Killing Batteries

Tomorrow I fly back to Romania for the second time in three months like a jet-setting badass to complete my LP guidebook research, wallow in the fame of being a travel writing all-star, beat off amorous groupies with my medical burro riding crop and sleep soundly every night with the knowledge that my life kicks so much ass that my government actually imposes extra taxes on me for it.

If only.

I’m not going to deny that there are days that I struggle into my home-office desk chair at the crack of noon, with a mug of chocolate-flavored coffee, no boss in sight, having not donned shoes or a shirt in over 24 hours, read my two pieces of daily fan mail (and delete my 37 pieces of hate mail) and finally get to the grave task of writing caustic remarks and cheap shots about Berlin, Jesus and the slightly dry steak I ate while in First Class during my last flight over the Pacific, but equally, this job has its moments of sobering wretchedness.

Since I’m comfortably at the experience and wisdom levels now that allow me to accurately see into the future (by the way, it’s Splitsville for Christina Aguilera and Jordan Bratman in 2009), I’ll give you a preview of subjects you’re like to read about in this blog - or more likely, on my Twitter page - over the next three weeks while I’m on the road in Romania:

•    The hair-melting heat wave that’s descending on southern Romania as I write this

•    People that work in Romanian tourism, that plainly loathe tourists

•    Why in Buddha’s name did I choose to research in July, knowing that every decent hotel would be booked for weeks?

•    How many Ibuprofen per day I’m taking to fight back the hip pain

•    How little clothing women bother with on the Black Sea coast

•    The ethical dilemma of being treated like a vagrant by people whose businesses I could make or break with one sentence in the book

•    Loud hostels/little sleep

•    Has anyone sent me a check recently?

•    I have exactly zero confirmed work for after September 1st – do I worry about finances or celebrate the long-overdue break?

•    I’d kill for a cheeseburger

And so goes the head-spinning highs and demoralizing lows in the life of a travel writer.

All possible adversity, pain and humiliation aside, this is actually shaping up to be the easiest bit of guidebook research of my short career. I’ve got three weeks to do about two weeks worth of work, almost everywhere I’m going is unspeakably awesome (e.g. Sibiu, Braşov, Danube Delta, Black Sea Coast), and if things go well I’ll spend the final two or three days sitting on a beach and practicing my Romanian with some of Europe’s most beautiful women.

Now I have to go pack my guidebook writer cape and tights (the lavender or the burgundy, I can never decide), review my Romanian curse words and lewd gestures for that first drive through Bucharest, shave my head for optimum speed-walking aerodynamics and eat one last cheeseburger to offset the 5-8 pounds that I’m about to lose.

Though my Romania research is only a little more than half completed (I return July 9th for three more weeks on the road), I’m long overdue for a positive post about this country just to pacify those of you that are undoubtedly wondering why I keep coming here.

Lists are nice. Let’s do that:

• The countryside: parts of this country are so unspeakably beautiful that your brain tries to reject it as a hallucination as a defense mechanism so you don’t go insane, like during hostile alien invasions. Driving through northwest Moldavia into Maramures (specifically between Gura Humorului all the way to Vadu Izei) I wanted to stop the car every 30 seconds to take pictures. As it was, I only stopped once. The instant I fished out my camera clouds descended, but I took the picture anyway.
• On that note, the villages in Maramures are just so infectiously quaint and peaceful that you have to wonder if there might be a Valium factory nearby, pumping 50 tones of byproduct into the air every day. If they had reliable internet, I’d probably never leave.
• Wine: so good and cheap that I’m surprised the EU hasn’t outlawed it. You can get a perfectly good bottle for about 3 euros (about US$4.50) - and it gets even better in Moldova.
• I never get tired of simply strolling around cities like Sighişoara, Braşov and Oradea. They’ve got this living museum effect, like Venice without the flooding.
• I would almost live in this Podunk village just for the name alone. (NSFW)
• Ţuică: Dangerously lethal plumb brandy moonshine, but if you get the good stuff from Maramures, don’t ask me why, hangovers are surprisingly mild.
• The women: you’re all so heart-breakingly, bug-eyed, lip smacking beautiful. Every time I leave the country I want to pop out my eyes and put them in a jar, so if some accident should befall me before I return, the last thing I ever see will be your faces (and stuff).
• Parking: with the possible exception of Italy, Romania has the most lenient parking restrictions I’ve ever seen. Though I’m sure the law books say otherwise, in reality the only restrictions are that you’re car must be at least 3/4 of the way into the space and you must move your car before 8am on July 12th, 2017.
• With very rare exception, the hostels here are great and getting better. They should send every HI hostel owner in France, Italy and Spain to Romania to teach them a desperately needed lesson.
• Oh no she di’in’t! (NSFW again)

That’s all for now. Part 2 in July will take me to the clothing optional utopia that is the Black Sea Coast. A hail of purely accidental Not Safe For Work images are sure to ensue.

