Hello dear friends :)
My past week was quite the adventure. Ok, you're thinking: Emily, you moved halfway around the world to a developing country knowing no one and not speaking any of the four languages. Of course your life is an adventure!
You're right...BUT this week held a whole new adventure for me!
Last Tuesday, Brandon (the other intern) and I had a meeting with our director to go over some of our projects. Before we left, he said he had something to ask Brandon. He then proceeded to explain how the ability of our loan officers to make trips into the villages to meet with solidarity groups and clients was extremely beneficial to our clients, but that using the mobile office to visit only a few clients wasn't cost effective. Our organization decided that purchasing a small car for one or two loan officers to use at a time would save us quite a bit. Ghena had picked out a car in Moldova, but it was an old car with a few problems. He had also found a few in Germany that were comparably priced and in much better condition.
We thought he was about to ask Brandon to put together a spreadsheet or funding proposal. Instead he explained,"We need this car before the winter months. I could go get it, but the visa and papers will take a month at least for me to be able to leave. It is much easier for you. You have an American passport. Would you be willing to go to Germany and drive the car back?"
Stunned silence followed. And then,"Yeah, of course!" And I couldn't resist, "Can I go too?" He said that our company can only afford to pay for one person to go, but if I could pay for my flight to Germany I could go. I was all aboard!
Then we realized this meant we could be living in two days. TWO DAYS!!!
We picked a flight to Germany, and I called my friend at Moldovan Air. The system here is a bit funny, as you have to pay in person and with cash. Everything went pretty smoothly!
Thursday around noon we flew out of Chisinau and arrived a couple of hours later in Munich, Germany. The first thing we noted was the cold! It was a lot colder than the weather in Chisinau had been. Then we unashamedly gaped and stared in wonder at all the little things that differentiate a developed country from a underdeveloped country and Western Europe from Eastern Europe: clean streets, solid construction, modern buses, more and more cars, coffee shops (without instant coffee), the scarcity of street merchants, racial diversities, Christmas decorations. Sigh, it was wonderful.
Oh, and Starbucks. There were Starbucks, and I was happy. :)
Whew, sorry, got lost in daze remembering it....anyways, we were completely confused about the train system but eventually, with the help of numerous gracious and pleasant Germans, we had our tickets printed, a list of our trains and departure times, and were headed into the city center. We had a few hours to explore the city, so we wandered around in what appeared to be a very Middle Eastern area of town before we got straightened out and directed towards the Mac store. The store was located in a beautiful shopping district full of elegant stores, trimmed with Christmas decorations,and bustling with well-bundled pedestrians. I'm afraid I may have pointed out and dazzled over every single Christmas decoration. Brandon was persuaded to appreciate more decorations than he probably intended too, but we agreed that Germany is definitely the place to experience the Christmas season.
We were able to find the Mac store, and though, no one was free to work with my Macbook, they were able to tell me which software I needed. One step closer to restoring my mac!
We spent a little more time walking through the shopping district and then headed back to the train station. The plan was to take the night train to our destination in northern Germany, so we decided to spend the last few hours enjoying the Starbuck's in the train station. Oh, yummy, yummy Starbuck's. It was so good. I'll be honest, I'm not a diehard Starbuck's fan, and I do feel a twinge of guilt sometimes at my willingness to pay so much, but this was a moment to enjoy our blessings. We, a bit jokingly, thought we might find the Starbuck's in each country we drove through and could use them as our stopping points. Turned out to be a pretty interesting idea. There weren't going to be anymore in the German cities we passed through, but there would be some in Vienna. We discovered that the only Starbuck's in Hungary opened June 15th in Budapest (conveniently already on our route), and there was one Starbuck's in one of the nothern Romanian towns we would pass through (all the rest are in the southern part of Romania).
The night train wasn't as conducive to sleeping as we had thought. We had to switch trains three times, so at least one of us had to stay alert enough to make sure we got off at the right stops and caught our next train. It may sound corny or like I'm trying too hard, but in all honesty, it's by God's grace that we caught every train. Twice we were waiting at one platform for our train, only to discover that the message over the loudspeaker had been explaining that the train was arriving at at different platform. Somehow, we always decided to go ask and would end up on the train with a few minutes to spare.
