Brasov Car Trouble

 Jo (with some Tosh edits): The internet and travel guides both point out the importance of caution about renting a car in Romania, due to 'reckless driving' of the Romanians. We are not deterred by that and rent a car for our two-week Romania road-trip adventure. This is the part of the trip, at least I am most excited about. When we land in Brasov on a red-eye, the car rental place at the air port is closed. We wait around for an hour and a half but nobody shows up at 9 AM, which the internet says is when it should open. The little Sixt booth has a piece of paper with a phone number that Tosh calls. A guy answers and says he'll be there in 1 minute. 20 minutes go by and nobody shows. I call back and the guy says "Oh no, we don't go to airport unless a flight comes'. Apparently today no flight (???. We take a cab into Brasov and head to the Sixt office there. That's when our plans start unraveling. Apparently, American driver's licenses are no good in Romania. An American needs to get an International Drivers Permit, and AAA is the only authorized distributor of those in the US; it would take 4-6 weeks to get one.  Luckily, I thought of bringing my German license, which they accept; however, the car reservation is through Kayak in Tosh's name. The folks at Sixt say they can't change the primary driver to me because Tosh's name is on the contract, and since the car was booked through Kayak, they can't change the contract; only Kayak can. Tosh spends about 4 hours on the phone getting bounced all around the company of Kayak, only to be told that "Kayak is only a referral company; he needs to talk directly to Sixt because that is who his contract is with." It gets kind of humorous when Tosh is transferred about five times; and at one point, he is actually transferred to the guy in the Sixt office with whom we are actually sitting and told us to call!

It appears that Romanian's are even worse beaurocrats than Germans and we are getting no where after hours in the Sixt office. So, we come back the next morning after spending multiple additional hours on the phone with Sixt and Kayak, trying to change the name on the booking. Finally, the Sixt guy told us he can make it work (we only have to promise our third born child to him, haha). I hand him my German license and US passport, hopeful we will finally get a car. He looks at the documents, then at me, then at the documents again. "This license is not valid, since your names don't match on the documents". Yup, Romanian are worse beaurocrats than Germans. It is proven. He says there is nothing he can do for us. We leave very frustrated and have to spend another night in Brasov, which is nice, but I am eager to start our mountain adventures. Next day we call every car rental agency in Brasov and finally find one that will accept my license and does not care about my name being different. We take a cab out to the outskirts of Brasov, which look a lot more like the Romania I had imagined: soviet-era concrete apartment blocks, small homes, everything a bit run down and grey. The car rental place is in a yard with a few vehicles and a construction trailer serves as the office, and the guy basically says, "You take picture of car. You give me money. I give you keys. See you ten days." Felt super legal (snicker snicker). We get a car with tires that look like spares, suspiciously easy and drive off feeling a little worried and a little like rebels. Let the adventures begin!    

Side note: The internet was right again, Romanians drive like lunatics, disregarding any traffic rules and common sense. In the busy downtown traffic I manage to somehow back into a cab that pulled up behind me, which I may have touched but definitely not enough to cause any mark on the car. The driver jumps out and starts cussing at us, pointing to a deep scratch at the back of his car, that I supposedly caused. When he sees Tosh get out of the car, he changes the strategy from trying to fist fight me, to jelling at us in the worst English swear word he could come up with:"You stupid!" And then jumps in his car drives off!