Bucharest was pretty dreadful, but I’ve had worse. Naples comes to mind - and that hellhole Andorra la Vella. Or that time in Los Angeles, when I drove from UCLA to Orange County… Nevertheless, I won’t be buying property in Bucharest soon or even investing in a 10-ride metro card. In many ways Bucharest is like a port town, but without the port. People arrive by plane and train, then promptly flee for more agreeable destinations.

I’ll grudgingly admit that there are worthwhile things to see here, but having visited every notable patch of grass in Romania, I can say with complete authority that anything and everything in Bucharest exists in much better form and surroundings at several other places in the country. If you’ve only got four days, fine, stay in Bucharest, if not, you’re doing yourself a disservice by lingering here.

Though not nearly as demoralizing as driving in Bucharest - which has unbelievably gotten worse in the past three years - five days on foot in Bucharest could break the patience and love of Gandhi himself. Hell, just sitting on a street corner can drain the hardest man’s will to live. The incessant car horns, the dense pollution, people screaming at each other, half-dead dogs and filth… Vlad Tepeş wouldn’t last 10 seconds in modern Bucharest. The first time someone drove by with a cigarette in one hand and a mobile phone in the other, splashing him with a totally avoidable puddle, he’d completely lose his shit. If only skewering wrongdoers from asshole to neck was still legal, people would probably have better manners around here. (more…)

Actually, I don’t really have anything else to say to you guys. I board a flight in just over 24 hours and as soon as I touch the ground in Bucharest, I’ll be a blur of over-Red Bulled, under-rested, stress-addled, bilingual jabbering motion for the next four weeks. I could promise to submit trip reports here at least once a week, but I really have no idea if that’ll be possible. On the surface, this research trip appears to be a cakewalk, but this is a Romania and Lonely Planet perfect storm we’re talking about here. Two entities that on their own virtually guarantee unpredictable chaos. When put together, be terrified (on my behalf). Be very terrified (on my behalf).

For you guidebook groupies, this research trip is only to update the chapters on Romania and Moldova for Lonely Planet’s Eastern Europe and Europe on a Shoestring books. So while the total number of pages that I’m writing/updating is far less than if I were also researching for the Romania & Moldova book, the geographic area that I’m covering has nearly doubled (I didn’t cover Bucharest or Transylvania last time, that was Robert’s job). So, while there’ll be less facts to check in each city and therefore less time spent pounding the pavement, there’ll be more time driving and as I’ve already testified, despite improvements in road conditions and driving behavior, driving in Romania and Moldova largely remains white knuckle, ass-tightening anarchy.

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If you missed it, you can check this page for the rerun schedule, but I’ll save you the suspense and tell you that Anthony’s trip to Romania was pitifully conceived, planned and executed. Among other things, totally avoidable eff-ups included:

• Rather than contacting me, he let his bumbling Russian buddy, who’d seemingly visited Romania once for a week in the 90s, plan the whole trip for him, including going to one of the schlockiest restaurants in the country and spending the night at a Dracula-themed hotel in Braşov on Halloween with a tour group from Nevada.
• Spending more than 30 cumulative minutes in that hellhole Bucharest.
• Believing that a professional advance team could iron out any pesky Romanian bureaucratic impasses before he got there and if there was trouble all he’d have to do is present his trusty folder of official papers and everything would be just fine.
• Thinking that driving a Dacia 1310 long distances would be funny, good TV instead of life threatening.
• Not getting a sexy translator.

On that note, I’d like to formally announce that I have signed contracts with LP to go back to Romania and Moldova to research and update chapters for the same for the next Eastern Europe and Europe on a Shoestring guidebooks.

