Private Driver to Sofia, Bulgaria

Our printed tickets just said the bus would pick us up at the central Gara de Nord in Bucharest, Romania.  Sounds simple enough, except for the fact that Gara de Nord contains two metro stations, the central train station, and the central bus station.  Digging deeper the bus company website says the pick-up point is in the parking lot.  Not much help there.  Arrived on the metro at about 7:20 am for an 8 am bus ride and started seeking out ticket windows to inquire…not much English spoken by the older female ticket sellers, and obviously our Romanian is non-existent.  Walked towards the other metro and finally found an info. booth with a much younger gal who nervously spoke decent English and got pointed in the right direction.  The right direction turned out to be the train station where they pointed us again outside to other booths.  Asking at both ticket booths got nothing but blank stares, which was the cue for the taxi drivers to start asking us if we needed a ride and then confusing us by looking at our ticket and telling us the pick-up point was 12 km. away.  Sent Jihye across the street to check a few bus stops, when finally a kind enough taxi driver who hadn't been able to help before pointed across the street at a small line of parked cars.  We ran over and realized it was now 7:56 am.  Saw a mini-bus go past on the other side of the street and Jihye went running across eight lanes of traffic to figure out if it was ours when suddenly a random guy walks up and says, "Sofia?".  Uhh..yes…but who are you??  He just nods and lights a cigarette.  Jihye does her best Frogger and gets back across safely while we try to figure out who this guy is and where our van could be.  Then he just says, "Ok", opens the trunk of a car and motions us to get in.  Umm…ID?  He shakes his head and motions us to get in.  ID, please.  He just says again, "Sofia…get in."  I size him up and realize I'd have no problem taking him.  So we toss our bags in the trunk and wait a couple minutes.  Finally a mini-bus pulls in and out hops a much more 'normal' looking guy who walks up and apologizes and says that because we are the only two heading to Sofia, Bulgaria that day, we'd get to take a private car and he'd be our driver.  Couldn't have been a better ride and kinder driver.  Also learned that Romania and Bulgaria have their own autobahn and anything under 130 kph is fair game.  Only thing that could have made the trip better would have been being able to drive that fast for myself.

Here is our driver saying farewell and heading back for the six hour return drive to Bucharest, Romania after delivering us practically to the door of our apartment in Sofia, Bulgaria.