Transcript:
So, back in Bucharest, about a day or so later, Jay flew back to Texas. Me and Jay had been staying in an Airbnb in the city, and my plan was then to go on to Turkey to do some hiking on the Lycian Way, from what I’d heard and from what I’d read about, a beautiful coastal path that I’d been wanting to hike for about a decade. At that time, it was about 40 degrees C in Turkey, as they were having a bit of a late heatwave.
So, I decided to send some of my warmer clothes that I’ve been wearing up in the mountains home by post. So, I said to the owner of the Airbnb, do you know where the post office is? And he said, “*Do you know what? I’ll drive you.”. And I thought, wow, that’s really nice of him. So, the next morning he picks me up and he drives me probably about 30 minutes away through traffic and he says, “Oh, the post office is over there”.
So, I walk to where he points and when I get there I see that the post office is closed. Not only is it closed but it’s closed down. So, I quickly call him up thinking I can still catch him and I say “Hey, hi the post office is closed.”, and he just says “Oh, I’m really sorry, I have to go. Good luck getting back. Bye!” and then he hangs up.
I’d bought a new phone but I hadn’t been able to download and log in to my Uber app and I couldn’t find a taxi *for love nor money. So, there I am with all my bags miles away from the accommodation. So, I had to walk back through traffic all the way back to the apartment. It was fairly hot, not too bad, however it was pretty polluted and noisy and it was about a two hour walk back to the Airbnb. A complete disaster. As you can imagine I was pretty pissed off. I was going to stay in the Airbnb for an extra night and didn’t for two reasons. The first being that he had moved me to a different apartment in the same building. It was a much smaller apartment but didn’t have the same facilities however he still wanted the same money. Okay, the second was, as I mentioned before, I was pretty pissed off that he just dropped me off in the middle of nowhere and then *sped off. So, I decided not to stay. I told him that I wasn’t going to stay for any further period of time and the next day asked him very politely to book me a taxi. And he said, “Oh, I’m very sorry, but I don’t know how to do that”. “What? You don’t know how to book a taxi?” And he just said “Oh no, sorry, I can’t do that”. So, obviously he was just being difficult because I didn’t want to stay for any further period of time. So, I had a look at my phone and there was an Ibis, an Ibis hotel about 25 minutes away on foot. So, I thought, OK, let’s get to the Ibis, regroup and formulate a new plan from there. So, I get to the Ibis and I decide that I’m going to book a flight to Turkey.
However, every time I try and book a flight to Turkey, it keeps sending a text message to my phone, which I don’t have. So, I called the bank and they said, we’re trying to remove some of the security measures, so keep trying. I did and what happened? In the end, all of my cards got blocked. Great! So, I was *holed up in the hotel. The only thing I had was credit at the hotel.
So, I was at least able to eat and get a bit drunk, which I did. After about a day or so, I managed to get the problem sorted with the bank, and my cards were unblocked. And I thought, you know what, I’m going to book a flight, but I’m just going to book a flight home. If the holiday carries on, I’m pretty much going to end up dead the way things are going. So, the next day, I had a flight home and just went back to the UK.
And it was about after about two days or so, back in the UK, you know, I’m still feeling a bit down about how the holiday had gone, when the girl who I had the summer fling with started posting photos of her travels on social media. And I could see that she was traveling with another guy. Okay, fine, that’s a bit of a surprise. And then I had a look on his social media, which was completely open. And there it was, the whole story. It was there for everyone to see. They’d been going out, travelling the world together for well over a year. On her social media, there was absolutely nothing. Finally, and this really *tops it off, their first holiday together was in, can you guess? Yes, Romania. Wonderful! So, there was me, I’d pretty much just done the exact same holiday; a tour of their first romantic holiday together. My God, *you couldn’t make it up.
No wonder that the holiday was cursed. But actually, seriously, it was a painful moment. She’d gone back to her ex, she’d chosen another man, as it was her *prerogative to do so. She’d done nothing wrong, but it still stung, nonetheless. Such is life. Sometimes it can be cruel and there’ll be bumps in the road. All you can do is *dust yourself off and look forward and not back. And that’s what I did; I booked a one-way ticket to Santiago in South America and decided to try again.
