Tuesday morning I met a French and German guy over breakfast. Turned out they were doing the exact route I had originally hoped to do but didn't have the balls cause I was travelling alone. They were planning to head off the next day and drive to Transylvania, then on to Budapest, Hungary. I told them that I wanted to do Transylvania but my rail ticket didn't start for another couple of days, so after much hinting, they kindly offered my a lift, which was awesome. The DARE group set out to City of Hope and Marios took us to the Romanian parliament building in the centre of town.It is the 2nd biggest government building in the world, 2nd to the Pentagon. It was huuuge, made of marble and crystal. We all found it pretty sick. Although it was obviously impressive, it could have housed every one of the homeless kids on the streets (I'm sure they could have all had en suites and huge rooms) and given pensions to the old dudes we saw bumming about looking for food in the rubbish bins. The government here is utterly corrupt. During the tour, an American tourist kept asking the tour guide inappropriate questions, like- 'Do you feel like you have freedom?' and 'Can you do anything you want?' and he was saying it was rediculous that you can't just walk into the Romanian parliament building (like you could even get near the Pentagon!!) Random western rudeness. At the end of the tour, he dissappeared somewhere and the poor wee lady taking us around had a wee fit and ran off to find him- I think she thought that he was an enemy spy. After the tour, we went to find some shade and some food- twas a boiling 43 degs. We headed back to the City of Hope office to get my photos burned to DVD and Marios showed us some vid footage he took of last year's DARE group at City of Hope over Christmas. We had a convo about what we would miss most about Romania and everyone said it would be Dan. This made me mega excited cause I'd arranged for him to surprise us that night. We didn't visit the streets in the afternoon cause it was getting rediculously hot. Back at the hostel, the others napped and showered, while I went online to try and finalise the arrangements of Dan's big surprise. I had told the others that we were meeting with Dr Avram's daughter that night, and none of them were keen at all. Really the plan was that Dan was coming to see us to give us a proper goodbye cause he felt like we had a rushed farewell when we had to hop on the bus in Campina. After I confirmed times with Dan, I bumped into a girl in the toilets. Normally I would always say hello, but for some reason I didn't. So about 1/2 hr later, I saw her again on her own and went over for a wee chat (I had a feeling I had to speak to her). Her name's Merissa and she's from Calgary, Canada. Turns out she was travelling alone, and was doing the exact same route that i was hoping to do. She had spent the last few months travelling Asia, Egypt and Greece with her Geography class from her uni and was now on her own for the first time to do Europe. So it worked out so perfectly. I found this out and straight away we decided to become travel buddies. Ended up chattin for ages, and managed to persuade the boys to cram her in the back of their teensie car as well to get a lift to Budapest. I then had to quickly get ready to usher the rest of the DARE group to meet Dan. We picked up a stray dog on the way to meeting him, which I was a bit dubious about cause 50 people get bitten by stray dogs every day in Bucharest (so says the travel guide!) I was so excited bout surpising them, and when we got to the train station, they were all asking what this Dr's daughter looked like and how long meeting her would take, cause we were all pretty tired. Finally I spotted Dan and ran over- it took the group a little while to realise what was going on, but when they did, we hada huuge group hug and it was crazy. They were all soo excited. Everyone had the biggest cheesers and we just had soo much to talk and laugh about. Dan drove us to a gorgeous lake somewhere in town and we grabbed a drink and some ice cream then rented 2 rowing boats and hit the water. It was awesome just relaxing on our last night together and telling Dan about our adventures over the past few days. He told us that the students were really upset after we left and Victoria had been crying for Rachel and Bogdan wanted us back to help painting. After an hour splashing around and chasing eachother around islands we headed back to dry land. Dan came back to the hostel and we made a feast of bruschetta and pasta. The french and German guys (Antoine and Lukas) joined us and we had a long chat about the situation in Romania relating to the government, what can be done for the kids/adults on the streets and various problems. Dan got a phonecall from Open Hands and recieved bad news that one of the students was threatening suicide. We were all so shocked cause this student had been so happy when we were there. We hadn't spent much time with them but they had always been smiling and cheery. Dan said there was someone staying with them to watch them through the night. We took some pics of the group then had our final good byes to make. Was so tough saying goodbye to Dan. We all agreed that he is the kindest, most generous guy we have ever met. He's just awesome and we all really wana come back to see him and the students. When he drove off, we didn't really know what to say. We went back into the hostel and the others hit the hay while I went outside to sit with the boys, Merissa and some other backpackers. We drank Romanian beer and chatted about random travel stuff. Merissa and I went upstairs to check out hostels in Brasov, then finally got to bed at around 3am.