Cluj, Sighisoara and one damn funny night out.

Hi again everyone. We've made it to a city called cluj (kloozh). There's not much here except for a big club scene and cheap rental cars, so the rest of the gang is gearing up to hit the club and I snuck out to spend a few hours on the internet. We had a big night out last night in Sighisoara (siggy-sho-arra) that was absolutely ridiculous. I'm actually shocked that I was relatively un-hungover this morning, but somehow your body seems to go into uber-efficient food and alcohol processing when you travel.

In any case, the last few days have been fun but somewhat wearying at the same time. We're now traveling as a group of 5 people. Mike, Jed and I invited another Aussie dude named Justin to go with us, and that would've made for a perfect 4 man road trip. Jed then got a little sweet on an 18 year old girl (from Courtenay of all places) and invited her to join us. My first thought was ~~greeeeeat~~ but actually she's been pretty cool. Of course 5 is a tough number though: we don't fit in cabs, we don't fit around most tables and its too many people to make decisions. I feel like 'dad' with these guys both because I've got almost a decade on them and because I lead them around by the nose a lot. I understand now why some of the guys would get really antsy on the COCA trips about the dickering that would go on while trying to make decisions. I'll certainly be better prepared for another trip like that in the future.

Anyway, I'd guess that these guys are probably just as ready to get rid of me as I am to drop them. That's an overly harsh way to put it... it's more of a craving for freedom that's slowly getting stronger and stronger. I expect that in 2 days, when we're finished with the car, we'll all be happy to go our separate ways.

Sighisoara was kind of a weird place. It rained hard last night and we all got soaked. Jed's walking around today in wool socks and flip-flops because his shoes are so wet. (It's 2 degrees out today). The town would be picturesque in a very Germanic-medieval way if every street in the old town weren't ripped up for some kind of sewage system repair/construction. I swear there were times when you had to inch along an ancient stone wall for fear of falling into a 10' hole in the street.

The town itself was completely dead by 10pm on a Friday night. Of course, it's only a town of 30k people so you can't expect a bustling city center, but it was eerily weird because we were, as I mentioned, inching along twisty, dark, steep cobblestone streets that were more open-pit strip mine than street.

We finally found a place that was open for food and enjoyed some good pizzas and beers, followed by more beers upstairs in the loft. An accoustic band was playing there that was pretty enjoyable, and we got started with our drinking. the entertainment was provided by an extremely drunk young woman who was with a table of Americans next to us. There were 4 guys and this girl, and she was putting on a show with ALL of them. We sat back and watched these guys competing for this girl. I won't try to describe it, but it got damn funny.

Eventually they closed down and we went back to have some drinks at the hostel next to our guesthouse. This place was full of 14 year old kids on some kind of school field trip- we had tried to stay there after getting off the train earlier. After being told they were full we asked if we could come back and drink there later. The answer: "fuck yeah... fuckin hell yeah!". The guy running the place, Andrei, was so sick of these kids that he was desperate for some normal people to keep him company. So, we came back, now soaking wet, and sent a crew out to get some booze. That trip ended up with 1 litre of vodka, a few 2.5 litre beers, and a picture of a cab driver in a huge sombrero dancing in the bottle shop.

We quickly found out that the Americans were staying at this hostel and that the girl worked there. Oh boy. We kept to our separate spaces, them in the lounge and us in the adjacent billiards room (sticky table, no tips on the cues). This worked ok, but since we spent half the night laughing our asses off at the video that we had taken of this girl "dancing" at the bar earlier, we ended up pissing them off pretty good. It never got nasty, but we eventually had to leave while the girl was yelling at us all. Damn it was funny.

Today was a sort of hazy day of sightseeing and trains. The real highlight was finding a grilled ham and egg breakfast offered at the restaurant from the previous night. I added a cappucino and a plate of cheese and ham covered toast and called it a perfect hangover breakfast. What a find: greasy eggs, toast and "bacon" after my biggest night of drinking so far. Sweet.

I should try to get my iPod and camera hooked up to this computer here so that I can transfer some more pics. Not sure how many I have now, but it's a lot. If I have some time at home before going back to work I better get my ass in gear and start sorting and editing them!

That's about it for news and events. We're still hoping to get the car tomorrow and find a cabin to rent for a night or two. It's sunday tomorrow though, so I have some doubts about whether this will be possible. Once we get out though I expect to be off the grid for a couple days. Don't expect much here until I'm back in civilization.

cheers,
bms