Thankfully, we found the people in town to be incredibly friendly and helpful. A lovely lady at a gas station on the edge of town, who wasn't phased at all by our complete inability to speak Romanian even though she didn't speak English, called the pension for us on her cell phone and found us the English-speaking owner, who gave us directions. We were far enough away still that we got lost again. Of course. At this point we were pretty tired and sweaty and done with carrying our backpacks around, so we decided to hail a cab. The driver was so kind, he pointed out to us with many hand signals and imaginary diagrams drawn on the hood of his taxi, that we were only a couple blocks away and it would be kind of silly to pay him to take us there.
The lovely kindness of strangers was the perfect start to a super-relaxing week on the beach. This wasn't travel, this was vacation, no doubt about it. The nearby town of Vama Veche was the epitome of a beach-bum village, with patio-ed restaurants leading out onto the sand lined up one right after the other, serving cheap, cold beer by the pint.
I found Romanian, of course, to be a beautiful language, and completely fell in love with it. It helped that it's a romance language, so the Spanish I know made reading signs and menus a little bit easier (especially compared to reading them in any Slavic language, which was absolutely impossible for me). It seemed to draw from so many places, I am completely turned around as to when and how this language originated - but they say "da" for "yes" (Russian), and "merci" for "thank you" (French). Embarrassingly, and with no excuse whatsoever, I had a really difficult time remembering merci. I didn't get it down until the last couple days. I kept wanting to throw some Italian out there - oops.
I was too busy actually laying in the sun to take any pictures, so here's what the internet had to offer in that department. Yup, that was basically my week in Vama Veche.
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