As far as hostels go, the Butterfly Villa is pretty nice. Lonely Planet rates it the best hostel in Bucharest and it’s not hard to see why. It’s a nice place, it’s not too crowded, they have all-day breakfast and free wireless internet. We met some pretty cool people our first night and since we couldn’t meet up with Oasim and pals until tomorrow, we hung out at the hostel drinking with some of the people here.

The main two people we spent most of the night drinking with were Gao Gao and Sally.

Gao Gao is a Chinese chick who grew up in the UK and is going to school at Georgetown. At first we surmised that she might be here as part of the NATO summit thing, but it turns out that she’s only 20. She’s been stuck in Romania for about a week since her passport was stolen. She got a new passport but is waiting on a replacement visa so she can get back into the US and go back to school. She’s opinionated, witty, talks a lot, and is generally a lot of fun to hang out with. She’s also lactose-intolerant, which severely limits the selection of available food for her to eat. Not one to let genetics get her down, she’s taken to calling herself “Lactose” and flashing the gang sign as her defining image.

Sally is an Australian who is working in the UK with NHS. After a long chat with her I was relieved to discover that in England it’s not standard practice to leave patients unconscious on the operating table while the surgeons break for lunch. She’s got a degree in statistics, which combined with Bedlam and I led to a drunken nerd-fest. She also gave us hope for the future because we’re not yet “proper old”.