Today I decided not to be the taxi going prude that I was yesterday and took a tram and two buses as an alternative for the metro. Considering the fact that it normally takes about an hour to get to school with the metro and a bus, I thought 2 hours for the new alternative will suffice.

Dead wrong! After two hours, not even half of the way was completed! Let’s start with the beginning though…The 10 minutes trip with the tram turned into 20. I finally got to the first bus stop and thought, hey, I still had time. After the first four 381 buses that I couldn’t get on because they already were full when they arrived, I started to doubt it!

The picture of the buses will stay in my mind for a long time, though. People’s faces practically glued to the bus doors, 5 minutes needed for the bus to finally shut the doors and move on, due to the fact that it took a while to get 4 more sardines in the bus! People swearing when they had to get off the small part of stair that they were on so that the bus could move on.

To my delight, a private minibus stopped and the driver shouted: “Going to the University! Get in!” It was close enough to Romana, so I got in. Checked my phone’s clock, I was still on time. Then, after five minutes, my dreams were shattered. For the remaining 1 hour and 20 minutes the driver managed to get us to the University! “It’s the first time I realize how important the metro actually is”, he said. Well, if there was one person left that had no idea about its importance, now it was all settled, no more ignorance in what the subway is concerned!

So I missed my class, but at least got some great news when I arrived to the office (I am only visiting, I’m on night shift today): the paper I needed badly by tomorrow will actually handled with even greater speed. So there still is hope…Let’s all pray the strike will be over!

Yet, according to Ziua (Romanian only) yesterdays’ negotiations failed. According to the same newspaper, the Traffic Police announced more of their agents will be present on the streets of Bucharest, handling the increased traffic. Well, yeah, they are out there, I actually saw them: they were practically doing nothing at all. The traffic lights were the major rule. And of course they were nowhere to be found in places where there actually were traffic jams at crossroads…