Bucharest: Travel guide, prices and free housing · 2026

ANAziz NadjimutdinovFeb 1, 2015Read

-Hey bro! What's up? -Not bad, good, you? -Are you upset? You know, there are things you just can't fight. And one of those things in your life will be an influx of a certain nationality through the program. Our restaurant could have been called "A Romanian-American barrel with a Bulgarian-Uzbek-African spoonful of tar, oh, I mean marmalade." Well, with Americans, everything is clear enough. In the places where you'll be working, Americans are by nature often freer than birds. From season to season, they travel to different states and work wherever it's best at the moment. They rarely stay in one place for more than one season (well, except for the locals). Uzbeks - 2 specimens. Me and another cook. We are both from the same university, but didn't know each other before. Although, living in the same room, we naturally got closer. Bulgarians - 3 specimens. Evgeni, Miroslava, and one other girl. Evgeni later became my best friend among all the locals. We got much closer to each other than to the others. African - 1 quiet specimen. So quiet that I never even understood exactly where he was from. And... Romanians... About 15 specimens of initially arrogant young people who constantly spoke only their native language among themselves, which, of course, annoyed the rest. At first, there were none at all, and then in mid-June, their university studies ended, and the influx began. Along with them came another African-American guy. I remember my joy: -Oh, Sam, at least you're not from Romania! -Well, actually I'm from Nigeria, but I study in Romania. And he spoke Romanian too. And so, at first, we fought with them for a long time, trying to force them to speak English at least in our presence, explaining that what is the point of coming to the States to live here like in Bucharest. Well, what do you think happened in the end? It seems almost the entire dorm fell in love with this language and started speaking it. As I said above, there will be things that are useless to fight. In your case, it could be any other nationality. For me, it was the Romanians. And now I actually want to go to Bucharest because I miss my friends from there. But it is worth noting that those with whom I spent a lot of time also learned Russian, just as I learned Romanian. This is one of the pluses of the Work and Travel program, that you go not only to work, improve your English, etc., but also to develop knowledge and literacy about other nationalities/cultures/languages/customs. Therefore, Tip #15: Take advantage of this opportunity.

ANAziz NadjimutdinovFeb 1, 2015Read

Returning to New York happened on October 4th with one of the Romanian girls on adjacent flights. At the airport, I decided to leave my luggage for a day, and together with the girl, I headed into the city with a clear mission: to bring her to her destination in the city, since I had already been here and she hadn't. The destination was a hotel in the center of Manhattan, where our two colleagues from Addis and their friend were staying. Upon arriving there, we left our things and headed to Columbus Circle to meet two more of our former colleagues. Yes, I am surrounded by Romanians again. As if I never left. From Bucharest, to Bucharest, and back to Bucharest. Well, we decided that I would spend the night with the colleagues we met at Columbus Circle, and they would stay at their aunt's place in the Bronx. The Bronx, just so you know, is the outskirts of New York. The farthest part. Besides, I left my backpack in the girls' room, so I had to go back, and only then take the subway to the Bronx. Here, perhaps, I overpraised the city's transport, as it took us a very long time to get there. Either the trains weren't running, or they were canceled, or something like that. Then they figured we could get off now, walk to another station, and take a direct line from there without transfers. Well, okay, I didn't even listen to them, I just walked in silence. I noticed it was getting dark around us. A couple of minutes later, I realized we were walking through Harlem. For those who don't know, Harlem is a predominantly African-American neighborhood in New York, and three white foreigners definitely shouldn't be showing up there at one in the morning. One of us, Radu, is a rapper by nature and really loves that kind of vibe. And you know, he was even happy that we were in such a neighborhood. Not a single policeman around, it was dark, strange people, but he was having fun. Honestly, it was kind of creepy. Even standing at the subway station, I didn't feel safe when some drug addicts were sitting on their knees in a circle near the bench next to us, doing something strange. Anyway, you caught Tip #20, right? On top of everything, we were very "lucky" and our train went express, skipping our station due to some repair work. We had to get back from the terminal station. We arrived home around two in the morning and passed out almost immediately. October 5th. The thing is, I can't even get home properly :D But I managed to turn off my alarms in the morning and oversleep. My flight was at 3 PM, but it's better to arrive at our airline 3 hours early. Plus, I wanted to stop by my friend's place on the way. And here I woke up, turned off the alarm, and fell asleep again. Then I opened my eyes - it was 10 o'clock. My phone was blowing up on silent, to the point that my mom called me long-distance, and besides that, there were Viber, Facebook, Telegram, SMS, etc. In short, I jumped up, got dressed, and flew out as fast as I could because it's a long way. The funniest thing is that on the way, I accidentally grabbed my friend's aunt's watch, which was lying next to my things. I ran back, returned it, and then headed to the subway. I traveled for 2.5 hours and arrived at the airport at 12:30 - just in time. I checked in, dropped off my luggage, and went downstairs to the shops. I had a final meal at McDonald's. Well, that's actually it. Time to go home. It was a crazy adventure, but that's probably enough for now. I even wanted to go home a little bit. Now there were 15-17 hours of the return flight ahead, which went much faster than the initial ones. It was terribly sad to leave this country, but I know that I will definitely return.