Bus from the airport

This is the story of the sweating bus that almost knocked A out. Like out, out! 

Freshly arrived to Henri Coandă airport, our mission was to make our way to Bucharest downtown and into our AirBnB.  After a little bit of looking around for the right bus and getting the tickets we managed to squeeze ourselves into 784. A number I will not soon forget!

There were dozens of people waiting for that ride and unsurprisingly, the stretched bus was full to the brim of mostly raw and un-fresh humanity. Being young, we stood and hung onto whatever we could as well as each other.

It soon became apparent that we had not done our research well because Henri Coandă airport is at Otopeni which even in the best of days is 40 minutes away from Piaţa Unirii in the center. This was not the best of days and we were crawling our way through rush hour Bucureşti in mild rain.

It was then that the humidity started to hit us in the face. Hard!

With long times between stops and the windows closed, it started getting pretty hot pretty fast. Soon enough, the coat was off, the sweater was off and my white T-shirt started to look like I was in a wet T-shirt contest. And I really don’t mean the sexy kind…

It was the strangest thing though: the walls and windows of the bus seemed to be sweating and nobody seemed to care! At this point, I was uncomfortable but A was really not alright and I was getting worried as I’ve already experienced her passing out and was pretty terrified by that event. All of this compounded by the fact that it had been a working day for her and that we were both pretty hungry seemed like a recipe for disaster.

Sure enough, about an hour into the ride and 100 checks of google traffic later she eventually just kind of sat, kind of dropped down on the bus floor and told me she was about to black out.

I immediately made a little space around her and asked people to finally open the damn windows. Eventually she came out of it alright but I was stressed out the rest of the ride and we finally left a couple of stops before the end just to catch some air.

Guys, it may seem like a silly thing but do a bit of research on rush hour and be firm about not letting heat and humidity get to you. If you are travelling alone, passing out in the middle of a bus full of strangers is not likely to be your favorite memory!

Be safe out there!