Before leaving I was dreading the 8 hour flight to Munich. However, I was shocked about how well this flight went. The plane was very technologically advanced and I was able to watch many movies and listen to music. I had not been on a plane internationally since 2005. What also made the plane trip so awesome was that I made a friend. She was flying to Serbia. Her name was Slavica and went to college in Ohio. She was super nice and we talked a lot through out the flight. She talked a lot about Serbia and was very interested in why I was flying to Cluj, Romania. At the end of the flight we exchanged information to become email pals. Once we landed in Munich everyone was very excited to get to Cluj. Unfortunately, we were epically delayed. The airlines told us that the plane could not land in Cluj because of weather conditions. However, certain people were being called to board the plane still. They then said that only a certain amount of people could be on the plane. Many people were kicked off the flight including us. This was very frustrating because the airport personnel were not helpful or nice. They transferred us to a flight to Budapest, Hungary and then take a 5 hour bus ride to Cluj. They lied. We were on a bus from Budapest to Cluj for 10 hours. The bus driver insisted that he did not speak English and his co-worker was very rude. There was 14 of my group on the bus a long with about 30 strangers. On a positive note I became quickly close to some of my classmates and was able to see the beautiful countryside of Romania. The a negative note, I experienced first hand the language barrier. I also began witnessing the attitude some people had towards Americans. By the end of the 10 hours I had been awake for 36 hours and traveling for over 24 hours. I was exhausted, frustrated, angry and helpless. I hated not being able to communicate and scared that I could not control my situation. Also as we were heading into Cluj the driver said he’d drop us off in the city center. He lied and everyone started freaking out. He drove an extra half hour to the airport outside of the city. People were screaming in all different languages and I had never felt so lost. A man that was on the bus with us is currently working on pressing charges against Luftansa for everything that we went through. My group as well is planning on protesting once we get back to the United States.