We arrived early in Holzminden, Germany. Too early for the car dealership to be open, in fact. Our twenty minute walk in the frosty air had woken us up though, so we walked a bit more and found a great German bakery/cafe that served a yummy hot breakfast. When I was ordering, I noticed that scrambled eggs came as a meal, but, not wanting a full meal, I asked how I could get just eggs. Not all things are lost in translation as one of the servers teasingly responded, "From a chicken." The manager turned out to be English though and kindly helped translate my request.
Once we were able to pick up the car and had the paperwork completed, our roadtrip began! Brandon handled the autobahn; I handled the TomTom. Pitiful, I know, but my experience with driving a stick shift wasn't adequate enough for me to want to take someone else's car out on the autobahn. Germany was beautiful!!! We drove through the countryside from Holzminden down through Nuremburg and then over to Lizt, Austria. We did stop near Nuremburg to purchase some items for our boss and his wife at an Aldi. The Aldi's have a brilliant little device that persuades customers to put return their shopping carts when they leave. You insert a Euro in a slot in order to be able to use a buggy, and then when you put the buggy back, if you lock it back up then you receive your Euro back. Brilliant.
Brandon's Americana experience involved Burger King. I'll admit it was pretty good, and for a brief moment, it almost felt like we were back in our beautiful USA.
We slept in the car at a really nice rest area near the border of Germany and Austria. The funniest thing to us was that you had to pay to use the bathrooms and showers. But I discovered that you could take your ticket from the bathroom and receive a discount on a cup of coffee. 70 cent bathroom ticket - 50 cent on a cup of coffee = not a bad deal because you were going to get that cup of coffee anyways....
Neither of us slept very well though, because of the cold. We would fall asleep for an hour or two, only to wake up shivering, crank up the car, let the heat build up, and then turn the car off again and sleep for another hour. This was our process for three nights. It definitely gave me a better appreciation for my Chisinau apartment with its government regulated heating and much more sympathy for those in Peru with no blankets during the winter, those on the streets in Charleston, and those in unheated homes in Moldova and other places around the world.
I'll admit I slept through most of the Austrian countryside, but it was foggy so I couldn't really appreciate the scenery had I been awake. We drove through the center of Vienna, located the Starbucks and refueled. Vienna was massive, packed with modern industry and classical architecture, rich with art, history, and life. Both of us want to return to explore the city more. Oh, side note, Brandon was somehow deprived of The Sound of Music, so I briefed him on the story as we passed through Austria. I'm not sure he fully appreciates it yet.
As we entered Hungary, Eastern European elements melded together with Western Europe. We passed through small town after small town. Budapest, upon first arriving, seemed to be a large industrial city. Dirty and built up. But as we neared the center of the city, magnificent buildings appeared before us. We passed over the bridge that literally ties together two former towns, Buda and Pest, and decided that we had to find our way back to the waterfront to explore this city a bit. We parked at the mall (home to our Starbucks stop) and weaved our way back to the water front. We took quite a few pictures (I'll upload those soon, I promise), and on our way back stumbled upon a large Eastern Orthodox church. Some street musicians were performing on the steps, and I captured some video of their music. Really like it. We then entered the church. It was strange to see the payments for incense and candles, portions of the church roped off for tourists. And it struck me as I entered, The God I know doesn't dwell here. He dwells within me. He dwells within living tabernacles, not in the works of men's hands but in the works of His own hands.
It seems so sad, so heartbreaking sad that people may spend their whole lives devotedly dropping coins in the box next to the candles and praying to the saints, but never know the True and Living God.
As we headed back towards the Mall, we stopped to find some Hungarian food (we had about one meal a day and had snacks from the Aldi the rest of the time). We decided on gyros, and when we went to pay the server, he looked at our money and made a really funny face and then looked at us rather confused. Did we not pay the right amount? He asked us, "What is this?" We asked, "Is it not right?" He finally explains, "I don't know what this is. This is not Hungarian money." Turns out the guy we exchanged some Euro with didn't exchange them with Hungarian dollars, but Peruvian. Ah, add that one to the books.
