The cops led us over to the side of the street where they had a van waiting and asked to see our identification. Our Romanian pals handed over their IDs and Bedlam and I gave them our passports. My first thought was “Are these guys legit?” I had heard stories of scams where people pretended to be cops and ask foreigners for passports in order to steal them but these police had pretty convincing kevlar and guns, plus if this was a common scam then our Romanian friends would have known something was up.

My second thought was “Am I in Romania legally?”. Truth be told I had no idea – I know you’re allowed to be inside the Schengen zone for up 90 days per 180 days, and I think I’m pretty close to the 90 day limit if I’m not over it yet. However, according to the internet Romania isn’t a party to the Schengen agreement even though they’re in the EU and Romania allows Americans to stay up to 30 days as a tourist with no visa.

I kept my fingers crossed as the cops asked Liviu questions in Romanian and he relayed them to me in English, then translated my answers back for the police. “How long are you here?”.. “A few weeks, we’re just visiting”… “How long in Bucharest?”.. “We’ll probably leave at the end of the weekend”. He scowled as he looked over our papers, then went over to the van and began writing down all our information.

Naturally, I did what any enterprising American would do when faced with the prospect of arrest by suspicious police who didn’t speak my language in a country where I might not belong: I pulled out the iPhone and pretended to be checking messages while covertly taking pictures of the cops that were detaining us. Why? Who knows, it’d be nice to leave an evidence trail in case I got disappeared, but also for a bit of entertainment value. “Man, this one time when I was in Romania…” It’s how all the good stories start.

At long last he finally came back and said we were free to go. I suppose this either means I am in fact here legally, or it might mean he was too lazy to call it in. Thankfully I neglected to register with anyone, so if they do come looking it’ll be a little hard to locate me.  This probably also means that I’m in a database somewhere now, so I’m looking forward to the grilling I get when I try to leave the country.