Ahhh Bucharest- here is what we did: Nothing. And it was awesome! Thanks to Nicks super awesome travel hacking skills we ended up in the Intercontinental Bucharest- a five star hotel- for free! We even got a room upgrade which meant a giant room and a lovely fruit basket, and because he is a platinum member with them, we got free internet (what is up with fancy hotels charging for internet? If we had not had the upgrade we would had to pay 16 Euros per day for internet! Achaw!).
IC Bucharest
We have been running around, putting tons of miles in each day and looking at so many historic and famous things it was nice to take a break and just relax. My foot has been hurting a lot lately and walking on it all the time has not been doing it any favors. Fortunately in Bucharest we didn’t walk as much and we finally had a bathroom with a tub for soaking my poor, tired foot. We did venture out some, but not nearly as much as we have been in the past. We walked past the palace and found the old part of the city, but that was about it.
After 3 days of luxury we left Bucharest for Bratislava, Slovakia. We took another train-hotel (over night train). Where it had previously been a slightly uncomfortable but generally not unpleasant experience, this time it was awful. Unfortunately, it was also our longest train ride at 16 hours. We were in a 6 bed couchette room on the top two bunks. The bunks below us belonged to two Romanian men. One was a little older, the other was only a little older than us. Here is a time line of our trip:
5:30pm: We left the station. The beds were still in couch form, the bathrooms were clean and fully stocked, the gentlemen who shared our cabin were chatting about ebola just outside the cabin and watching the world go by and for a while the ride was fine. We hd no idea what we were in for.
7pm: The other two gentlemen came back into the cabin, turned the couches into beds, put on their sheets and went to sleep. This meant we were confined to our bunks and trying to be quiet. Fortunately, we were on the top. The top bunk has a bit more headroom and storage space then the other two bunks, I could sit up comfortably, Nick could lean into the storage space and lounge comfortably. While it was weird to have to be quiet that early, we were still fairly comfortable.
7:45pm: They shut the window!! This was a problem. The window being open was not only a good source of noise which meant we could talk a little louder, it was literally the only source of airflow into our cabin. Shutting the window sealed in all the heat and all the smells in our tiny room. The heat was the biggest problem- heat rises and here we were on the top bunk, getting warmer by the minute. To make things worse, Nick came back from the bathroom closest to us an reported that the toilet was broken.
8:00pm: We picked up more passengers in Brasov, our cabin got a couple from the Czech Republic. We opened the window up again, but way up on the top we got very little airflow. It was also fully dark at that point and we were hesitant to turn on the light due to the added heat. It was getting really hot and muggy up top.
10:00pm: I finally put up my book and tried to get some sleep. One of the Romanian dudes shut the window. We opened it. This proved to be a recurring cycle all night long. I tossed and turned for hours, it was just too hot to sleep.
2:00am– Nick got up, opened the window that had been closed at some point, left the cabin and stuck his head out the window of the train for an hour to cool off. On the plus side, he did see a business man sneaking onto a cargo train, so at least it wasn’t all boring. He checked the broken bathroom, the toilet was overflowing and the floor was soaked. (His theory- someone filled up the toilet, so the next person just opened the door and peed on the floor).
Some other time in the night: (3am ish?) we woke up from our light, sweaty sleep to find the Romanian men were both gone. We stripped their beds, moved our sheets down and re-opened the window. Finally, we were both cool enough to sleep!! We slept for a few hours before we got into Hungary and were awakened for passport checks.
8:00 We woke up, discovered that the bathroom nearest us was in even worse shape and the bathroom further away was only a little better. We ate our breakfast of pretzels and tried to make conversation with the Czech couple to no avail.
9:00 We finally made it to Budapest! From Budapest we only have a two and a half hour train ride to Bratislava and we were so happy to finally get off the first train.
Finding our second train was not quite as easy as we had hoped. We were catching the 11:25 train, but at 11:15 the platform where we were to catch our train was still unlisted, we were starting to get nervous. Fortunately, we were able to creep on a conversation that was going on near us between a girl who was traveling on our train and a train station employee. Our train had not pulled in yet, but was about to. When it did, we walked up and down, looking for our car. We didn’t see the car number we were supposed to be in, but we were worried about the time and so just jumped in anywhere. Nick left me with the stuff and went to find someone to show us where we were supposed to sit. A few minutes later he came walking back with a train station employee and we followed him. The reason we could not find our car is that it was not attached yet- after it was attached to the train, the train station employee showed us to our seats. And then he asked for money! He didn’t show us to our seats because it was his job, or to help, he did it for money. Unfortunately for him, we were just about out of cash (we were changing countries and Hungarian florians would do us no good in Slovakia so why would we have a ton of them?). Nick gave him what equated to about $0.50 which was all that he had. The man then pointed to a bottle in his hand and asked if it was alcohol or beer and asked for that! When he saw that it was just iced tea, he shook his head and wandered off. It has been an adventure of a train ride, that is for sure!
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