Do I have to spend the Bucharest of my life without you?
Before getting on the train to Bucharest, I was served pizza in Braşov by the most beautiful girl I've ever seen in my life. That is all.
The train ride was once again beautiful, but there was no interesting conversation to be had. I got very confused and lost when I got out of the train station as the hostel's directions made no sense. After stumbling around for 20 minutes, I finally found a tram that took me where I wanted to go. I settled into the hostel and started to get hungry. I got a recommendation at the front desk for a nearby restaurant and headed out. It started to pour on my way there, and of course I had no umbrella. I had yet another awkward cosmic lonely eating experience. Not wanting to waste any of their tables on just one guy, they placed me sopping wet self at a table with some man who seemed to have ordered eight or nine courses. I tried to do a better job ordering than the last time, but I pretty much ended up with the same lame meal, minus the french fries. Meanwhile, a bass, accordion, and dulcimer trio played "La Vie en Rose", of course.
It was late at this point, so I stayed in the hostel for the rest of the night. For a while, I sat in the little den area on a couch with a bunch of people watching Lord of the Rings. Well, mostly I watched the old man with an indeterminable accent watching the movie. He had put on his comfy clothes and was sitting barefoot in a weird position with his legs crossed near his ankles. He held the remote (or, as he would say if he were an American old man, the "clicker") in his right hand and obsessively fine-tuned the volume throughout the duration of the movie.
While sitting there, I met PJ, who was to become my good friend for the next two days. He was a Londoner in his 30s. He was some sort of free-lance economist for the British government, which allowed him to travel contantly. He'd been to over fifty countries so far. It's hard for me to capture his manner of speech here, exactly, but it was pretty distinctive. He talked fast, mumbled a bit to himself, and would say things like: "America...wonderful country...really fantastic..." and would ask lots of hypotheticals: "When I say 'Chicago,' what do you think of? Lake Michigan, winter, pizza..." or "If you were stranded on a desert island and could only eat one kind of food, what would it be? I really like Italian."
The next day, we would really bond when we discovered we were both huge fans of The Prisoner.
The train ride was once again beautiful, but there was no interesting conversation to be had. I got very confused and lost when I got out of the train station as the hostel's directions made no sense. After stumbling around for 20 minutes, I finally found a tram that took me where I wanted to go. I settled into the hostel and started to get hungry. I got a recommendation at the front desk for a nearby restaurant and headed out. It started to pour on my way there, and of course I had no umbrella. I had yet another awkward cosmic lonely eating experience. Not wanting to waste any of their tables on just one guy, they placed me sopping wet self at a table with some man who seemed to have ordered eight or nine courses. I tried to do a better job ordering than the last time, but I pretty much ended up with the same lame meal, minus the french fries. Meanwhile, a bass, accordion, and dulcimer trio played "La Vie en Rose", of course.
It was late at this point, so I stayed in the hostel for the rest of the night. For a while, I sat in the little den area on a couch with a bunch of people watching Lord of the Rings. Well, mostly I watched the old man with an indeterminable accent watching the movie. He had put on his comfy clothes and was sitting barefoot in a weird position with his legs crossed near his ankles. He held the remote (or, as he would say if he were an American old man, the "clicker") in his right hand and obsessively fine-tuned the volume throughout the duration of the movie.
While sitting there, I met PJ, who was to become my good friend for the next two days. He was a Londoner in his 30s. He was some sort of free-lance economist for the British government, which allowed him to travel contantly. He'd been to over fifty countries so far. It's hard for me to capture his manner of speech here, exactly, but it was pretty distinctive. He talked fast, mumbled a bit to himself, and would say things like: "America...wonderful country...really fantastic..." and would ask lots of hypotheticals: "When I say 'Chicago,' what do you think of? Lake Michigan, winter, pizza..." or "If you were stranded on a desert island and could only eat one kind of food, what would it be? I really like Italian."
The next day, we would really bond when we discovered we were both huge fans of The Prisoner.
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Die Wiener Kompilation
- The Shangri-Las - Train From Kansas City
from Shangri-Las-65! (1965) - Seam - Stage 2000
from The Problem With Me (1993) - The Prisoner - Main Title Theme
written by Ron Grainer (1967)
posted by Evan C. at 10:07 AM
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