04 August 2006

a tale of two cities

It's a pity I didn't like Bucharest. It's too chaotic a city, too chockful with dodgy homeless tramps who try to touch you in the middle of the streets, young children exploited by syndicates to beg and generally some ignorant people who find a way to be very impolite while doing so.

Some random guys just went 'china china china' at us in a complete mocking tone. Or better yet, this random guy at a otherwise nifty bar who first approached Gwen asking her how to say i love you in chinese. When Gwen told him that our native language was English, he didn't believe her one bit and continued harassing her a little. He promptly came over to my end of the bar and this is how our conversation kinda went:

IB (Ignorant bastard): Your girlfriend is being really mean, she doesn't want to tell me a few words in your native language.
Me: Maybe because it's ENGLISH?
IB: No no english. I look at your face and you can't be speaking english!
Me: Maybe when you were colonised by the English, you end up speaking ENGLISH?
IB: No no it's not possible.
Me: F*** OFF

At first we thought we might be a little sensitive about being 2 lovely *snark* Asian girls in a strange Eastern European country. But we received so much undesirable attention that even Claire, the french girl we were travelling in Bucharest with, got really disturbed. As a result, Gwen and I almost cancelled our trip to Belgrade, Serbia in favour of Budapest, Hungary.

Thank goodness we didn't!!

Belgrade is a looooove-ly city. Serbians are a delightful crowd. No weird leering men, mocking teens, just full of fun and helpful people. It helps that our hostel is party central too. Everyone's always smoking and drinking, regardless of the time of day and they're always going out to party. Language is a tough barrier though, even if alot of them speak English, alot of them don't. Plus the Serbian language is written in Cyrillic alphabet, so getting around is really not easy.

I'm not sure if we're gonna go party with them tonight. We didn't last night because I was feeling a little under the weather, which was a pity cos 2 of the crazy German guys have left! But we have an early train to catch tomorrow to Budapest. We originally wanted to catch the train to a town in northern Serbia called Subotica and spend the whole day there before continuing northward to Vienna where Gwen and I will part ways. But another German guy told us that Subotica is reaaaally small. So we'll be stopping in Budapest for a good party for a night!

Won't get a chance to update before I head back to France, or actually Singapore. I'll be home 10th August everyone!

1 comment:

Gwen said...

same flight! cant wait to seeya in Amsterdam already!