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 we sat on the platform for about an hour. There was some confusion as the train before us just didn't show up and I didn't really know what the procedure was for getting on and getting seats. I asked the guard if there train that had arrived at 9am was out and he said yes, so there was a bit of a mad scramble to get on. As you can't book these seats in advance either, I had to split everyone up and give them their tickets.

We started off and the tickets were checked and I sat back and relaxed for the four hour journey. I listened to my music and I may have even fallen asleep at some point. We arrived in Bucharest at about midday and the heat was unbelievable. I organized the passengers into a group and made them wait in the main entrance hall, which I went off to find the hotel, which was supposed to be within walking distance from the station. I exited the station, turned left and the hotel was right in front of me. I went straight back to the passengers and walked them to the hotel and checked in without any hassle. To our delight the rooms were air conditioned. I gave the group half an hour and then headed out to do an orientation walk of the giant heaving beast they call Bucharest.

For the first forty minute we walked in the heat without seeing a single thing of interest besides crumbling and derelict buildings. Eventually we popped out at my intended destination, the peoples palace supposedly the heaviest building in the world and the seat of power for the old communist leaders. The giant building, not too much unlike the Victor Emmanuel monument in Rome, basically stood in the middle of a field. I've never seen such a large building look so isolated before.

We then walked through the park and back over the river to the old town for lunch. It took me a while to find said old town, as it wasn't mentioned in any of my notes. I found out why, it wasn't really worth seeing. We had lunch there and I checked out a few of the old buildings afterwards, but that was about it. I then left my passengers to it and walked back to the hotel in the searing heat.

There were actually a few times on the hour long walk back to the hotel when I nearly stopped thinking I wasn't going to make it. I kept telling myself not to stop, Come on one foot in front of the other. I eventually made it back to the hotel, where I sat in the nice air conditioned room for a bit and then went down to the lobby to see if I had any emails from Absolute Africa. Unfortunately, I didn't but the lady who did the interview had a few more questions for me on skype. She wanted to know if my first aid certificate was still valid and if I'd had all the required injections and said I would know tomorrow, so that sounds positive.

I then went to one of the rooms for happy hour, although I only had a shandy as I was feeling a bit ill from the heat. I stayed and chatted to the crew for about an hour before going back to my room to chill out and watch TV for the rest of the evening.