Day 15 – Sunday 17th October – Last Day in Romania!
Official Itinerary says: "Get up early and shake off that hangover! After breakfast it's time to load up the coach for the last time and travel across Bucharest to Otopeni airport. We will be flying back to Heathrow, leaving Bucharest at 10.00 am and arriving back in London at 11.30 am (local time)."
So Ins'Allah, we'll be going home today! Although there's definitely a big 'hopefully' in that sentence, because it's incredibly misty in Romania this morning and everything leaving Otopeni has been delayed. I'm writing this in the departure lounge of the airport, sitting in the smoking area with KT, Debs, Sal and Vix (ah, the smoking party) and waiting patiently for the fog to lift enough for us to leave. At the moment it shows no inclination of doing so, but we live in hope.
Last night (our last night in Romania... *sniffle*), we all got back to the hotel from the restaurant and met up for one final room party. Although technically it was more like a lobby party, since no-one wanted to volunteer their room on the last night, and there was a wedding reception occupying the bar and restaurant. Disorganised Mick had made one last attempt at organising something (bless him), and had set up a talent show of sorts, and fun happy prizes as well. Basically we were all encouraged to get up and make fools of ourselves... not that most of us need encouragement for that, obviously.
I'd tried to talk Stella into reprising the 'Stella and Rakie Show', but neither of us are quite drunk enough for that. So in the absence of actually having a talent (not that that's ever stopped me either) I'd written a very quick poem on the coach earlier that day. It was basically a list of all the stupid things we'd done during our two weeks abroad, and although it probably won't be funny if you don't directly know the people involved, here it is anyway:
"Thirty of us to Romania we went,
With black clothes and New Rocks and long hair unkempt;
Helen the star, the girl in command;
Mick with his grey wig, he gave her a hand;
We headed to Brasov and hit all the bars,
Stella drank vodka and shouted out 'ARSE!';
Twenty-eight of us all went to the pub –
While KT and Mark they found a strip club;
We ate a meal in the salt mine caves,
With twenty-five different personas of Dave;
Lawrence fed every stray puppy in sight;
Duncan and Paul – they became knights;
Sal and her comics, Debs and her yak,
Drank Lady M and sat at the back;
Darren took off his shirt without provocation;
Lisa brought down the house with her nasal irritation;
We went on the log carts – Kylie broke her seat;
All the dancing girls they love Meeester Meeeck;
We contributed to the local economy,
In the form of Klif and Vix's tat-buying spree;
Rosie's an angel, as sweet as can be;
And Mick got his legs out for the whole world to see;
Tim learned to swear, and Al dressed as Vlad;
The polenta and plum brandy, it all made us mad;
Ernestine, Robert, Andrew and Sue;
J dressed as a peasant girl and scared us too;
The beautiful Tara wore her so scary mask;
I argued with Becky and she kicked my ass;
Our coach did break down and we gave it a shunt;
Stephan's our driver and Nicolae's a... guide;
Jane and Jim they round off our crew,
Of misfits and outcasts – and some normals too;
And this was our holiday, I think it the best,
From Sibiu, Sighasoara, Brasov, Bucharest;
An ace bunch of people I'm sure you'll agree –
And this is my poem, it was written by me!"
Oh, I'm so very talented, yes I am. I got really nervous having to stand up in front of everyone and read it out... but fortunately everyone liked it. Thank God for that.
Then everyone else got a chance to embarrass themselves. Dave and Klif did a very fun Romania rap (although there was a line that said something like, "hangin with my hos at the back of the bus", that I feel morally obliged to object to), Debbie whistled 'Haul Around My Tat', J reprised his peasant girl routine, and Rosie and Ali acted out a really cool semi-operatic thing about Nicolae – "They called him Nicolae! NI-CO-LAEEEE! And he was the crappest guide in Bucharest." Debs, Rosie and Ali, Klif and me all win fun happy prizes. Yay! Other awards go out to the winners of the story and limerick contests, and also to Lawrence for ‘Services to Feeding Romania's Stray Dog Population’, and Tara for ‘Services to Romanian Dancing’.
The prizes we get are the most amazing piece of tat ever – a gold-painted plaster-cast bust of Vlad the Impaler. Omigod, I am well impressed with that. I really wish I had a mantlepiece back home that I could proudly display it on. And I'm even more impressed when we discover that it was actually Ginger Dave who made the items. He apparently sat there and moulded them out of clay, and then cast them in plaster and painted them gold. I now have ace mental images of him sitting over his little workbench like the Mad Baron of Reading or something.
Once we've all finished embarrassing ourselves for fun and handmade trinkets, we set to work getting rid of all the alcohol that we don't want to have to carry home. I finish off my last bottle of Morefatlard (excluding the three bottles that I'm taking home in my Transylvanian Ikea bag, natch) and most of my second bottle of black cherry brandy (again technically meant for my dad, but it's just sooooo tasty), although I have a little help with that one. Me and Ginger Dave have one last final slo-mo gunfight, which appropriately enough ends in a sort-of draw (we both die – I shoot him and then he inconsiderately uses his last ounce of strength to lob a grenade at me while I'm standing over him gloating). Ah, yet enough thing I'm really going to miss when we get back home.
