The Great Train Trip

For the next leg of our journey we took advantage of our EURail pass and took a series of overnight trains through Eastern Europe. Our end goal was eventually to get to Greece and we thought that this would be an easy way to see a little of Eastern Europe and not have to pay for accommodations at night since we would be traveling via train.



Our initial thought was that we would sleep on the trains and then arrive in the next city rested and ready to spend the days exploring.  This proved to be a little bit more challenging than we had planned for.

Our itinerary included stops in Budapest in Hungry, Bucharest in Romania, and Sofia in Bulgaria.

Had to make a stop at the Bank-O-Matt for funds for the trip…I need one of these at home! (Oh…wait…I have one!)

After a long day of sightseeing in Prague and in order to avoid the growing cold and rain we headed off to the train station to kill time until our train arrived. Unfortunately, our train didn’t leave until midnight. So, we got a coffee and a muffin to help keep us awake for the long wait. In order to pass the time we entertained ourselves by watching the excitement that was “Floor Buffer.”



Watch “Floor Buffer” in action!

Note the people sleeping on the floor…this should have been us at this point. It must have been very late, I must have been extremely bored or just really jacked on coffee because Floor Buffer was super exciting at the time!

Budapest
The train from Prague to Budapest wasn’t so bad. We had places in a 2nd class Couchette (which was one of the little cubbies with the sliding door but instead of bench seats it has 3 bunks on each side with a ladder that can be placed in the middle). You are given a pillow and a sheet which proved to be plenty as our car was pretty warm - not nearly as sweltering as the last one but still rather warm. We shared our car with an Asian guy and a sweet and patient old lady who had obviously done this a few times before and who showed us everything we needed to know. It wasn’t the Hilton of train accommodations, but a place to lay down nonetheless and get a decent night sleep.



We arrived safe and sound in Budapest at around 10 am with enough rest to explore some of the city sites.

Enjoying the ambiance of the Budapest Train Station.

We ended up doing some shopping, walking along the river, and seeing the Market Square.

Inside the Market Square building.

Some of the fun food stalls inside the Market Square. The cookies were so happy!

Waiting for our train at the Budapest Train Station.

After a full day of walking through Budapest we headed off to the train station to rest our feet and wait again for our midnight departure. Unlike Prague we didn’t have the enthralling entertainment that was “Floor Buffer” but we did run into a nice lady from San Francisco named Bobbie who ended up being all the entertainment we needed for the evening. We got to talking and found out that she was finishing out her week vacation by catching a 10 pm overnight train and heading off to Krakow. We talked for a while learned a little about her Jewish heritage and what it meant for her to pilgrimage to Auschwitz.

It got to be close to the time she was supposed to leave and she was having difficulty reading the departures board so Matt stepped in to help. Everything seemed fine until Matt realized her train wasn’t on the board and the time on her ticket didn’t read 10 pm but 20:00. She had misread the 24 hour time and her train departure was actually at 8 pm. The real teeth-grinding part of the whole thing was that she had been waiting in the train station for the last 3 hours. So, she was there and watched her train leave without her. We tried to talk her down and help her figure out plan B. So, we directed her to the nearest ticket office and watched her things as she ran off with hopes of catching something else. Options are pretty limited that late so we weren’t too optimistic (of course we didn’t let her know that).

She ended up having to purchase a whole new ticket for the train leaving at 5 am the following morning. The train trip would take most of the day and included 3 train transfers when her overnight would have been direct, making her lose a whole day of her already planned out vacation. She seemed OK with it and was just going to wait it out in the station all night. We again had to break the bad news to her that the station would be closed from 12-3 am. Needless to say we had to talk her down again. We advised her that it might be best if she found a room seeing that the streets of Budapest at night seemed a touch seedy. We even told her that there was a Best Western that we had seen earlier that was not that far away. We tried to assure her that she’d be OK. She thanked us in the calmest tone she could muster and headed off. We are not sure what became of her but hopefully she made it alright.

In the end she not only had to pay double for her ticket and for a hotel room but she lost a whole day of her already short 10 day vacation. Lesson learned: make sure to check and double check the 24 hour time on your train ticket! One small misread may cost you more than you really want to spend.

