Sayonara, Kai - Trip to Bucharest!!

"さよならは悲しい響きだけど 君とならば愛の言葉"

It's a verse in a song written by my favorite artist, Kazutoshi Sakurai. In translation, it means something like this.

"'Sayonara' is said with sad connotation, but between you and me it's a word of love."

OK, let's replace "Love" with "friendship" here and read on.

As the title of this post suggests, Kai Reimers of Germany finished his traineeship in Romania and flew back home this weekend. I met Kai last year in Atlanta while he was doing his study abroad in Jacksonville, Florida. He chaired our regional conference and it was great. And I still cannot believe the fact that he happened to be in the same place at the same time when I decided to take a traineeship in Galati. It was completely a coincidence! So I have no doubt that I'll see him again sometime in the future, so until then, SAYONARA Kai!

So on Saturday morning, Herman, Kai, and I left Galati with 1992 Dacia Supernova (again) to go to Bucharest. The trip was nice. The weather was perfect, Bucharest wasn't too far away, and we even had our first experience with Romania highway!



Normally the road in Romania is really bumpy, but this highway was really nice!

And then we arrived at Bucharest, met up with everyone else (Frank, Dirk, Dragos, Claudiu, and Martijn), tried to go inside of the Palace of Parliament but couldn't, so we visited a ruin. We payed 3 lei to get inside, and according to Frank, "there's nothing to see," and in fact he got that right. There wasn't much to see.



So we went on and walked around the city, walked around parks and drank some beer, went back to the hostel and drank some more beer, and we walked into the city again to eat dinner, drink some more and party. We met one guy from Whales and one guy from Canada, so we took them with us. I'm tired of pasting the pictures now, so go to my Picasa Album and see the pictures yourself.

We had a lot of fun but to make long story short, we went out clubbing and drank more beer. Club A was great although apparently it was too crowded for some people. When I got back to the hostel, it was past 5 A.M. and smelled like I was covered in tobacco for hours.

Then less than 4 hours later, Kai took off. We were sad, but I think were a bit sleepier than we were sad, so we went back to bed. Later we visited the Palace of Parliament and this time we succeeded to get in. The Palace was HUGE and gaudy. Many Romanian people don't like it for several reasons. And we got in for free, thanks to our student status.

After we toured around the city some more, we drove back to Galati. I ended up driving part of the way, and I must say that driving in Romania is different from what I'm used to. Fortunately, we all arrived home safely.

And here's the picture of the weekend. I'm tired of putting thumbnails now but this one deserved it.



Whoever ever drew this graffiti better be prepared to die at the hands of samurai.