I manage to get through most of the evening without getting teary, although we all do a lot of hugging and last minute exchanges of email addresses. I get everyone to sign my Big Pink Book of Friendship, so I've now got loads of fun sarcastic messages to remember everyone by. Bless. I wonder how long it'll be till I revert to my usual crap ways and start forgetting to return emails (Note from Future Rakie: About three weeks).
So this morning we woke up at some obscenely early hour of the morning and took our last ride on the coach that's practically been our home for the past two weeks. We arrive at the airport in what we assume is plenty of time, but delays with check-in and security checks means that we're all getting a little flustered by the time we finally get through to Departures. At which point we find out that the flight has been delayed for three hours. Oh great, thanks for telling us.
Getting through security is fun as well. Amazingly, both Klif with his amazing collection of swords and KT with her chainmail get through the metal detectors without a problem, but I get my hand luggage searched because there's a camera battery at the bottom it. Bloody typical. We all wave goodbye to Stephan and pretty much ignore Nicolae, then go join the second (equally enormous) queue for check-in. Me and KT get into a random conversation with a Somerset bigot, who tells us that he's over there because his Romanian ex-wife is trying to have him killed by the mafia. 'This is the second time it's happened to me,' he informs us, 'All woman are bloody bitches.' At this point KT rather archly suggests that he should maybe take up chastity.
The large delay unfortunately means that when we get back to Heathrow there probably won't be time for me and KT to go for one last drink with the guys, since we've got to get ourselves across town to Gatwick before about five o'clock. This is a real shame, and I can honestly see us making our final tearful farewells in the baggage reclaim section at Heathrow.
Anyway, enough of the complaining here. We passed the three hours in Otopeni airport quite pleasantly, spending the last of our Lei and overpopulating the smoking area. Me, Dave and Becky collected up all the random Lei coins and played poker with them for a while (there's nothing better than getting to say, 'I'll see your three thousand and raise you FIVE THOUSAND', even if it’s technically only worth about twelve pence), and for once in my stupid life I actually start to win. Unfortunately, that all changes once Tubby Mark comes to join in, since he actually knows how to play poker, and promptly cleans us all out. Watching him systematically take all of Dave’s money is extremely entertaining though.
After that I get sleepy and curl up inside my huge purple coat and fall asleep in a corner. I wake up some time later to find that a) the mist has completely burned off, and b) everyone is laughing at me because I look like a large furry purple slug when I’m all wrapped up in my coat. Thanks guys.
As predicted, we ended up having a brief and tearful farewell in the baggage reclaim section of Heathrow, and then me and KT had to run off and find a coach. We also saw Billy Zane and Kelly Brook there, incidentally – so watch out for a movie set in Romania with either of those guys in it. Saying goodbye to all our friends was really bad… it feels like I’ve just lost a load of my best friends. Obviously there were dozens of promises to keep in touch, but I know exactly how good I am at keeping up to date with emails (and so does everyone reading this), and I’m sure I’ll fall back into my usual crap ways alarmingly quickly. Whatever happens, it’s almost a certainty that we’ll never again get all thirty of us together in one place at one time. Like that bit in Stephen King’s ‘IT’ when the seven kids realise that it’s the last time they’ll all be together… it’s the end of our group. We’ve been practically living in each other’s giant stomping boots for two weeks, and now the group is breaking up and dispersing. What if I never see any of them again? It’s a distinct possibility. I’ve lost contact with so many friends before now despite our mutual best intentions, so why on earth should this be any different?
It’s only been about an hour since me and KT left to go get our coach, but I’m already missing the guys. Especially Stella, my little drinking bunny. It feels so weird to be on a coach and not be sharing a bottle of vodka with her. Actually, that’s a good point – I’m on a coach, it’s the middle of the afternoon, and I really feel like I should have a bottle of vodka in my hands. I really hope I can break out of this habit fairly quickly, otherwise I’m just going to have to avoid buses for a wee while. Plus I suspect that I’m going to be thanking everyone in Romanian and yelling ‘ARSE!’ randomly for at least a few weeks.
Anyway, I think I’ve had enough of this writing malarkey. If it doesn’t annoy Future Rakie too much, I’ll get her to write a ‘Back Home’ update at some point, just to round things off in a nice, um, round way. But for the moment, this is it, this is the end of our Romania adventure, and what an adventure it’s been. I’ve had so much fun that it’s hard to believe it’s really over… it’ll be interesting to see how long it takes to reintegrate myself in everyday life.
It’ll also be interesting to see how long it takes me to get ‘Haul Around My Tat’ out of my head…
TO BE CONCLUDED! YES!!