34 hours: To Cluj and back.

This weekend I ventured off on my own to meet some of my fellow volunteers in the large university town of Cluj. I left my apartment a little late on Saturday morning because my alarm clock didn't go off.

Instead of waiting two hours for a bus I decided to try my hand at hitch-hiking all the way by myself. I've always been a little timid about doing this, but I sucked it up and held out my hand in the proper position my gazda dad, Dan, had taught me while hitching a ride to Bucaresti from Ploiesti. It wasn't 5 minutes and I had a ride from a nice man traveling to Targu Mures. We had a short chat and then he turned the radio up so I figured I was either boring him or he just wanted to drive in peace. I liked this! Once in Mures, I decided to continue hitching to Cluj. I found a ride to Ludus, and then hopped aboard a maxi-taxi to the train station in Cluj. This took me around 5 hours and cost me 10 lei (about $3)...by car from Tarnaveni it takes approx. 1 hour 45 minutes. Asta e! (literally translated as "This is..." It's commonly said throughout Romania, and is the equivalent of saying "What can you do")

Once in Cluj, I met up with the volunteers and a couple of their friends visiting from Michigan. We just chilled in the afternoon since they had all had a late night the evening before. Once evening came we thought we'd try to get a table to watch the football game between Romania and Serbia. It's impossible to find a place without reservations for the game so we split up for the time being and had some drinks at different bars. Serbia won the game so the ruckus in the streets I was hoping for never transpired. There was, however, a nice candlelight vigil held in the piata for Earth Hour! Did you all do it?? After the game, we were walking around when we encountered a girl with a "Free Hugs" sign. Our entire group happily accepted the hugs and went on our merry way. We ended the night in a great Hookah bar across from our hostel. After the festivities at the Hookah bar, we headed back to the hostel and proceeded to have a massive cross-cultural exchance. I variety of languages were spoken (Romanian, English, French, Spanish, Russian) and then -- skipping over some parts -- we all went to sleep for a couple hours before waking in the morning and departing for our various towns in Romania.

A group of us headed to McDonald's before catching our buses, talked with some American basketball players playing on a Romanian team, and then we said our goodbyes and headed home. I got back to Tarnaveni looking like a tired mess, and of course I ran into a group of students on the walk to my apartment. Good to be back in my Romanian home.

Can you tell I got tired of telling this story? I hope you found it a bit interesting.
All in all it was great fun, but it was also one of the longest 34 hours of my life.