The Train ride from Budapest, Hungary to Cluj, Romania

Well, it has been a little while and there has not been much posting on this blog so I thought I would tell you all a story. Some of our fans out there may be sitting comfortably at home wondering to themselves, "I wonder what traveling (as in physically moving around on planes, trains, and automobiles) in Eastern Europe must be like?" The following is my most recent train experience (copied and pasted from my journal)...

August 16, 2006 – Kotegyan Station, Hungary
I have a bit of time to kill so let me tell you my story of traveling today. The morning started off fine enough; I had successfully stayed up all night partying away at Sziget, the weeklong music festival in Budapest. We got back to our hostel and saw the Finish guys from our hostel the night before. With them was an Irish girl who I chatted with two nights prior and two Welch kids. A guy and a girl who I am assuming were together because they ended up making out later when we were on a bridge. We saw the sun rise and talked on the bridge which was a lot of fun, I started walking back to the hostel, continuing to talk with the Irish girl who was quite a character and fun to talk with. I was going to go through my plan; instead of paying for another night of accommodation I would ride the train all day to Romania and sleep on the train. The Irish girl was a bit of a planning freak so she thought the plan was just absolutely crazy. Throwing caution to the wind I got on the metro and rode to the train station. I should have caught a bus. I think going on a train in Eastern Europe is like paddling a boat across the Mediterranean, it will be complicated, no one knows how it is done, and you only have a slight chance of getting to the place you were trying to go.

The entire train station was filled with angry people who were screwed in one way or another by Hungarian trains. I should have just left then and headed to the bus station. When I got there I talked with three different offices until I finally found the International train office. The line was just two people, me and a Spanish guy in front of me. It took the desk clerk around 25 minutes to help this man, just to ended up saying that he could not bring his bicycle into the Slovak Republic. My time with her wasn’t much better. It ended up costing me 11,000 HUN (around $55 USD) and another half hour of my time. Plus, I think I got a round trip ticket. Before I left the office, the line was out the door. This was the second moment I told myself, just cancel the ticket and go find a bus. I turn the corner into the actual terminal just to see that my train for 8:20 is twenty minutes late. My ticket was a bit complicated since I had to make two transfers. My first transfer had a 12-minute difference between the two trains. Hoping that the train would make up the difference en route (and because I didn’t want, or have time to go through the line again) I boarded the train and hoped I would make my connection.

I boarded the train, set my alarm and went to bed, ahhh peace at last! When I woke up I looked out the window at a beautiful countryside and thought for the first time that this trip was actually worth all the effort. I asked some people on the train what the next stop was, they pointed to a stop name that was at least 5 or 6 stops before my transfer. Either we had a time change and my clock was an hour off, or somehow we slowed down more and were now running an hour behind schedule. I decided to relax, sit down and enjoy the rest of the scenery.

The rest of the stops went like clock-work (only an hour behind what was written on my sheet.) 11:24 Gyoma, 11:45 Mezobereny, 11:45 Murony. Perfect, the next stop was my transfer, Bekescsaba. My clock must be just an hour off; I was going to make my transfer. Except when I got to the station not a soul spoke English, despite the fact there were over 30 people there, and I had to have talked to most of them. The first person just said, “No” when I showed him my sheet, the next conductor just studied it for a while and muttered something in Hungarian and then pointed to a far off tree, who knows what he was trying to say. The lady at the information desk looked at it, and pretty much just started helping the next person in line. So I decided to approach a kid about my age, waiting for a train, hoping that the educated youth of Hungary would have a better grasp of foreign language skills. I went through the list, “Excuse me sir, do you speak English? Espanol? Français? Deutch?” I didn’t bother trying to add Chinese to the list (the next language I am trying to half-speak). In fact, listing German as a language I speak was a bit of a stretch but lo and behold he spoke perfect German, so, still half asleep, I figure I was better off trying to mutter what I wanted in broken German than my typical mode of communication, flailing my arms about and pointing at sheets of paper. It worked, although he didn’t look that excited to help me out at all and kept inquiring if I had any cigarettes, probably in exchange for his help.

