This is not my story. Once upon a time, back when Romania was just another country behind the iron curtain, they had a crazy dictator. I mean, absolutely mental. His name was Ceauşescu, but since I can't remember how to say his name, I call him Crazy 
Dictator Dude. Bucharest, the capital of Romania used to be called little Paris. Because, they say it looked like Paris. I imagine that it was full of color and life, with bustling streets and lots of shops with bright window displays. But Crazy Dictator Dude, he didn’t like the city. He was obsessed with city planning and order, and wanted to redesign the city. And so he did. The entire center of the old city was destroyed. He built wide avenues, massive buildings, planned a park, and started to build the People’s Palace. It’s already the second largest building in the world, after the Pentagon, and they still haven’t finished it! It takes 45 minutes to walk around the outside of it, it's that big. But maybe he drove through the city too fast and didn't see everything, or maybe the maps sucked, because he forgot to demolish little bits of the old city - an arcade here, a church there. Anyways, Mr. Crazy Dictator Dude did not live to see the completion of his evil master plan to turn the city into a sterile and gray place. He was executed, although some people think they executed his double and he’s living like a king in South America. So whether or not he died, he was no longer Mr. Crazy Dictator Dude. The Berlin wall fell in 1989, the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, and Romania was left with a capital that used to look like Paris, and now is full of wide 
streets with no shops, huge buildings that are empty and incomplete, small bits of the old city, the second largest building in the world (still under construction) and the worst labeled underground system I have ever seen. Inside there is no map. They list some of the future stops at some of the stations, but in general you have to guess what train you need to get on, and in what direction. It’s a mystery underground. You never know where you’ll be when you come above ground again, into this gray city with a feel of decomposition to it. Vines are beginning to take back the buildings. Chaos is coming back, and perhaps one day, people will take the empty streets back to be their own. But for now there are lots of rabid dogs wandering the streets. The scene has now been set. Would you believe it's the scene for a love story?
I really like the city though. It's in transition from what must have been a beautiful city, to a sterile city, back to a city of people and dogs and mice. I like seeing life reclaim the huge concrete buildings and empty streets. Kate says she thinks it’s a great example of urban planning gone horribly wrong. Beware of talking to her about urban planning though, she has a tendency to talk for hours. She likes the city too. She has a reason to like it though. She was in Bucharest once before. You might like her story.
Kate came to Bucharest on the train from Sofia, in Bulgaria. It was a night train, her first proper night train and on the train she started talking to an American couple. They are not important for the story though. The part they play is that they were saying bad things about Wales. From the next compartment came a noise – boo boo boo. Kate jumped. She hadn’t realized someone was inside. The guy inside was named Rich, or as Kate’s mother refers to him, Richard II. He was a Welsh cartographer living in Sweden, on a year long journey. He had never been on a plane in his life, and planned to never use one if possible. Kate was smitten. Both with the guy and with his life. They found themselves both popping out into the corridor to look out the window that night.
The next morning, when they arrived in Bucharest, he waited for her to get off the train. In need of money, they both went to the bank machine. He got money, she didn’t. So she went to the other bank machine. Still no luck. Neither of the exchange places would change her Turkish lira, and so she was stuck, with no money in a strange city. And Richard II was Kate’s knight in shining armor. He bought her breakfast in the train station, and said that he was staying in a hostel close to the train station. She could probably stay there too.
The hostel was run by some orthodox Jews who had moved back to Bucharest from Canada after the fall of the wall. They let Kate stay in the hostel, and they fed Kate and Richard a second breakfast. He asked for advice on fixing his trousers that zipped off into shorts, but were now refusing to zip back on into trousers. After using duct tape (fixes everything), Richard II went out to meet a friend, and Kate went out to explore the city, the People’s Palace, and the bad underground system, waving her bag at rabid dogs to keep them away. She was a bit spooked by the huge boulevards with no shops, and no people or cars on them, feeling like she had entered a ghost town. But then back near the train station the city felt overflowing with people, dogs, and encroaching ivy. That night, Richard II returned from the opening of some new restaurant, and he and Kate walked around the dark and silent city for two hours, talking about everything.
She saw him at breakfast the following day, and then went off to explore. Taking the underground north, she found a model of the Arch de Triumph in Paris, funny since the city no longer looks like Paris. She walked through neighborhoods that most tourists never saw, and although she got a little lost, she found her way back to the hostel. By the time she returned she had tried almost every brand of bank machine in the city and was getting a bit panicked. She had stayed in the hostel, and owed her knight in shining armor money. What would she do? The woman at the hostel recommended one bank machine that she knew worked with foreign credit unions. Richard said he would come with her.
They found the bank machine, only to discover that it had an out of service message. Richard burst out laughing. However, around the corner was a working one. Well, working for everyone but Kate. Finally they found a tiny place that would do a cash advance on a credit card. Thank goodness thought Kate. The woman spent forever preparing the forms, but when Kate went to sign them, the lady looked at her tiny signature and said, that’s not big enough, do it again. Again?! thought Kate. In those long moments as the lady filled out the forms she thought of all the horrible things that could happen to her. She did get the money though, and she and Richard went to one of the remaining arcades and then another place to have some beer. And talk. Talk about travel and the stupidness of bank machines, about trains, maps, geography, writing a thesis, accidentally ending up in Iraq, couchsurfing, politics, and beer, about adventure, and getting lost.
Wishing she could join Richard in his journey, she knew she had to go west to meet her family in Budapest in a few days time. She had time to go to either Braşov, home of Dracula’s castle, or Sighişoara , birthplace of Dracula. Richard and the hostel owner both recommended Sighişoara , and so she left. A few hours later Richard went to Bran, only to discover Kate's bad luck had rubbed off on him, leading to a stolen wallet. She left behind a guy she had fallen completely in love with, and was never to see again. But she had been smitten, transformed into a traveler for life, and promising herself to always travel overland if possible. Kate knew then that traveling could and would be her way of life.