Yesterday was Day 16, and to be honest, it was an itinerary failure...

What is more, we should have known it would be. When we did 12 straight hours of train travel, back in 2020 (Irun to Vigo), we decided it was an experience that was best not repeated. And yet here we were, facing a journey of 13 hours.

And sure enough, by the end of it we were mighty tired...

So, if we were doing this journey again (and I definitely would do it again), we would either take the night train, and accept that we would miss out on miles and miles of Carpathian scenery, or we would find somewhere -- anywhere -- to break the journey for a night.



There was much that went just fine:

-- There's a 24-hour supermarket close to Brasov railway station (and to our accommodation), so we were able to come up with a much healthier picnic than had been possible for our long journeys up to now.

-- Contrary to what happened when we travelled from Sofia to Ruse, the coach that had our reserved seats in it actually did exist...

-- Much of the journey was splendidly scenic. You're never long without mountains, and the massif that lies to the left of you for hours and hours is snow-topped and awe-inspiring.

-- There was no trouble at all crossing the border. Your last station on the Romanian side is Curtici, and the Romanian passport official was happy to have a New Zealand passport to show his rooky colleague (his expression). Your first station on the Hungarian side (where you also put your clock back an hour) is Lokoshaza. As we're now in the Schengen area, this should be the last frontier check for a while.





But there were also some major inconveniences:

-- We had to share our six-seat compartment with four other people. Why, I don't know, as for most of the journey there were masses of other compartments that were absolutely empty. But of course, once you've hoisted your luggage onto the rack, and settled in, you're loath to leave the seat you know you're entitled to, in order to camp out in a pozzy from which you may find yourself being evicted further along the route.

-- Our four compartment-sharers were four young men. They weren't doing anything gross or really terrible. But there was a very definite generational difference. They talked loudly to each other; they talked REALLY loudly on their telephones; at one point three of them were listening simultaneously to different things on their phones (without earphones, of course). I shoved my noise-cancelling ear buds in for a lot of the journey -- and I could still hear them. Plus, they sprawled. Somehow, four young men made the compartment feel claustrophobic in a way that four older people wouldn't have done... I think they found us as uncongenial as we found them. Occasionally -- blissfully -- two or all of them would disappear into another of the empty compartments for a while. I took myself off at one point, too, when I just couldn't bear them any longer. A big failure, I know... I can imagine Joe Travel Writer striking up a conversation, despite the lack of common language, and sharing lunch provisions, and generally exuding bonhomie. We didn't. We just bore it as best we could. Another nail in the coffin of inter-generational harmony.

-- The lovely scenery remained largely unphotographable. The windows on our side were mucky, and the left-hand side of the train, which might have offered better opportunities, was accessible only after negotiating four pairs of splayed legs, so you wanted to save that experience for when you really needed to get out -- to go to the toilet, for example.




-- The journey was SUPER-slow... Like, extraordinarily slow... At points, we were barely crawling along. Apparently, this is all to do with the upgrading that is under way, with financing from the European Union. Along the way, you could see identical stations being constructed, and the current -- perhaps dilapidated but quite characterful -- stations being shunted into the wings in various ways.


All things come to an end, and finally -- finally -- we were pulling into Budapest Keleti station. Bang on time, actually. All that crawling had been factored very accurately into the timetable.

From there it was a quick trot to our accommodation. Which is interesting...










We weren't up for any exploration of the locality yesterday. Just a quick shop, and home. But this morning we went back to the really awesome railway station to take some photos:






Unlike Sofia and Bucharest, whose railway station environs definitely don't show the best of the city, Budapest's are pretty impressive:





All very interesting. Looking forward to exploring.