(written July, 14th)
Expect the unexpected, especially on travel days. After staying in Bucharest for a few days with the whole squad, it was time for my team, GLOW, and team SHOFAR to leave for Targu Mures where we’ll be doing ministry for the rest of the month.
7:15pm– With all of our gear we take a couple of bus rides to get to the train station.
8:30pm-The finance people from our teams go to buy the tickets for a train leaving around 10:30pm. We’re told that all of the sleeper cars are sold out and that we’ll be sitting in chairs for our 8 or so hour ride.
8:48pm– Lets go to McDonald’s! They have popcorn shrimp and potato wedges at the McD’s here.
9:22pm– The tickets are checked again just to make sure of the time we’re leaving. We’re not sure if we can actually read them correctly so the finance people go to the ticket counter to ask what time it says.
9:55pm– “Hey guess what everyone? There was a mix up with the tickets we bought and they’re actually for the 8:40pm train, so we missed it, but we’re going to try to get them switched to the 10:30pm train instead. ”
10:15pm– “Bad news and good news. There aren’t 13 seats available on the 10:30pm train so we got tickets for the next available train. It leaves at 7:30am.” Instead of a nice eight hour ride, like the 10:30pm train would have been, the morning ride is nine hours on one train and then we switch trains and ride for about 2 more hours.
10:18pm– The team leaders, finance people and Jenny, one of our squad leaders staying with us for a week, have a meeting about what to do now.
10:23pm– It’s decided that we’re going to try to catch the bus and take it back to where we had been staying to sleep for the night and come back to the station in the morning. So we grab all our packs and head outside.
10:26pm– “Taxi? Taxi?” We’re bombarded by offers from quite a few taxi drivers to take us wherever we need to go.
10:35pm– Still waiting for our bus to show up. “How late do you think the buses run?” “Maybe till 11:00pm or so.” “Well if the bus comes right now I’m not so sure we’ll make it in time to the next stop down the road where we have to switch buses.” “Lets pray about it.” In the mean time a random man comes up and offers to give us a good deal on some sort of hotel or something.
10:40pm– Its then decided that instead of risking having to walk all the way back and pay extra money to get back to the station in the morning that we’ll just spend the night in the station.
10:44pm– We find a spot to stack all of our packs and wait for 7:30am to roll around.
11:07pm– A couple of people decide to take out their sleeping pads and get a little shut-eye.
11:45pm– “So since McDonald’s closes in fifteen minutes and doesn’t open again until 4:30am how about a bathroom run?”
12:02am– We play some card games while we wait.
12:40am– Daniel and I go to check out one of the only places still open and buy a shoarma for a nice midnightish snack. A shoarma is shaved rotisserie type meat, french fries, cabbage, pickles, mayonnaise and ketchup all wrapped up like a burrito type thing.
1:05am– While wondering around, we find a vending machine type thing that sells cups of coffee. We need all the help we can get to stay awake all night.
1:20am– A couple people need to use the bathroom and venture outside to look for one. They end up not finding anything and just use some bushes behind a bus stop.
2:34am– a couple of the guys from our teams start entertaining us by impersonating random people walking past. Most of the people have had a few too many drinks, so it gets pretty funny.
3:09am– Back to the coffee vending machine we go.
3:41am– A couple of Americans walk up to us and ask us if we’re from America and then ask us if we’re missionaries. We find out that they’re World Racers also and they started their trip in October, 2009. They had come from Serbia and we’re trying to get on a train that left in about 10 minutes headed to Moldova. We tell them where we’re going and find out that they had just been in the same place the month before. They really liked it, which made us pretty excited to finally get here.
3:48am– A one-legged man in a wheel chair and his apparent sidekick come up and start trying to talk to us and sell us a doll. Then the man in the wheelchair pulls out a deck of cards and starts showing us a few magic tricks. After ten or so minutes of laughing, us laughing because the tricks don’t make any sense and the two man laughing probably at us, they so goodbye and head out.
4:12am– “Please McDonald’s open up soon!”
4:33am– We go check to see if McDonald’s is open so we can finally use the bathroom. It is! While we’re there we decide to buy some breakfast, come to find out that they don’t sell breakfast so we buy some muffins, pie and coffee.
5:00am– So we’re all pretty tired by this point. The train station starts to fill with more and more people so we just sort of sit for a while and people watch.
6:05am– A couple of us head to a little market to buy some food for the train ride.
7:32am– “All aboard!” We all find our spots and pack in to the little rooms. Again on this train there aren’t any sleeper cars available so we’ll be sitting in pretty uncomfortable chairs for the next nine hours. The rooms are beyond small for all of our packs plus eight of us, every square inch is pretty much covered, including the floor. We all climb in and try to get comfortable enough to doze off a little. The scenery going through the mountains and forests is beautiful! So wanting to stay awake and see it all combined with being pretty uncomfortable doesn’t equal much sleep.
4:30pm– We arrive at the train station where we’re catching the next one for the last leg of the trip.
5:15pm– Off we go on the second train.
7:05pm– After 24 hours of waiting and traveling we arrive in Targu Mures!
We were met at the station by Pastor Z. For the next couple of days we’ll be talking with people in the city, handing out fliers to invite them to church, and attending Pastor Z’s church. Then we’ll head up to the mountains for about a week and a half to do some evangelism.
