I was up early this morning to take the group to Bucharest, the Romanian capital on the train. The cab drivers arrived on time and took us to the station. They all used their meters, which came out at around twelve lei each. I gave them twenty anyway. Bev actually left her bag in one of the cabs and the good old cabbie actually chased her down with it. Who does that in the third world? I had gotten us their stupidly early, which no one seemed to mind and w...

I woke up in Romania today on a rickety old train being bounced around six feet in the air on the top bunk of my sleeper carriage. It was about 6am and there was no need to get up just yet, but I had to go to the bathroom and couldn't be bothered doing my monkey impersonation to get back into bed for another hour or so sleep. All my passengers were now getting up and commenting on the passing scenery and taking pictures out the train window of a much poorer l...