Balkans August 23, 2018 Bucharest, Romania

Our luggage arrived at our hotel last night!   A very nice thing to wake up to.  I took a cab to pick up the bike while Sooz had a massage. Her back was hurting a little and the massage helped.  I met Tebi, not Sibi, at his shop and completed the paperwork and signed over our house to pay for it.  His full name is Tiberiu Anghel and he owns Motorcycle Hub which is primarily a motorcycle rental and repair shop,   www.moto-hub.ro  He is a very nice man in his 30s and easy to do business with.  The bike came with panniers and a top case.

I was able to plug my stand alone BMW GPS (thanks Ted) into the onboard BMW mount which works very well.  I also installed a tank bag I brought from home. I mounted my cell phone on the handle bars using a Ram mount I brought and ran a power cord to a plug (also brought from home) that fits into a BMW outlet on the bike to keep my phone powered.  I use the phone as a backup GPS and can also play podcasts and music into my helmet through Bluetooth. The GPS audio also links to my helmet Bluetooth.  Sooz also has a Bluetooth helmet receiver and speakers in her helmet she listens to books on tape and music through her phone.  We can also use our Bluetooth helmet gear as intercoms to speak with each other when riding.  It may all sound complicated but it's really pretty simple.  The companies that provide the equipment are part of a niche group of motorcycle gear suppliers that seem to work together fairly well.  Like any hobby, once you get involved it comes together in time.

I rode back to the hotel, picked up Sooz and we went out for lunch and a tour of the city. 

For my planner friends, it's a beatiful city with impressive architecture. I think what impressed me most are the wide , tree-lined boulevards with cable car lines in the center lanes and wide bike and pedestrian lanes away from the traffic.  All of the main boulevards are also anchored at each end with large, impressive and visible monuments or public buildings.  These were designed well over 100 years ago but could have come out of any recent new urbanism textbook.  This is the old urbanism that new urbanism tries to emulate but is rarely successful. 

For lunch Sooz had a nice salad and I had a kind of Mexican inspired chicken meal in a taco bowl - shutout to Max.  It was all good.  I think the entire meal with 2 bottles of sparkling water was $17.  Bucharest is very affordable.   Dinner at the hotel was  cabbage rolls and palenta for me and a palenta, cheese and fried egg combo for Sooz.  Our water/chef/bussboy was a hoot.  He spoke enough English to make our orders an adventure and had a great sense of humor. 

Sooz and I remarked to each other that we may be seeing a personality trend with the locals.  When I went to get coffee this morning at the hotel a woman was there to assist if needed.  I walked up to her not sure of the protocol and I asked her if she spoke English.  She looked at me very sternly and said, "Of course!"  I said something like, "Well this is my first visit to Romania so I'm trying to learn."  And she immediately asked, "You're trying to learn English?" and started smiling and laughing at her own joke.  I just about fell over laughing myself.  The contrast between her stern look at first followed by a very dry sense of humor is a characteristic of a few people we have met so far.  We'll see if it holds up.

Tomorrow we check out of the hotel and ride north into some small towns and the Transvagarian Highway which is supposed to be one of the most beautiful 2-laned, twisty roads in all of the Balkans.