Visa Denied - On to Constanta

Our plans were to stay in Bucharest for Tuesday and Wednesday and apply for our visas. We had a staff meeting Tuesday morning and the office elders told us that the "Department of Cults" would not  accept our visa applications because a report from the church had not been completed. (Our church is considered a "Cult" because our membership is less than 1% of the population of Romania) So we will have to wait a few weeks before we can apply for our visas.

We looked on line and there was a train leaving for Constanta at 2:00pm, so we hurried back to the mission home, got our luggage and grabbed a taxi for the train station.

We got tickets for Constanta - the schedule said it would be a 2 1/2 hour ride but it turned out to be 4 1/2 hours with all the stops. We found out that this is common.

Needed to use the restroom - which you had to pay to use and it looked familiar.

The train was very comfortable and the tracks were welded together so you didn't hear the clickity clack that you usually hear on a train.

The country side was very pretty with crops and vineyards everywhere. Almost every home has a garden with fruit trees and grapes. There were people pruning and planting and getting ready for spring.







We arrived at Constanta and grabbed a taxi to the hotel that we
had booked on line called "Hotel Golden Rose" which was a pink building. The hotel was like most of the hotels we stayed at in Asia with very hard mattresses.







Our hotel was about a ten minute walk from the branch so we walked to the branch where they were having a birthday party for one of the new members.








This is our Branch President Elin Constantinesceu and his family. They both speak excellent English and his wife speaks Portuguese.

This is their little girl - she gets lots of attention. She made us miss our grandkids!