Romanian Goose Chase

We weren't chasing actual geese. We were chasing a small flock of Romanian girls.

That so doesn't look right on the screen.

As you know, Mark and I find ourselves back at Butterfly Villa, the hostel where we lived for several weeks when we first arrived, semi-often. Not nearly often enough, but that's another story. Anyway, when we went to try to catch up with the guy who's won the Longest Butterfly Villa Resident Award, we found him missing, kidnapped by his brother and not due back for a while. We found that one of the girls was having a birthday celebration on Wednesday, which was yesterday. We promised to come and join in the fun, which included a late-night-early-morning-dawn expedition to Club Fire. She would finish with her shift at 10 p.m.

We arrived at the hostel at 10:30 p.m. last night. The girl who had the late shift told us the other hostel clerks, which are really one entity known simply as “The Girls,” had already gone. They were not at Fire. They were at Taverna Veche at Nr. 69, B-dul George Cosbuc. So we dropped off the Birthday Girl's gifts and went to catch the metro.

Unfortunately, the metro didn't take us as far as we thought it would, because the night ended for the trains. So we had to take a taxi the rest of the way. We discovered, too late, that it was a taxi with a defuncta meter. He took us up a dead end. We thought maybe that wasn't such a good thing. Maybe he had friends in the alley. But he didn't and we arrived at our destination with a 10 lei bill, which was probably actually less than a healthy meter would have asked for.

We walked into the bar and found ourselves in a tiny, smoke-filled room with a boar's head on the wall. Although the place was simply eaten up with atmosphere (it was the sort of place that an urban Aragorn would love), we knew our girls' natural habitat is the dance club. We also knew that, had they come into this bar, being both beautiful and young, they would have been eaten by the natives. So we left, assuming we were in the wrong place.

(We're going back though. Like I said, urban Aragorn atmosphere.)

Taverna Veche was next door. Taverna Veche was inchis. Closed. (And before midnight. That's unheard of.) The Girls were nowhere to be seen and both of us had forgotten our cell phones. So we hailed yet another taxi.

The taxi driver was young. The radio played contemporary music, which very appropriately declared, “I don' t know if we'll make it” as he scooted into the lane next to us, which was already occupied by a car, forcing that car to slow so he could slide in front of it just in time to avoid hitting the open door of the truck parked in our lane.

There's a reason there's no Six Flags Over Bucharest.