I'm staying in Cluj in the Babes University Housing Room 708. Babes is pronounced 'babesh' and is one of the 2 big universities in the city. It's about 10 min (by car) from downtown, and right next to a pretty sweet park with running track. For long term housing, it makes sense to have a place with a little kitchen rather than the very hotel like experience I had for the 1st week of time here -- Hotel Centraal right downtown Cluj. The main difference is that I'm a cab ride from the bars/coffee shops rather than a 5 minute walk. But I'm closer to other practical things like a place to exercise and a place to get groceries.

I'm not really close to work, but everyone at NI-Romania has been beyond accomidating by picking me up all the time. I tend to get two rides a day, with Rares taking me to and from work (thanks man!) and someone else rotating and picking me up for dinner/trips/etc. The folks at work have been awesome, awesome hosts -- they have made me feel very welcome and gone way way out of their way to make sure I'm comfortable and happy and entertained while staying in Cluj.

Funny that last night they had live music in Cluj -- probably the first name a big name musician has come to the city. It was Beyonce. She played in a old soccer field pretty near to the old apartment, and I could hear the concert decently well by just opening the windows. Pretty good, considering it was a crappy cold and rainy night; so I got to enjoy the quote unquote music in the background while studying up on my Romanian. Here's a video of what I could see from the apt -- you can kinda hear the end one of her big hits in the audio though you cannot see much of the lights from the show...

Arriving to Cluj Romania was a little more interesting than I had pictured. I had been told of some oddities with the local airport -- where they have a bus drive you 20 meters from the plane to the front door. In other words a tiny airport. But what I wasn't prepared for was the surprise in my carry-on luggage.

It all started the day before in Amsterdam. Wandering here and there, heading out to the Van Gogh museum and checking out the sweet green grassy field in the museum area there... Well I guess it started earlier than that. The story really begins when Fido was eating his kibbles n bits that morning; and then proceeded to drop a nice, stinky poo somewhere in that park in Amsterdam.

Suffice it to say that I had no idea what I had stepped into. You know how it goes -- usually you don't know that you took a stinky step until you take those shoes off. In this case, I was blasted drunk by the time I squeezed out of those sneakers back in the hotel room; and I certainly didn't notice anything was amiss.

Getting up at 6am, hungover, I spend 15 minutes decided if it was the right time to wake up and get moving to the airport. Oh wait, gotta pack real quick. Getting the medicine bag put away, check. dirty clothes, check. running sho--oh yuck, what haenous shit did I step in yesterday !?! Well there was no time to worry too much, I was nearly late for the train to the airport. I searched thru the hotel room looking for anything remotely resembling a stink-proof bag. couldnt' find a damn thing. Best I could do was a piece of plastic wrapper from the bag of hotel slippers that i had foolishly torn in half. Good enough, i figured. Just slap that plastic strip on the bottom like a second sole and pack those shoes away and deal with it later.

Welcome to the baggage check at the Amsterdam airport. Hello ma'am, yes you speak English great! Wait what do you mean my checked bag is too heavy? There are 5 people in line behind me and I've been here for 20 mintues. You want me to repack it quickly here you say?... So I take out the obvious heavy things, and remain a few kg over the weight limit. Only thing left was those damn stink shoes. So I reluctantly open that part of the bag, letting lose the odor, and snatch those shoes out of there. Great, the bag is now light enough to check. and there it goes. And here I am w/ some stinky carryon luggage.

So I carry the stinky shoes thru security (thank god they didn't ask me to go thru the bag). I put them in the overhead compartment. I could smell a bit of a waft of poo from time to time, though I'm sure the other passangers assumed that it was just one too many chili dogs from the guy sitting in front. Guiltily, I pretend not to know a thing.

One plane down, one plane to go. Welcome to Budapest. So we grab a bite to eat, with the striped, stink-bombed laundary bag far enough away to avoid causing a stink. From there, to the next gate. At the gate, my nightmare.

The lady says that I can only take 1 carry-on and I must check the other one at the plane. While I'm digesting this information, she instinctively leans down to tie off the 'extra bag check' tag to the bag. I didn't know what to say. Her nose was right down in it. Then she couldn't get the tag attached, and waved the other girl over to see if the way she'd tied it on was good enough. I was bright red. I grabbed the bag, and was off and couldn't look her in the eye.

And that was how I arrived to Cluj, and my 4 weeks in Romania began. Gotta be my worst slash funniest baggage story to date.