There's a romance to train travel. The bustling station, the exotic destinations on the departures board, the endless bloody burger chains...
Bucharest's main station is modelled on the Gare du Nord in Paris but it has the same atmosphere as Waterloo or Paddington - they even have a McDonalds, a KFC and a Subway. But they also have some local fast food joints. Yes they sell junk food, but it's ROMANIAN junk, hurrah! As reported in the our previous post, we have taken the precaution of stocking up on food and drink en route to the station.
The station is really busy when we arrive at about 4:30. Ninety-five percent of the passengers are on their way to the suburbs after a day's work in the city. We're in the other five per cent, on our way across Europe by the Night Train To Budapest!
It being a night train, there are sleeping cars. Strangely, they are divided according to gender so we have decided to book seats. We did this on the Ghan (going north from Adelaide to Darwin via Alice Springs) and it worked out ok. That was two and a half days; this is just fifteen hours.
The train is nearly full, and we're lucky to get a double seat to ourselves with a table between. This means we can pass at least some of the time playing Cribbage, the best card game in the world. Philippa usually has a pack of cards and a crib board in her bag, and today is no exception. Dec asks that we draw a veil over the result.
There's no scenery to describe because it's dark out there. Time passes slowly; a small child nearby plays with a gameboy which plays its stupid plinky plonk music, interrupted and restarted at random, for an hour, although it felt longer than that. But otherwise the carriage is fairly quiet. We doze and read, doze and read until we reach the border about 6AM. Our passports and tickets are inspected THREE TIMES. Then it's back to dozing and reading. The train is due to arrive at 8:20, so it won't be long.
HOWEVER. An unscheduled stop at Beckescsaba station lasts for over an hour without a word of explanation. It's just like being at home, this. The train finally gets going at 9:30. Sadly that's 9:30 ROMANIAN time, which is an hour ahead of HUNGARIAN time. We still have a long way to go.
Bucharest's main station is modelled on the Gare du Nord in Paris but it has the same atmosphere as Waterloo or Paddington - they even have a McDonalds, a KFC and a Subway. But they also have some local fast food joints. Yes they sell junk food, but it's ROMANIAN junk, hurrah! As reported in the our previous post, we have taken the precaution of stocking up on food and drink en route to the station.
The station is really busy when we arrive at about 4:30. Ninety-five percent of the passengers are on their way to the suburbs after a day's work in the city. We're in the other five per cent, on our way across Europe by the Night Train To Budapest!
It being a night train, there are sleeping cars. Strangely, they are divided according to gender so we have decided to book seats. We did this on the Ghan (going north from Adelaide to Darwin via Alice Springs) and it worked out ok. That was two and a half days; this is just fifteen hours.
The train is nearly full, and we're lucky to get a double seat to ourselves with a table between. This means we can pass at least some of the time playing Cribbage, the best card game in the world. Philippa usually has a pack of cards and a crib board in her bag, and today is no exception. Dec asks that we draw a veil over the result.
There's no scenery to describe because it's dark out there. Time passes slowly; a small child nearby plays with a gameboy which plays its stupid plinky plonk music, interrupted and restarted at random, for an hour, although it felt longer than that. But otherwise the carriage is fairly quiet. We doze and read, doze and read until we reach the border about 6AM. Our passports and tickets are inspected THREE TIMES. Then it's back to dozing and reading. The train is due to arrive at 8:20, so it won't be long.
HOWEVER. An unscheduled stop at Beckescsaba station lasts for over an hour without a word of explanation. It's just like being at home, this. The train finally gets going at 9:30. Sadly that's 9:30 ROMANIAN time, which is an hour ahead of HUNGARIAN time. We still have a long way to go.
We finally arrive at Budapest about 11:15, which is a disaster for two of our fellow passengers. They're members of the Romanian National Ski team who are on their way to a training camp in Austria, carrying several pairs of skis and who knows what else in some of the biggest bags we've ever seen. They seem bound to miss their connection, and they will be changing trains again in Vienna. Best of luck guys!
Our hotel is a short walk from the station, and we check in and shower before heading out to explore the town. The hotel provides a map which we use to head for the centre. However none of the street names match those on the map. It turns out that this free map doesn't cover the area around "our" station. A long walk and a bus ride later, we finally make it to an area with restaurants because we need breakfast AND lunch - it's 1pm by now. In search of refreshment, we close our account of the night train in time to do some tourism.
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