Culture Shock :: Romania 2

Since Romania was our first international stop on this globe-trotting adventure, we happened to notice a fair amount of cultural ‘differences’, if you will. Unfortunately we decided to write on this topic a little late in our tour of the beautiful country and now we don’t have the time, or the memory, to go into detail on every difference. Instead, we’ve chosen the stand-outs to mention in the last Culture Shock post for Romania.

Oh the people you’ll meet

Sibiu, Romania

Being sick while traveling is something that every traveler dreads. Unfortunately we now know why. Both Gage and I took turns on the sick bed over the past two week in the beautiful city of Sibiu, Romania. In fact we spent two weeks here because my sickness caused us to stay inside too much and we wanted to explore more. Too bad no one told our virus that. One word of advice to future travelers, ibuprofen is expensive and acetaminophen is non-existent. Come prepared.

Culture Shock :: Romania

For a while now I couldn’t figure out a meaningful way to contribute to this blog. Jen’s posts are hard to beat and we don’t need two people writing about the same silly adventures (since we’re always together). The cool thing is that the perfect subject was under our noses the entire time. In fact, our senses are constantly being overloaded with the stuff. Culture Shock. A common term for the obvious differences between the culture your ‘visiting’ and the one your ‘used to’, which can sometimes drive you to ripping all your hair out by the roots during an episode. Luckily, I haven’t been successful in scalping myself yet but, nevertheless, we still have come across some strange cultural differences that we’ll share with you in this new category of post.

Gettin’ Sighi With It

Sighisoara, Romania

“Sighisoara (Sig-ee-shwar-a) can probably be seen in about a day.” That’s something that you would hear if you were going to visit this place. In fact just about everyone says it including myself and Gage. Heck you can ’see’ Virginia Beach in a day, but most people like to get in the water and we wanted to dive into Sighisoara as well. The citadel that attracts so many tourist is located on a hill and filled with rough cobblestone streets and beautiful Transylvanian/German architecture. As the birthplace of Vlad Dracul one might expect it to be a bit creepier. Unfortunately for the Dracula-philes, even the cemetery here is beautiful and serene.

Dracula has Left the Building

Bucharest, Romania

Our arrival in Bucharest marked a day of firsts; first time in Romania, first day abroad, first time in a hostel, first time getting ripped of by a taxi driver. That may sound bad, but I think getting ripped off because you’re a tourist is a rite of passage. It says, welcome to my country, let me take advantage of your before you know too much. And to be quite honest, we were only ripped off a little bit, and when I pointed out to the driver that I wouldn’t be able to pay him if the meter climbed much higher, he kindly turned it off. So I think we both got what we wanted in the end. Now if I could do it all over again, I would have arrived before 6pm so that I could have purchased a bus ticket for all of $1.50, but we arrived at 10pm and there were no other options besides the Fly Taxi’s. Note to self, arrive at your destination during the day so that you have time to do some tourist-floundering.