It has been over a month now since our big 3 week European adventure so I guess it is about time to get the pictures and comments up on the big Yusmith.
Here is a Map showing the route followed on this epic journey.
I left the US on Monday afternoon Sept 30 on a redeye flight that got me to Frankfort Germany at 6 in the morning on Tuesday, to catch a flight to Bucharest, to meet Mary, that thanks to her scheduling had arrived there 1 day too early. In Bucharest we boarded a little turboprop which was the only flight daily to Satu Mare, Romania (official pronunciation here)
Believe it or not that is exactly how all Romanians talk, more on that later.
Satu Mare is a town of about 100000 near the northwest border of Romania with Hungry. We arrived and walked into the terminal building and waited for our bags at the about 8 foot on a side baggage belt go-around thing. (didn’t know they could be made that small) We got to our hotel, which actually was quite nice and went out to find a place for dinner. Satu Mare seems to close up about 5 in the afternoon but we did find a little 5 table place in the basement of a building and was able to finally eat some food after a day and a half of travel. (in fact it must be some ex-soviet state law that all restaurants must be in the basement because that is where all of the ones we ate in were located). We took care of business and then had about 24 hours to kill until being able to get the only flight out the next day. So we walked the town and hung out at the central city park.
The town itself was old Europe and with a blend of Soviet ugly.
While there we did notice a couple oddities. At all their streets where they had traffic control they of course had the walk, don’t walk signs but during our time there we did not ever see one person disobey those signs. Not old people, not people in a hurry, not teenagers, not young kids and not people wanting to cross a little 10 foot wide 1 way street. This was the most unusual thing I have ever seen. Unfortunately we were never able to find out why there was such a strict adherence to obeying the walk signs.
The other thing must be a result of history. See below for the old map of the area. You will see that Satu Mare was in a little area just outside Transylvania.
With that being the home of all vampires that must be the reason for the lack of famous Romanian singers and the preponderance of gymnasts from Romania. In fact as noted above all Romanians talk in the exact same voice. While we were out walking around I asked a random Romanian woman to sing the chorus of Jingle Bells and luckily my phone happen to be in record mode. Here is that rendition.
They just can’t carry a tune but as leaving she did do 5 flips 6 back flips and a Jacques Cousteau dismount.
So it was off to the Satu Mare International Airport (actual real name) to go to Bucharest for the night.Here is the waiting room and the security checkpoint.
After spending a short night in a hotel near the airport in Bucharest we got up and started on our way to Paris. We had a connection in Istanbul and here are a couple pictures of the airport.
What is of interest and somewhat surprising with these pictures from the Istanbul airport is that nowhere is there an ottoman to be seen, and there could be plenty of places for them to be used.
The full picture set in the list at the right.
On to Paris.