We bought an ice cream cone each. The ice cream tastes different than I’m used to, but it was really good anyway. Then we had 5,000 Lei left, I believe. There isn’t much you can buy with that. We wandered around the various booths looking for something that was less than 5000 Lei, to no avail. We saw this group of Romanina deaf people signing, and I was again amazed at these encounters. We decided to go to the supermarket in the train station to find something cheap. One of the deaf guys must have seen us signing and we encountered him at the front of the store- he was very animated and explained that he had lived for a year in London and knew some BSL. We explained that we were from America and that the BSL alphabet is very different from ours, when he tried to sign in BSL.

He was really nice and went in to help us buy something. We had to explain that we had only 5000 Lei’s and just wanted to get rid of them- we saw these small snacks- similar to Little Debbie’s and could only afford one. He was like, no, they’re old! We’re like, it’s all we can afford. He was so full of energy and bustled us to the line, then took us out of line and grabbed two containers of these chocolate cracker cookies with white filling in between (yum!) and our ‘little Debbie’ from Robyn and paid for them for us. How nice! Then he escorted us to the table where everyone else was. On the way, he explained that he was married and his wife was deaf (has a sister in Minnesota- hearing) and he had two kids. So we met the others- it was all a flurry because we were being pulled into different conversations, then rushed and pushed onto our train before it left. We met two young girls, the deaf dude, and maybe 3 or 4 more. It was very interesting and I really enjoyed it – a great experience and just eye-opening. The young girls had no job, no home, no income, no education, so the other guys were helping them out with money they earned through selling things on trains. The girls had no education and couldn’t find a job. The men, only one had any education and knew English. I left wishing we could do something for the deaf people in Romania- they’re bright and independent but ignored and not many get a chance to succeed. How many students from Gallaudet are Romanian? I bet you there are none at all- and perhaps have never been. We exchanged email addresses with two of them, then were rushed off to the train- since our Balkan Flexipasses are 1st class (the only option when purchasing them, anyway.. at a good price), we decided to sit in first class- you have to pay $$ but the guy was nice and warned us to watch our things in the regular compartments before kicking us out. Theft was common in Bulgaria, he gestured and wrote down. We walked through the sleeper car and you have to pay 5 Euros. We opted out of that and just sat in the regular car- a compartment all to ourselves, as usual.