Little things, big thoughts

Things I think about every day while living in Craiova, Romania:

Slow buses and nonexistent timetables. Usually you can walk to somewhere with same time that it takes to take a bus. And it’s hot inside and outside of a bus. Some cities in Romania have timetables in the bus stops but not Craiova. So you almost never know when the driver on the white fairy tale bus will arrive.

Taxis are crazy cheap. Of course it depends on what city you come from but 1 kilometre with taxi costs only 1.65 leu/0.36 euros. But be careful, in Bucharest there are a lot of taxi drivers who will ask you more than the machine shows so before taking a taxi make sure that driver is honest. And in Craiova taxis are yellow so it almost feels like being in NYC!

Traffic. It is crazy. Romanian drivers don’t care about the rules that much, they yell and use the vehicle horn all the time and pedestrians are constantly afraid to cross the road since not every driver stops because of them. Watch the video where we interviewed Romanian drivers and pedestrians:

Being a blonde female pedestrian is tiring. As I mentioned before drivers use horn a lot. They also find necessary to use their horn when they see a blonde girl. And some of them yell too, hopefully compliments.

Romanian language. As you may have understood I don’t understand what drivers yell because Romanian is difficult language to learn. But as long you know how to say numbers and order a beer or ice cream you will be fine. Younger people usually understand English but a lot of them are not comfortable speaking it by themselves. Older people don’t speak English but I have heard that some of them speak Russian.

Lot of volunteers. Luckily we have several different EVS projects and lot of volunteers to speak English with.

What’s up with these electrical wires? I don’t know but they look dangerous.