When we entered Romania we were definitely back in Eastern Europe. Small towns with dirt streets (except for the main street we were on), horse-drawn buggies, fields, roaming cows, stray dogs. There were a few bigger cities though. Our last Starbuck's was in Cluj-Napoc. We were relieved to see the prices come back down again (Vienna had been expensive, and we didn't actually get anything from the Starbuck's in Hungary). The city, for the most part, was very much Eastern European, but when we entered the mall, we were blown away. It was massive and modern. Very western. In fact, much bigger and nicer than some of the malls in Savannah and Charleston. The most unique element was the market on the first floor. Our guess is that it was a special Sunday market, as it was comprised of tables of antiques, soviet relics, and art pieces. There were some really interesting pieces to see.
Another town we stopped in was much smalled than Cluj-Napoc. Reghin is a town known for its production of quality instruments. Brandon had heard of a travel guitar made by Hora, and he was hoping we could find them. I was hoping to find a hammered dulcimer or some smaller instrument. We had looked up the address before, but Gunther (our GPS) didn't recognize it. So we set about asking random Romanians for directions. Three different times and two hand drawn maps later, we found Hora....or at least the factory. And, being Sunday, the factory was closed. So no guitar or harps, but another scenic detour as I like to call them.
We had to cross the Carpathian Mountains to go across Romania. I was completely content to leave the driving around perilous curbs to Brandon. At some points, it just seemed like we were driving through the countryside, and then suddenly we would be going up a mountain on narrow roads. The drops weren't always that bad, but the curves in the road, oh me. The arrowed signs in the States indicate a nice round curve with a wide angle turn. Not so in Romania. An arrowed sign means be prepared to make an extremely sharp turn, hope another car isn't coming the other way, and then make a ridiculously sharp turn the other way. I set up Gunther to show us the road a little ways ahead; the picture he gave us was a curly maze.
And besides the curves and the steep drops to the river below us, it was really foggy. The kind of fog that hides all but five feet in front of you. Thankfully, the only snow we hit was very minute. I didn't even notice it, but Brandon could tell the car was sliding.
Other good news, we drove through Transylvania under a full moon without being attacked by werewolves or eaten by vampires.
We made it to the Romanian/Moldova border by midnight Sunday night. Our boss drove to the Moldovan border to meet us and bring the car in. The customs process here was more complex than at any of the other borders, because upon leaving Romania we were also leaving the European Union. This resulted in different taxation issues. After going to the customs office, we went to the border guards. We were incredibly blessed to have a guard who spoke quite good English. He took our papers and looked through them, only to bring them back and explain that we were missing the customs paper. The customs document certifies that we paid the VAT tax. Without it, we would have to pay a large fine to bring the car into Moldova. As it turns out, the document we believed to be our customs paper, did indeed have the correct stamp on it, but it wasn't the correct form. As the guard explained, "You can either go back to Germany or you can see if that can fax it." Great, fax it. This sounded like a feasible plan. Most immediate problem being that it was midnight in Romania, and 11 pm in Germany.
So we spent another night in the "Pocketful of Sunshine" as Brandon had named it, again waking up to turn on the heat every hour or two. Our boss was handling the document issue through German speaking friends. Our job was to sit and wait. We realized we hadn't eaten a real meal since Hungary, so we thought we might look for a cafe or somewhere to get breakfast. No such luck. We went back to the gas station we had spent the night at, purchased two tiny cups of interesting coffee and went back to the PoS. As we waited, we had plenty of time to watch the town around us come to life. Every so often a cow or horse would cross the road. Villagers were driving horse-drawn wagons up and down the roads. Many were going to the wells near the road and to draw buckets of water. There were some modern dressed villagers, and some clothed in more traditional attire with the older women were colorful floral broom skirts and scarves over their heads.
Unfortunately, we were unable to obtain the correct documents, and we had to pay the fine, but around 4 or 5 o'clock Brandon and I finally arrived in Chisinau with the PoS. The exhaustion is kicking in now, but the journey was incredible and the kingdom building will continue in Chisinau.
Thanks for the prayers!
~ Redeemed
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