I once again walked to the information booth again, with my new Hungarian translator in tow, and found the next train to Oradea, where I was to connect to another train to get to Cluj Napoca, Romania. I thanked my new friend and walked away when I realized that this train arrived too late to make my next connection. So reverting back to flailing arm, pointing Ryan I talked with one more person and found a train to a town bordering Romania. Having already converted all my Hungarian Forint into Romanian Lei I decided if I was going to be stranded somewhere it might as well be Romania. I made it onto the right train, talk with a couple sitting in the booth next to me to make sure it was the right train (it was) and fell back asleep, perfect! They politely woke me up and pointed out we were at my stop (Kotegyan), it seems I forgot to set my alarm again, but I hopped off the train in half a daze, just to see a small white building in front of me and the train taking off behind me.


The people in the building walked outside looking at me like I was an elephant walking through New York City, I, with my big, black, American backpack couldn’t have felt more out of place either. None of the three people working at the station spoke English but unlike the last station they were very kind. I showed one lady my printed itinerary and started saying, “Cluj?” while shrugging my shoulders, and she ran inside, reemerging moments later with a stack of books, which eventually held the answers I was looking for. I have to wait at this station for another 4 hours before my next train arrives but thanks to this ladies patience and kindness she found me a train, which will arrive in Cluj only an hour and a half after my original train was suppose to arrive. Now, I haven’t arrived in Cluj, or Romania yet, but I am sitting here in this beautiful small station, with a plan and a schedule to hopefully get me there safely. Sometimes Eastern Europe is a freaking wild frontier!

August 17, 2006 – Cluj Napoca, Romania (Retro Youth Hostel)
I finally arrived! But first, the rest of my story… My next train came, but it was 30 minutes early, and one of the non-English attendants that I was talking to pointed it out. One train would only come to this station about every 30 minutes so it was good she told me, because I expected to arrive later, and it still left 20 minutes before it was suppose to? The rest of my trains were like that (in total I had to change trains 5 times). Some were on time, some left late, and some even left early! Needless to say, it appeared that no two timetables were the same, and of the two, neither would be correct! You only hope is to try to make friends around you and eventually someone will shake you and point to a train.

At Salonta, the first stop in Romania, I met a man on the train who spoke French and helped me with the passport check when customs kept asking me questions I couldn’t understand. Afterwards, he got off with me, helped me figure out my connection and offered to get a beer with me at a bar down the street. The hardest part of traveling is to know when to trust someone. Almost everyone (outside of cities) is very polite and extremely kind, most of them are legitimately being nice, some of them try to screw you somehow or demand money (or cigarettes) afterwards, and a small minority will even try to rob you. I was almost positive this guy was just a genuinely nice guy, interested why an American was traveling to Romania (it feels like I am the only one), but I decided to decline on his offer, thinking to myself I look like a huge target, and I have already taken enough chances on all the trains I have taken. I didn’t want to push my luck.

My train arrived at 11:30pm, way past when I thought it would arrive (there was indeed a time change once you enter Romania), and I was faced with a challenge of either sleeping at the train station (it was a dodgy, small looking station), stay at the over priced (85 RON, 31 USD) one star hotel across the street, or find the hostel I was planning on staying at, which involved walking through the city in the middle of the night. Plus I only had 6 Leu on me, 3 of which I direly spent on a bottle of water at the train station, so I didn’t have money for a taxi. I asked some people drinking at a bar down the street and they looked at me like I was crazy to walk to the center with all my stuff in the middle of the night. That was enough for me to know I wasn’t going to sleep in the station and I wasn’t going to chase after some hostel I didn’t know, (near Catedrala Szent Mihail?) without a map or any knowledge of this country. I had to bite the bullet and pay the extra dough to stay at the hotel.

It was the best night of sleep I have had in a long time, room to myself so it was dark, and quite. Ahhhh after 2 months of hostels even a one star hotel seems like luxury! It was a good thing I stayed, too! It took me about two hours to find the hostel today (I was taking the scenic route and trying to learn Romanian on the way) and when I arrived she told me they were full last night. All the other places around here were at least double what I paid at my one-star hotel. The city is nice, and I am planning on heading to the Maramures (most traditional part of Romania, northwest of Transylvania), in a few days, on an organized tour with the hostel. I am hoping to get some amazing footage, which means – hopefully another video coming soon! So everything worked out, 24 hours later, with a little adventure and a little hatred for the Hungarian rail system. And I am a millionaire! (1.000.000 old Romanian Lei = 100 new Romanian Lei) So far, I have traveled through 14 countries, 5 currencies and have just arrived in my second non-EU country. What adventures still lie ahead …?