So... our plan was to travel from Briceni to Lipcani (Moldova). At Lipcani we would walk across the border, find a rutiera to Suceava, Romania. At Suceava we would get another rutiera (or possibly the train) and arrive in Gura Humorului. From there a quick rutiera or taxi ride would bring us to our destination at Bucovina Hills Guesthouse, a kind of hostel. We all know, however, that "the best laid schemes of mice and men go often awry."
From Briceni to Lipcani would only be about a 30 minute ride in a rutiera. As we were riding, however, I began asking around trying to learn more information about where exactly we would get off to be closest to the border crossing. Two people in front of us wanted to help, but only spoke Russian. An older gentleman next to us spoke Romanian and said we needed to go past Lipcani to Criva where we would cross the border. He said at Lipcani we would have to walk a lot, but at Criva we would not have to walk. We told him where we were going in Romania and he said that would be the best idea. We trusted him. Oops.
We stayed on the rutiera until it terminated at the border with Ukraine after the Moldovan village of Criva. There we walked across the border with our two backpacks and Peace Corps passports. Once on the other side, there was supposed to be another rutiera to take us to a city in Ukraine. We waited. We waited. We asked what kind of money the driver would take, which of course would be Ukrainian grivna, and found a place to exchange. We waited. We froze outside in the snow. Finally a rutiera came. We rode that bus, not quite sure where we were going or if there would be a bus to redirect us to our planned path in Romania. We arrived at a little town and started asking around. We learned we needed to take another bus to go into Chernauti, Ukraine, which is a larger city and where we would find a bus going to Suceava, Romania. Aha! So, we waited for the bus, jumped on when we found it, and headed to Chernauti. While on the bus a drunk Ukrainian man wasted no time learning we were Americans and trying to speak Italian with us. Smiles and nods will get you through situations like that. When we arrived, we were not at the bus station. We were at the piata or market. So we asked around and found an in-town bus to drop us at the autogara (bus station). We walked around the bus station and finally asked to learn that the next bus to Suceava, Romania would be the next day at 7:30 a.m. Hmmm, so now we felt stuck in Ukraine where we didn't have much money and no reservations or knowledge of our exact whereabouts. We were both stressing out, but knew we weren't far from the border. If we could just hitch-hike or find something going to the border we could at least get out of this country! We helplessly walked towards the entrance of the gara/station where sometimes you can find taxis or private transports. Sure enough some men asked us where we were going (we think, because of course they asked in Ukrainian/Russian either of which we don't know). We tried to reply in Romanian that we were trying to get to Suceava. One man knew some Romanian, so in our broken Romanian and his broken Romanian we made a deal to be taken to the Romanian border. The cost, unfortunately, was much higher than the rutiera would be. We didn't quite have enough Ukrainian money left, and he laughed when we said we had some Moldovan lei. Eventually he took, it though. He took us to the border and dropped us off. We made it through the Ukrainian/Romanian border without incident and began walking. We asked the first driver we saw if he was going to Suceava. He said he was not going that far, so we kept walking. That same driver pulled up behind us later and offered us a ride a little further, and we gladly accepted. He took us to a town where he said we might be able to get a ride or find a taxi. We thanked him (happily in Romanian, which could understand and appreciate) and started asking some taxi drivers, all of which said they would not take us.? A private transport was about to leave and asked us where we were going. Luckily he was taking a man to Suceava also, so we got a ride with him. He dropped us at the train station where our day started to change rapidly. We were now back on our planned path, out of Ukraine, and quickly learned there would be a train to Gura Humorului within the hour. Shelbi warmed her feet and I went walking around the train station, found some hamburger attempts and returned to Shelbi to surprise her with some dinner. We bought some 1.5 RON (Romanian lei) coffees and ate our nice dinner and felt more pleasant than we had all day waiting for that train.
As we settled into our train car, we exchanged smiles with the young family that occupied our car with us. Their young children were very cute and we smiled at them all the way up into the mountains, the sun's light fading on the snow-covered foothills. We arrived in Gura Humorului and made the short walk to the center where we found a small petting zoo and beautiful Christmas tree. We waited for a while and finally took a taxi up to Manastirea Humorului (the small village where we stayed). There we stayed for four nights exploring the monastery and the two towns through the Christmas holiday.
What have we learned from this experience? We need to stick with plans if at all possible. If I had not second-guessed our plans and had stopped in Lipcani as planned, we would have learned that the border was open and that there were rutieras going to Suceava. You live and learn, and we're learning a ton! Below are some of the pictures from our vacation.
The giant Christmas tree in Gura Humorului was a wonderfully-welcoming sight for us.
Below is our Christmas feast with plenty of roast beast. You can see we were very comfortable and that we over-endulged in some sweets for our Christmas. We put the Coke and cheese on the window sill to be cold. The third picture shows one of our Banana-grams games. It's a great way for us to have fun together.