After the debacle with Bobbie we were on high alert for our own train. It did arrive on time and we made sure to get on board as soon as we could. Being that this train was going to be the longest of the legs, we opted to pay a little extra to be bumped up to the 1st class accommodations. Mind you…the upgrade was only about 4 Euros per person so it really was a no-brainer. We got our own private little cabin where the seats folded down. It was warm, quiet, and private…we couldn’t have asked for more! The best part was that with first class breakfast is included. I say breakfast with a very loose definition of the word. The conductor handed Matt two packages of pretzels and some water, shrugged his shoulders, and said, “breakfast…???” like, “I know this really sucks but it’s what you get so eat it or not.” We happily took our pretzel breakfast, made out beds and headed off to sleep.

All was fine and dandy until about 2 am when the customs folks came pounding on the door. Customs really isn’t something I’m usually uncomfortable about but when they wake you up from a dead sleep and demand your passport, that you have to half-awake quickly try to dig out of your money belt that you are semi-sleeping on, you get a little nervous. Then they stand there tapping their foot impatiently and looking at you with their stern, “I’m in a hurry and not going to wait for your slow American butt” Eastern European face. It makes you think that if you look at them wrong or even if they just wanted to they could deport you right then and there. It really doesn’t help when they take your passport, turn around and walk away with it. At that moment, all I’m thinking is, “oh my God, oh my God….Can he do that?” And when you are in the middle of nowhere on the border between Hungry and Romania the answer to that is “yes,” they can do whatever they want!  After about five or so minutes of freaking out he eventually did bring it back, stamp it and forcefully hand it back to me. Then once you’ve almost got back to sleep, about 30 min later, they come back and do it again. Because, of course, the first time is leaving one country and the second time is entering the next. So you might as well have just stayed awake. Needless to say it took a while to get back to sleep after that but in the end we did make it to Romania in the morning!

 
We weren’t scheduled to arrive in Bucharest until around 5pm the next day, so we spent the day on the train relaxing and watching the beautiful Romanian scenery pass by. It may sound like a dull day but it was actually quite enjoyable. With so many days of hop-on hop-off train travel it was nice to just sit back and enjoy the ride. 


Inside our cute little room.





Bucharest
We arrived late in Bucharest and it was already starting to get dark so we didn’t really have the chance to explore the city as we had hoped to. At this point in our trip I was hit with my first real slap of culture shock. It had been a long stretch of constant travel, odd or infrequent meals, and no showers. So, I was a little tired and a bit emotionally drained at this point.
There are many things that I’ve missed from home throughout this trip so far, and I know it seems silly, but one of the things I miss most is my dog. It’s funny to me because I always thought those people who talked about their pets like people or children when they were traveling were crazy. I’ve had pets all my life and never really missed them when I went off to college or traveled before. I guess maybe it changes a bit when it’s your pet instead of the family pet. Plus with all the travel Matt was doing over the last year and being isolated in New Mexico, Ellie kind of became my back-up. She was who I turned to when I got tired or drained. So, at that moment I was suffering a little bit from snuggle withdrawals and wishing for her to be close.

We walked outside the Bucharest train station to see if there was anything close by for dinner options and saw a dog sitting on the steps eating some bread. He looked perfectly happy not really bothering anyone. He was just laying there with his bread between his paws watching the people pass. I even mentioned to Matt how happy he looked nomming on his bread. Now to preface this there have been lots of dogs everywhere in Europe. People take them on the trains, they bring them into restaurants, they walk them through town without leashes, and even the stray ones seem to be kind of taken care of by the community. Most often they tend to belong to someone one way or another. I just assumed the dog belonged to the kind of shabby street lady that was sitting next to the door behind us.

So, it seemed kind of odd when she kicked his bread away from him and shooed him away. The dog came toward us as and hid behind us using us as kind of a shelter. I even looked down at him and said, “sorry buddy but I don’t have anything for you.” He continued to linger and then out of nowhere she comes up and kicks him really hard to the point where he let out an ear piercing cry. Now I’m one of those people that has a zero tolerance for animal neglect and abuse (it still bothers me just thinking and writhing about it now). No animal, no person for that matter, deserves to be kicked like that. So I broke. At that moment there wasn’t anything I could do for him and no one else around the area even seemed to notice. I understand that different cultures approach animals differently but at that moment I really didn’t want to have anything to do with Bucharest.

