Day 12) Smiling at strangers on trains

Route: Budapest - Bucharest

Yesterday, I finally found out what railway romance really means. I had heard about it before, but I had never truly experienced it until my journey until yesterday. On the long journey from Budapest to Bucharest, it finally happened.

The carriages were quite old, but the sleeper beds were incredibly comfortable. In my compartment, there was a Romanian mother with her three children who wanted to go to Brasov. The mother spoke a few words of German (Brasov is located in Transylvania, where there is still a large German-speaking minority), and otherwise, we mainly communicated nonverbally. A smile in our compartment truly said more than a thousand words. During the journey, the men stood in the aisle and conversed in Romanian, while others enjoyed the journey with the windows open. It truly felt like a sense of community on the train, something I had not experienced on any other train before. At the border, we were first awakened by Hungarian border guards, followed by Romanian border guards. That was my first experience with border guards. The Romanian border guard told me that my name is Romanian. Something I did not know before, but was confirmed to me several times in Bucharest. Finally, I woke up at 9:00 am (I had not slept so well in a long time) and helped the family unload their luggage. The next four hours (the train was an hour late) the train traveled through Transylvania. The area reminds me of a mix of the Black Forest and the Graubunden Jura; it is incredibly beautiful here. The Euronight train meandered through the narrow valleys at a snail's pace, while the mist-covered mountains of Transylvania passed by. The Glacier Express may claim to be the slowest express train, but this train is certainly the most beautiful. And it challenges the Glacier Express for the title of the slowest express train.

After getting off in Bucharest, I was sure: that was not only the longest, but also the most beautiful journey of my entire trip. Unfortunately, Bucharest itself is not so beautiful...

Bucharest is the sixth largest city in the EU, but tourism has not developed here yet. There is a small old town, but you can see it quickly. Since hardly any tourists are around, there are people everywhere who want to take your money. The only special thing about this city is the architecture of Ceausescu, the megalomaniac dictator who was executed in 1989. In Bucharest, you can find the second largest parliament in the world (only 100 rooms out of 5000 are used), and a kilometer-long street lined with fountains leads from the center to the parliament, while a six-lane road surrounds the parliament itself. Unfortunately, the large Arc de Triomphe is located at the other end of the city and I will not visit it. After 2 hours, I had already seen enough of the old town and walked back to the hostel.

There, I talked with a Brazilian couple, an Australian backpacker, and an elderly black Englishman about European politics and, after plenty of alcohol had been consumed, about love.

In the evening, I had one of the strangest experiences of my trip so far. I was in the basement of the hostel at 9:00 pm to watch the football match, but I forgot about the time difference, so I was an hour early. And there was a fat Romanian man dancing without a shirt, watching Bulgarian music shows, and forcing me to dance with him and kiss in a brotherhood manner. Without any knowledge of English, he tried to explain to me that smoking makes you strong and that we will remain good friends forever...

During the football match, I met two interesting personalities with whom I can absolutely identify. One is a Frenchman who traveled by train from Paris to Bucharest to see a concert of his favorite band in Transylvania. The other is a 49-year-old Irishman who wants to travel by bus from London to Armenia because he has 'never been there'. I want to be like that when I'm 49.

Tomorrow, I will continue my journey to Bulgaria, and I am glad that I can leave Bucharest behind. I just couldn't make friends with this monster.