It’s 23:53 Bucharest time and I should be going to sleep but it’s been the sort of evening that needs a few minutes to decompress first. I’m here for two reasons, the second of which will come along on Monday but the first is to correct some mistakes from my last trip here, which was in 2009. I said I’d come back in a few years, when Bucharest was beginning to make some visible progress in its journey away from its Communist era and see how I liked it.

So, story begins in Bristol with a Ryanair flight. Definite downgrade. Last time I flew BA from Heathrow T5 and judging by the photos, had hold luggage – there’s a picture of a full-sized bottle of suncream on my bathroom shelf. This time, personal item only. Fine. I brought my tablet because 1) long enough flight to want something to distract me (Gilmore Girls; I’ve never seen it before and without the sheen of nostagia… well, it’s not going to become a favourite series unless it makes a lot of changes in Lorelei Gilmore) 2) to write this blog on! I had a delightful neighbour who wore her big coat draped over her shoulders, thus pushing me into the wall, when Ryanair is already cramped enough but fine.

I was concerned about passport control, about arriving at 9.20pm and then having four hours of queueing for the new biometric controls thing, can’t remember what it’s called, can’t be bothered to look it up at 23:57. But it took two minutes to get from the plane (admittedly via a short bus ride to the terminal) to passport control and then I was only fourth in the “all other passports” (we took back control, yay for us!) queue and they haven’t implemented it yet, so that was all very quick. By 9:22 I was heading for the exit! By 9:29, I was buying a train ticket to the city centre. Last time I was here, in 2009, mistake number 1 was to not know I needed to validate my bus ticket. Well, now they’ve opened a direct rail link to Gara de Nord. Got on the train and noticed the ticket was for the 23:52 train when I was on the 21:31 (when it failed to move, I went to look at the sign on the platform. It arrived at 21:31, it was departing at 21:52. So off I went to the website and then to the app and discovered that the 21:52 did not exist. Fine. See what happens when or if the conductor comes round. Which he did the second the train started moving. I held up the ticket and asked “Is this ok…?” and he didn’t even look at it but just went “NO!” and immediately and with barely a word, sold me a ticket from the machine. Both together came to about £2.75 which is very cheap for a direct airport train.

Another unremarkable journey and then I walked out of the station and along the road to the hotel. I’d checked the directions but hadn’t taken into account that Bucharest has a lot more major roads than it used to and I had to use 3 crossings at a junction when just walking across six lanes of traffic would have been only 1 crossing. Got to the hotel the best part of an hour earlier than I’d expected, thanks to passport control being so close and so easy.

And this is where disaster struck. Mistake number 2 in 2009 was to stay in a truly terrible hotel, demolished less than 5 year later, according to Google Streetview, where the whole place was semi-derelict and the breakfast had mould on it and someone screamed like they were being murdered in the middle of the night. Maybe they were murdered in the middle of the night. So this time I booked a reputable chain hotel of the international Accor Group. Luxury! Non-mouldy breakfast included! Great!

I successfully checked in, took the lift up to my floor, let myself in my room… and discovered open suitcases. So I went back to reception and said “There’s already someone in there!”. The receptionist, who was not wearing a name badge, checked that I’d gone to the room number written on the card (I had; my Romanian is very weak but I can read numbers), looked at the computer, made concerned noises and then went upstairs presumably to check whether I’d just imagined open suitcases. I waited. And waited. She came down, she made more noises at the computer and then she disappeared out the back where raised voices were heard. I was concerned, but not overly so. The more noises she made and the more tearful she looked, the more I began to realise they probably didn’t have a room. But I’d booked and paid for if it several weeks ago and if they’d messed up, they were going to have to fix it. Whatever happened, I was not going to be turned onto the streets.

It took forever. The poor girl shrieked into her phone, got colleagues on the phone, got colleagues to the desk, sent me off to sit in the restaurant with a complementary drink while making distressed noises that almost made me feel like I was the one who had to reassure and console her. More shrieks, more tearful noises and I began to seriously think I was going to be roomless. Matters were complicated when someone came down to complain that their room card wasn’t working and I spied my room number on it. No, your card isn’t working because that’s my room! Receptionist checked whether she’d swapped with the person in the next room or whether she was supposed to be in the next room, sent her back up and I just sat there, thinking “if you’ve got no rooms, you’re going to have to find me one and taxi me there because this one, this time, isn’t on me”. Then she went upstairs for quite a while.

At last, and it’s at least 11.30pm by now, she came back and presented me with a new card for the next room. This would be easier with numbers but it’s stupid to put your hotel and room number on the internet while you’re still there. The room next to my original room, the one the current occupant may or may not have been supposed to be in. I have no idea what’s happened, whether someone had marked her as being in this room but had given her the card for the other one and why it took so long to untangle that – and a problem for tomorrow, whether anyone’s going to try to move in here tomorrow. But for the time being, I have a room and it appears to be all mine.

But the “fixing mistakes” counter is now on two mistakes not entirely solved, just changed. Evolved. Upgraded.