Aerosmith! And Brasov.

Friday, June 18th: Sadly, I did not get to see much of Bucharest. Somehow, it´s not a city that inspired exploration. I did see a chunk of it walking down to the main mall in the centre of the city, but I failed to take pictures (alas); we were making the trip because the wheels on Ashley´s new suitcase had basically broken and, from all the dragging, became pulverized rubber. But she got a new one, and it seems to be working out nicely.

Lauren, Ashley and I spent most of the day at the hostel until about 5:00 when a very nice employee offered us a ride to the concert. I don´t think I mentioned this, but we had purchased tickets to see Aerosmith in Bucharest some time back, and the 18th of June was the day to see them. We attended the concert with two other people from the hostel who happened to also have tickets in the same area, so that was a nice coincidence - their names were Lindsay and Jacob, they were cousins from the United States.

We´d purchased the cheapest tickets, so we were at the back section of the field (each section was gated off) but we did stake out spots at the very front of the crowd, right at the partition, and we held them well.

The opening band was Reamonn, and they were all right. They came on at about 7:15, and played for about half an hour. So we were expecting Aerosmith to come on at 8:00, but they took their sweet time. If their intention was to build anticipation, it worked, because when they came onstage after 9:00, the reaction was enormous. The whole group was there, and nobody fell off the stage, which is apparently a huge feat. They played a lot of their famous songs, like Crazy, Walk This Way and I Don´t Want to Miss a Thing. I had a lot of fun, and the band performed really well, and they were great to watch.

We walked back to the hostel afterward, all five of us together. Went to bed late, but we woke up at 10:00 to get ready for the next stage of our trip, which is Brasov. We checked out at 12:00, and got a taxi to the train station with another hostel guy, Andrew. He was speedy enough to catch the 1:00 train, but we got tickets to the 3:15 (there was a 2:10 but it was one of those slow trains, that stopped at every single station and would take hours more than we wanted). In the end, the ride took about three hours, maybe more, due to holdups on the line. Once in Brasov, we ended up running into Andrew at a restaurant, and he told us that his train was going really slowly, which is probably why ours was delayed as well.

Brasov is one of my favourite cities, probably second-best after Timisoara, and I´d like to say it´s as great as I remember it, but it started raining as soon as we got in and it´s been cloudy every since. Hopefully, tomorrow will be nicer as we´re hoping to get to Bran Castle for sight-seeing.

That´s all to report for now, I think! The Porolissum team´s met by now, and they´ll be about to spend their second night together, so I wonder how they´re getting along. We´ll find out on Monday! For now, Ashley and Lauren are watching the World Cup, so I´m going to join them.