piece of cake for 3 pounds. I had a strawberry tea and a piece of really good (and big) chocolate cake.

From there we went into a couple stores looking for safety pins so that I could shut my backpack, which has just about fallen apart completely. It won’t zip anymore so I have to use straps and the pins to get everything working. We ended up finding some at Ryman’s.

I went back and packed up a little and met Lauren at Regent’s Park and we sat on the chairs you have to pay for until a guy came around to get money. I took some Nutella packets from the café and we ate them with our fingers. We moved over by the water and sat there for a little before I had to go back and get ready.

The bus was fine (it seems forever when you don’t sleep it) and I read both free papers on the way and listened to the White Stripes, making me a little excited to go back to Detroit.

I was taking Wizz Air and you can’t check-in online, so I had to go to the desk and all that. I didn’t exactly have a ton of time to mess around. After a family that clearly had no idea what they were doing got their ticket, I got mine and went to security. I forgot to bring a plastic bag and they charge for bags here so I decided to risk it and put my two liquids in my back pockets. Fortunately (or many unfortunately) it worked, although if I was caught I imagine I’d have a lot of problems.

The flight was delayed for a little taking off and I stayed up for most the flight and wrote my column on the back of London Lite. I read about Bucharest and the in-flight magazine before falling asleep toward the end. The flight took forever, around three hours. We got in around 2 am Bucharest time (two hours ahead of London).

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a Romanian before, but here it seemed like everyone was. There is a slight resemblance with them and dad in the face, very interesting.

All the signs are in Romanian and the airport is incredibly small. It has maybe 30 chairs in waiting areas, with only six gates. Nothing was open (which was too bad because I’m really thirsty). There was supposed to be free internet in the terminal but I couldn’t seem to connect and my computer had all sorts of errors when I started it up. I let it restart and typed up the column (I like this one, it’s more analytical instead of just talking about myself) and wrote this up too.