Saturday, October 13, 2007

Here We Go 'Round the Mullberry Bush...

Not knowing Romanian really stinks! It also stinks that no one in Brasov seems to speak English or Russian, alas. I did my standard charades move to find out how to get to Bran Castle, and the nice lady at the bus ticket booth told me (I thought) to take bus #23 until I got to a place called “Autogarooch”. I thanked her, jumped on bus #23, and looked and looked for “Autogarooch”, but no such thing. Finally, I got off, stopped and tried to ask again, and the people pointed me back the direction I had come. “Ah-ha!”, I thought, “I guess I did miss it.” So I bought another ticket and jumped back on the #23 going the other direction. Still no “Autogarooch” all the way back to the bus station. Frustrated, I got off, walked back to the lady at the ticket counter and explained that I couldn’t find it. She did speak a little bit of English, so what I discovered is that “Autogarooch” isn’t a stop, it’s a place. It’s another bus station. And the reason I kept getting conflicting information is because people kept pointing me back to the main station rather than assuming I needed the “other” one. Armed with my new knowledge, I eventually found the “Autogarooch”, which, incidentally, appears to be Romanian for “Auto garage”. Anyway, I managed to find the bus to Bran, jumped on, and even found a group of Americans to chat with on the way. Good to go.

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