Day 18
By Train from Budapest to Bucharest
Friday, September 6, 2024
Jó reggelt kívánok,
We woke this morning with a long day of travel ahead of us. Today we were taking a train from Budapest Bucharest. Or București as it is known in Romanian. So we would also be crossing the border from Hungary into Romania.
Actually, it was two train rides. The first was from Budapest to the town of Arad, just over the border in Romania. Then we would have a short wait in Arad, before boarding the overnight train to București.
The Train From Budapest to Arad
We found the easiest way to book this journey was via the Romanian railways website, https://bileteinternationale.cfrcalatori.ro/en. This website was very easy to use and the website had a great English translation version. We were able to book the complete journey though this website.
The first train ride was uneventful. Budapest has three train stations, and we boarded at Keleti station, conveniently located a short Metro ride from our apartment.
Once we were on our train, Buzzy Bee settled in for the ride. It was a bit slow, we stopped at a lot of stations, some of which looked very run down. This journey was scheduled to take four hours. As with our journey from Ljubljana to Budapest, there was no dining car on the train, and there was no time at any of the stations to disembark from the train and go looking. Luckily Grandma had packed sandwiches and plenty of water for this part of the journey.
All of the trains we’ve used so far have advertised free WiFi onboard. We have yet to find any WiFi service onboard, free or otherwise. We both have Holafly eSIMs in our iPhones on this adventure. This gives us unlimited data throughout Europe. But we found that in Hungary as soon as you left the train station the best you can hope for is a 3G connection, if anything at all. So you spend most of the journey with no service, then a brief flicker of 4G or maybe LTE as you approach a station in a town, then travel back in time to the early 2000’s as you leave town again, forced to either read a book or hold a conversation.
As we approached the Romanian border we stopped at Lőkösháza in Hungary. Hungarian border patrol officers boarded the train and checked our passports. The lady that checked our passports was a very serious person, with a very serious looking pistol at her hip.
As soon as we crossed the border into Romania, Holafly suddenly started to serve up 5G data. This service was pretty much maintained for the rest of our journey. And the train really started to move. It wasn’t French high speed rail fast, but quicker than it had been in Hungary.
We also had to move the time on our iPhones forward one hour, as Romania is in Eastern European Summer Time.
The Train From Arad to Bucharest
We arrived at Arad station, just over the border from Hungary, at about 4:30pm local time. Here we had a wait of about ninety minutes for our next train, the overnight service to București. Just enough time to find some food for a quick dinner.
Despite being a reasonable sized station, Arad railway station had no food outlets. All we could see were some vending machines selling chocolate bars and chippies.
A quick look at Google Maps suggested we might have some joy in a collection of take-away type places across the road from the station.
Sure enough, Koro found a bakery, and Grandma found a kebab shop.
Arad was a bit of an eye opener. Railway stations are not usually located in the most desirable parts of town. But even so, the area around Arad station was run down and dirty.
Koro sat on a bench outside the bakery while Grandma was waiting for her kebab. While Koro was sitting there he had two people stop and ask/beg for some of his food. One was a young lady huffing something out of a plastic bag. Surprisingly the other was a lady with a young child.
We did not get good vibes from Arad.
From Arad we had a two bunk sleeper booked for the overnight journey to București. We thought we’d try sleeping through the night on the train. The Romanian railway carriages all looked very smart and modern and modern compared to those used by the Hungarian railways. The seats were plush and comfortable looking, the carriages filled with lovely cool, air-conditioned air. We had paid a little extra for a sleeping carriage, so were expecting comfortable beds and air-conditioning.
Alas, the sleeping carriage appeared to be a relic from the 70’s. The bunks had rubber mattresses and sad little pillows. Without air conditioning we had to keep the window open to save ourselves from suffocating. As our carriage was directly behind the engine, that meant lots of noise through the night and the occasional whiff of diesel fumes.
And after midnight, why in the hell does the driver have to blow the horn every 30 seconds?! That’s not an exaggeration, Koro is typing this paragraph at 1:30am while trying to bloody sleep on this train! It is hot and noisy, the mattress makes you sweat, and that damn horn won’t stop. There is goes again!
As for the toilets, they are best not mentioned. See for yourself in the picture. Note the bolts holding the seat down. Koro just feels sorry for Grandma - for males, going to the bathroom is easier. And yes, as the train moved about, you could hear the contents of the tank under the toilet bowl sloshing about.
In hindsight we would have been better off just in a normal carriage, which we know are quiet and smooth and we have certainly had no trouble sleeping in them - it would be like sleeping on a plane, but quieter. Part of the joy of travelling is finding these things out. Years from now we will still be laughing about the ladder Grandma had to climb to get into the top bunk.
It is now a sometime around 3:00am and we have both just visited the bathroom (with our shoes on!). Now, we think, we may get some sleep.
Stop blowing that bloody whistle!
Love to you all from Grandma & Koro & Buzzy Bee.
