Travel Day

We met at the terminal as our team assembled from different parts of the country. Everyone arrived without difficulty and we were ready to test the limits of Lufthansa’s ticket counter personnel with our unusual baggage.

Each airline passenger is allowed two checked bags of 50 pounds each. The week before, we packed trunks with 50 pounds of dental supplies and equipment and brought them to the airport as one of our two bags. For the rest of the trip with a stop in Frankfurt before arriving in Bucharest, each team member had to keep up with his or her assigned trunk.

Lufthansa fed us dinner and showed a couple of movies (Akeela and the Bee, Just My Luck, and Over the Hedge) after we were airborne and later turned down the lights in a failed attempt to make us think it was late at night and we should all go to sleep. A few hours later, the lights were brought up and they served breakfast. We left at 3:00 PM and we were landing in Frankfurt at 7:00 AM after a ten hour flight. After a lay-over, we boarded a flight to Bucharest.

We must have been a sight to behold as we left the Bucharest terminal to meet our friends from Braila. Here were 20 Americans wearing identical shirts in single file pushing baggage carts with a footlocker on each. We were met by a van and a bus from Holy Trinity. The van carried the dental supplies, and the team rode in the bus.

We drove about two hours to Bazau where we had lunch at McDonalds. Yes, McDonalds is about the same everywhere, including the drive-through, except beer is included on the menu here. A wedding was taking place while we ate outside.We watched as the wedding party progressed from a building on one side of the square to the other side, where the church was located.

We reboarded the bus for the remaining two hour trip to Braila. This segment was through farmlands of a great plain stretching from the Carpathian Mountains to the Danube. Every few miles the sameness of cultivated land was broken by a village. It was a stark yet beautiful sight as the sun was setting. Through every village we saw the same scene of farmers leading cows and other livestock along the side of the road back to stables. We were surprised to see villagers getting around in horse-drawn wagons and drawing water from wells.

After more than twenty-four hours of continuous travel, we made it to Braila around 8:00 P.M. Saturday.