I didn't get much sleep last night, but I did manage maybe an hour or so before getting woken up at the border. We ended up getting into the city around 5 AM, an hour before expected. I was again impressed to see that Bucharest has a fairly extensive and modern subway system that got me to the hostel maybe half an hour later. Surprisingly, one of the volunteers woke up and let me in. While I didn't have a room yet, I fell asleep shortly thereafter in some beanbags in the common room's wooden loft.

I woke up around 11 and wandered around the city for a while. It's a really strange place. We're close to the central square that hosts the Romanian equivalent of the National Mall, and it's completely ridiculous. The Presidential Palace was built under communism and is absolutely immense, as is the still under construction cathedral directly next to it. There are lots of huge open spaces around these buildings but it all seems very empty. The architecture around the area reminds me of Vienna, except much bigger, more brutalist, and vastly uglier. It seems to operate under an equivalent philosophy to the classic marching band "if we just play really loud, people will think we're good." I've always imagined North Korea would look like this - monuments built to aggrandize the corrupt, totalitarian government but do nothing for the people. The people don't seem to appreciate the effort going into this either, since I saw almost nobody the entire time. There are no shops or restaurants lining the streets and nobody in the parks. Cars drive by so it's not like the city is empty, they just don't seem to go anywhere near the center.

I kept walking and eventually made it into the old city. Little of the old city survives since the communist regime destroyed most of it to construct giant, ugly buildings, but there's still a little bit here. It's not very interesting although there are a few nice cultural sites, most notably some museums that I'd like to visit at some point in the future. While walking through this area I heard an awful lot of English and a little French, but no Romanian - it seems that this is the part of the city intended to draw tourists. I'm still unsure where all the locals are actually driving to.

I headed back to the hostel and, while not impressed with the city at all, found the hostel to be awesome. It's got a really great social vibe and the people are all really friendly. I made some lentils that I found on the free shelf and then joined a group for the trivia event they were hosting. They have an extremely friendly cat here that slept on my lap almost the entire time. It seems that this hostel has a bar that the locals like to come to, even though there's nothing to indicate that this is a public space. They turned out huge for trivia and the numbers in hostel swelled. Some of them were incredibly good and kept nailing questions that I can't even begin to imagine knowing the answers to. Our group did ok though, and it was a ton of fun regardless. The atmosphere reminds me a lot of attending a house party where you don't really know anyone (in the best way possible). I tried a local NEIPA and was amazed to find that it was excellent - probably my favorite beer that I've had on this trip. Much better than even a lot of the Boston area breweries. I went out with some people later to play pool. Even at night the city seemed quiet.

Not hugely impressed with Romania and looking forward to seeing JP in Istanbul, but hopefully will get to see some of the museums here and still looking forward to spending more time in the hostel tomorrow.