Getting Around

Let me just start with my main point here: this city is not easy to navigate.

Last night Pete and I were thrilled to have a night out. Our babysitter arrived and we jumped in the car to head out to a place known as the “Marine House” for a good ol’ American chili cook-off with some of the Embassy folks. On the map it looked quite simple to get to, about 10-15 minutes away.

Thirty-five minutes later, we started what was to be our chant of the night: Driving in this city is never simple. Here are some of the reasons why:

1. There are no street signs. The names of roads are occasionally posted on buildings, but they are never readable until after you’ve already gone past the intersection.

2. There are no lane lines, so cars drive (very, very quickly) wherever they want. We are always being passed on narrow roads by big vans, and all of the buses and mini-buses are coming in and out from the curbs. So even if you wanted to try and read those little road names on the buildings, you can’t take your eyes off the road because you never know what car is about to cut you off.

3. There are way too many cars in the city for these small roads. Which means there are almost always traffic jams, adding many minutes to even a “simple” trip.

4. There are many one-way streets. These are not labeled on our maps, so we keep getting surprised by them, making us do long detours, which usually put us back into a traffic jam, thanks to #3 above.

5. The road names are all long names like Mitropolit G. Banulescu-Bodoni or Mihail Kogalniceanu , but then the labels on maps or on buildings are abbreviations like "M. Kogalniceanu" so you really need to know both names. Plus these are relatively new names (the streets all used to have Russian names apparently), so many locals still don’t know them and are not helpful for directions. And, as we found last night, sometimes some of the smaller roads have building signs still with the Russian names.


We experienced the effects of all 5 of these aspects last night, which made us very, very late for the chili contest event. Thankfully the Marines are pretty laid-back, when off-duty, and no one seemed to mind.

But what put me almost completely over the edge was the next part of our journey. After we left the Marine House, we were heading to some friends’ house for a little gathering. Pete had a map and directions with him, and he said, “Should be pretty simple.” HA! HA! HA!

Now we had a new little twist to deal with: Darkness.

Because the street names are only on buildings, they are, of course, not lit, making navigation in new areas virtually impossible. We knew we needed to take a right at some point… but which right? After about 10 minutes of saying things like, “Are we still on that “H” road?” “No, wait, I think we somehow ended up on the “I” road” “Where do you think this ramp leads? Is this even a road?” I was ready to throw in the towel and head home. But Pete persevered. Thankfully he has a built-in GPS that he was born with, and so about 10 minutes later he said, “I think this could be the right way” and he turned down what felt to me basically like a dirt road with ditches we had to crawl through (mind you, we are still in the city, but the road conditions are abysmal!). Sure enough, after wending our way down this narrow little alley, we arrived at the correct house.
Getting the car turned around in this alley to head back home after the party is a whole other story (think golf-cart scene in Austin Powers movie ---according to Pete).

Anyway, the little gathering was worth it…. There were 6 Americans, 1 Moldovan, 4 Nigerians, and 1 young man from Switzerland. We had pizza and played games – a very fun night.
And the ride home was definitely not simple. But this post has more than enough words already.