In 1995 I graduated from university and had decided to celebrate my slightly disappointing 2:2 in History by going on holiday and for some reason and opted for a holiday in Romania at a resort on the Black sea coast called Mamaia.
The hotel was fine; basic shall we say. The room was clean and the food was indifferent. The staff though were friendly enough but unfortunately their limited English and my non existent Romanian meant I found it hard to communicate and get any answers to my questions like; where can I change money? Are there any taxi's around here? And where can I buy toothpaste? And so on. But it was cheap and the weather hot and the Black sea was warm.
One day satisfied with my tan I decided it was time to strike out and explore the environs a bit. Standing at the central bus station I mentally tossed a coin and settled on taking a coach to Brasov which was a good distance away in the foothills of the Carpathian mountains and thought that might be interesting. According to the timetable we should arrive at about noon so I planned to spend the afternoon exploring the countryside get some decent photographs and then at about 5 or 6pm take the bus back.
It was a hot sunny day and I tramped through the forest up the hills and walked along the riverbank taking lots of pictures and by about 3:30 I started to get really hungry and I slowly walked back to the town and found a place to eat. The meal in the cafe was terrible, so was the coffee and the beer was warm. Very disappointing.
But worse was to come. When I tried to find out what the times were for the coach going back to my resort I eventually discovered from one local, who had a smattering of English, that there would be no coach back today! I would have to wait until the morning. That was a hell of a shock I can tell you and the news left me nonplussed. I had obviously not read the timetable carefully enough (that asterisk had clearly mention something!) Tomorrow morning! Shit! I went back to sit at the cafe and tried to think about what I was going to do and by late afternoon I still hadn't managed to come up with a plan and so I was at my wits end.
I was wandering around aimlessly resigned to the fact that I might have to spend the night on a park bench when...turning a corner into the town square I saw it, A parked bus! I was surprised and delighted but also puzzled because I had been told that there would be no buses today and yet, here it was. True it didn't look like the the regular scheduled service for the very obvious reason that it was a rickety old beast only held together by sellotape and string and it was astonishingly filthy caked with dust and grime that must have been there since the birth of Jesus. But on the other hand it was a bus and it just might save my bacon.
I walked up to it and saw some locals standing around and I assumed they were waiting to get on. I asked them if it was going to Mamaia? One or two nodded their heads. I cheered up immediately. With a lot of arm waving and gesticulating with my hands I tried to find out if I could get on? They looked puzzled. They obviously didn't understand. I decided that the best thing for me to do was wait for the driver to turn up and ask him.
When he did I asked if he was going to Mamaia. He nodded. Pointing to my chest and pointing to the bus I asked if I could get on. To my relief he said yes. I didn't waste any time in hopping on. I took a window seat opposite the exit doors halfway down the bus. Gradually the bus started to fill up and a huge middle aged woman took the seat next to me and after about twenty minutes the bus set off. It became obvious after a while that as I had suspected this was not a regular local service but was a bus provided for the local people who worked on the local farms because it very soon left the main road and started to bump along rutted country lanes stopping to let some passengers off and let others on. The bus was soon packed with big and sweaty agricultural labourers in their grimy clothes..There were a few women but mostly it was men who all seemed to look the same: dark, tanned and very hairy The bus rattled along noisily bouncing painfully over each bump as it didn't appear to have any shock absorbers.