Some of my heartiest, long-standing blog readers will either be groaning sadly and/or getting very excited for all the pathetic, whiny, bleating, bitchy Romania and Moldova-related blog posts that are sure to follow which have historically been some of the funniest material I have ever written. Well, the joke is on you, jackholes. This is going to be the greatest trip ever and here’s why:

• I’ll be traveling in summer, not the dead of winter.
• I’ll be driving a real car, as opposed to this piece of $hit.
• I’ll be constantly mobbed by crazed fans, carrying the previous additions of the guidebooks, co-written by me, directed by me and starring me.
• I’ve been to all of these destinations before, several times in some cases, and won’t have to deal with things like getting lost while driving, getting lost while walking and getting lost while getting lost.
• I’ll have a sexy translator in tow.

On that note I’d like to formally announce that I’m taking applications for the position of my sexy translator. Ideal applicants will have the following qualifications:

• Speak English
• Speak Romanian
• Be not batshit crazy
• Be sexy

Though my Romanian language skills haven’t deserted me as fast as my Italian language skills, it wouldn’t hurt to have a second pair of ears while I’m interrogating bus station clerks or to have a flirty co-pilot to smooth things over when I get stopped by the pigs for imaginary driving infractions and shaken down for a bribe. I’m looking at you Moldova.

I blast off for the first of two Romania/Moldova trips on May 7th. Bucharest beware, I’m coming to see you first and I’m not happy about it.

Folks, my deluge of Romania travel posts on Gadling.com has begun today with this post.

Again, I should be posting 3-5 times a week for the next four weeks or so. Set your feeds accordingly and leave a ton of comments so the other writers feel unpopular and wretchedly envy.

I’ve just signed a variety of scary looking documents to seal a travel-blogging deal with Gadling for the duration of my upcoming one month trip in Romania. I’m going to attempt to post 3-5 times a week in posts of 750 words or less (testing the upper threshold of my powers of brevity) about subjects such as post-EU changes, food, drink, hitchhiking, how kick ass my LP guide to Romania is and why you should never take directions from drunk dudes.

Post frequency here will suffer as a result, but hey, 3-5 times a week is more of me than even my ex-wife could handle, so you should all be plenty sated.

See you down the rabbit hole.

(Or would that be ‘doofi’?)

I have a dirty little secret. Every time I fly in or out of Italy or Romania, I’m scared shitless. Actually, when I fly into either of these countries, I’m merely very concerned that I won’t see my luggage for a week. Inconvenient, yes, but not in an underwear soiling sort of way (which is advantageous since I’ll be wearing that pair of underwear for the next six nights…). But when I fly out of these two countries, I need two shots of tequila, a blindfold and preferably a stick to bite on.

The reason why I’m this scared is this: I don’t completely trust the ground crews in these countries. I know this is not going to go over well in my voluminous Italian and Romanian fan clubs, but the fact is that I’ve lived in both of these countries for a fair time and it was hard to overlook a few character flaws that these people have in common. That being, they tend to be inordinately distracted from critical duties by inconsequential matters. Distracted from driving their car in a straight line by adjusting the stereo. Distracted from getting the hell out of my way by lighting a cigarette. Distracted from closing the luggage bay door on an airplane by an SMS message from their girlfriend or what have you.

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The return to my unintended second home - Iasi, Romania - has been filled with equal parts business-as-usual and unlikely surprises.

The overnight train ride from Bucharest to Iasi was pure Romania:  The train was full to bursting.  My compartment was all men.  On that note, why am I always grouped with stinky men?  Never beautiful, nice smelling women. Whether I’m on a train, bus, airplane, hostel room or nude beach, always with the men.  One time, I sat next to an achingly pretty Swedish girl on a trans-Atlantic flight, who flirted, placed my hand on her firm breast (ostensibly to feel her heart beat) and slept on my arm for three hours.  That was 1991.  It’s been farting, sweating, drunken, deodorant flouting men ever since. 

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Guess what?  I’m going to Romania next week.

Don’t worry, I’m not staying for long.  I’m not completely backing down from the vow I announced in August, made at the urging of my lawyer, psychotherapy team and concerned parties at the American Embassy in Bucharest.  Also, my dietitian said I needed to detox from eating pizza six days a week for 13 months straight, but what does she know?

I’m jetting in via Rome with budget airline Blue Air for 11 indulgent days - December 28^th through January 8^th – after being successfully lured there on the strength of the New Years Eve celebrations and the unhinged street parties that will follow on January 1^st to celebrate Romania’s photo-finish acceptance into the European Union.

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