Overnight train from Bucharest to Budapest

Our last day in Bucharest.  We found out it is a Public Holiday, Virgin Mary Day.  Most of the shops are closed.   We walked into the old town and it was almost empty.  Great for wandering around and taking photos.

The hotel ordered a taxi for us.  There are some rogue taxis out there so they recommend you get the hotel to organise.  Our driver took us to the station and he said the cost was 5 ROM which is barely a couple of dollars so we paid him double that and he was very happy.

The train station was crowded with people.  It was hot and smelly from cigarettes and body odour.  There are no seats so we went to McDonalds who had an outdoor seating area and we had a bag of hot chips and some cokes while we waited for the train.  This turned out to be a good idea as there was no food available on the train.

As soon as the train pulled in we went aboard and found our 2^nd class cabin.  Small but neat and clean.  The conductor gave us a bottle of water and some pretzels.

Our beds were already made up and we sat on the lower bunk, it was only 5.30pm so too early to go to bed.  The train departed on time and we sat and looked out the window as the train followed the route next to the road we had taken when we went to Transylvania.

The train rattled and rocked and shuddered along the rails.  Eventually it became dark and we decided to go to sleep.  Colin attempted to get in the top bunk.  The problem was the bunk was very high and there was very little space between the bunk and the ceiling.  He tried several times and at one stage thought he would sleep on the floor.  This lasted all of a minute.  Too hard, too noisy and smelly.  So he tried again and eventually he was able to squeeze himself into the bed.

I climbed into my bunk and went to sleep.  We were woken during the night twice.  First time was the Romanian border into Hungary.  The border control banged on the door and I opened it and they asked for our passports which I handed to them and they began the laborious task of writing the information out by hand.  Colin stuck his head over the rail of his bunk and they seemed happy with that.

I settled back into my bunk and about two hours later there was another knock on the door.  This time the Hungarian border control wanted to see our passports.  It is was a young girl and she had a machine that read our passports so that was much quicker.

We went back to sleep and slept until our train rolled into Budapest.  It was a bit late but that was not a problem for us as we had quite a while to wait for our train to Vienna.