carnivale - mi-e frica!

scratch and sniff - don't do it :) although this would be the best way to sum up the WC experience in timisoara - which we'll lead into this poveste now....

it was a long day of getting ready and studying limba româna. no nap for me :( but the excitement was high. our train left cluj at 22:25 in the evening and our train arrived in timisoara just before 5 am. approx 2.5 hrs of sleep. don't mind little sleep - in fact - love the night. adventure was certain and began while we waited on the platform for the train. our first site on this trip was the barbat jerking off on the train next to us on the platform. well well well - what can i say about that? we both noticed him at the same moment and looked at each other and burst into laughter. turning away wondering what would happen next? our train arrived and we found our seats and the whistles announded our departure...a sign to get settled for the long journey ahead.

settling in with no one else in our wagon we yammered on about everything. armed with our apa minerale, bananas and chocolate...there are many stops on the train and after a few stops an older woman joined us - she was probably 75 years old (not really sure because i can never tell how old anyone really is at all) after a while the guy who checks the tickets came by to check and bătrână did not have all of the proper papers as a pensioner and did not have any money to pay. her fate was to be put off the train at the next stop in the rain in the middle of the night after a 5 minute ordeal of the om demanding more information which she couldn't produce or money to pay the fare. so they left the car to continue the conversation. while she was put near the exit to wait for the next stop, we found him and along with another romanian woman on the train we paid her fair and she was allowed to return to our car. she didn't know that we paid for her. so that made it even more beautiful to see her smiling face as she showed us her ticket. her smile was like an angel glowing a halo of luminos light. she no longer showed her years only her inner beauty which streamed out of her. (by the way almost don't like mentioning our deed because it is not boasting but part of the story of the journey....so that said we continued on) she would reach her destination safe and sound. we were happy too knowing that she would be warm and could sleep peacefully in the car with us...we continued on until we arrived in timisoara around 5 am.

so what is worse the toilet on the train? or the WC in the station? lack of sleep makes either choice easier certainly. damn i had to go and so did chris. lugging our baggage, we headed toward the acrid smell. well it was as if we had arrived at the entrance of a carnival when we walked to the WC - a glass booth with turnstiles on either side and a sleeping man who was probably in his 30's or early 40's - feet up, he was the guardian who would take money 10,000 lei each (quite expensive i think) to give us TP and move the bar past the turnstile that would allow us to witness a site that most would prefer to avoid. this repugnant smell unfortunately would stay on my pumas until i could get them home and soak them in hot water and a supersonic cleaner. most WC in romania in my experience are not bad at all. i look at going to the bathroom in a public place as an opportunity to work my quads - squat and work those muscles. nici o problema but this was only a surprise to me since we were in the gara of one of the largest cities in romania. in all the other places who cares..you expect this a little more hard core but here a small surprise. so for those of you who haven't had this experience i will try to describe it....

imagine a stench of urine and cacați emenating from probably 40 holes in the ground where you can deposit your bodily waste. a group latrine with doors that don't close and really at some point you don't care because you don't want to touch anything there anyway. for guys not so bad for girls well.... so ok i'm not going to describe it any further since well... i love romania and it's not a pretty topic. chris was a saviour with her anti-bacterial travel size cleanser. so we have an hour to kill b4 boarding the train for belgrade -

so off to the cafe in the gara to drink some espresso. the cafe was filled with barbați only and one female server. many were roma i think and almost all of them were drinking some form of alcholic beverage.....

lack of sleep for me so i will continue this poveste later......