I read somewhere before we started traveling that when you travel for this long it is inevitable to feel sad and that the best thing to do is to just let yourself feel the sadness. in the end it puts the good things and what you love most about home into perspective and helps you to appreciate it more when you return. So, I did just that and embraced the sadness and let myself cry. Matt would say I went a bit overboard and it took me a while to settle down but it was what I needed to do mentally at the time. In the end it wasn’t the best place or the best evening and all we saw of Bucharest was the train station but we did make our 10 pm train to Sofia. At that point all I wanted to do was leave that place hoping for a better beginning in the next.

I was a little nervous for this leg of the journey as we were unable to book a sleeping car, so we didn’t know what kind of seat we were going to have to suffer through this time around. It could have been worse. We found out  we were in a room that could have seated 8 on 2 benches facing each other. Luckily it was just us and another couple so Matt and I had a whole bench to ourselves to snuggle up together and stretch out as much as we could. This would have been great if they just would have let us sleep. We were woken up by the scary passport people twice and then by the ticket agents three times. Why there was this need to verify our paperwork every hour I’m still not so sure of, but it didn’t make for the best night sleep. It did prove to be quite amusing at times though.

My favorite moment was when we handed the Bulgarian ticket agent our EURail pass. It came to our attention at that moment that it might not be very common for those with a EURail pass to choose this route as he didn’t seem to know what to do with it. He looked at it for a bit, flipped through the pages, turned it over and then called his coworker over. She did the same. They even both stood there and looked at the little map on the back page with the colored in areas of the countries that are included. They pointed and talked and did this for about 10 minutes. Finally, they both must have come to the conclusion that they would accept it but then the problem arose of how to mark it. Even though we couldn’t understand what they were saying you could tell that the guy was like, “well, now what do I do with this? I’m supposed to mark it. I have to mark it.” The lady looked at him and just shrugged. So in the end he just flipped it over, scribbled something on the back and shoved it back at us. They were both a little confused. Hopefully we made it a little easier for the next crazy Americans with a EURail pass that decide to go off the grid and travel to Bulgaria.

Once we reached the border between Romania and Bulgaria, the other couple in our room left so we both had our own bench all to ourselves (it’s amazing how your standards for accommodations lower when you travel). This would have been great but unlike the sauna train, this train was freezing! I think Matt and I both layered on as many clothes as we could and it was still cold. It would have been better just to stay snuggled up together but there was no room. It was a long and restless night in the icebox train but we did finally arrive in Sofia.

Sofia
Sofia was a bit of a resting stop. Since there are no international trains to Greece we had to schedule a bus for the following day. The best part of this arrangement meant that we got to sleep in a real bed and take a nice hot and much anticipated shower. To our surprise the people we met in Sofia were welcoming, friendly, and some of the kindest that we’ve run into in Europe so far. Our hostel host even took the time to make sure we knew where all the sites were and told us all about the history of Sofia. He was so proud of his city and you could tell he was excited to share it. He made sure we knew how to work the shower, showed us how to use the keys and even showed us how to work the mini blinds (mind you these were just like any standard mini blinds with the rotating plastic handle you have everywhere…but it was still nice of him to show us). The next morning, he even went out of his way and drove us to the bus station to make sure we didn’t miss our bus. Of all the places on this train adventure I wish we could have explored more, or would go back to, it would be Sofia!

Trying out the local Bulgarian cuisine at the King Potato!

Despite the name and goofy mascot it was actually quite delicious! We had a great meal with the help and suggestions of our kind and patient waitress!

The next day we boarded our bus for our five hour ride to Thessaloniki, Greece. I was fully prepped for the school bus style bench seats, diesel exhaust, and wafting odorous bathroom but this bus was above and beyond what I could have ever imaged for a 35 euro bus ticket. The seats were comfortable and each one had it’s own private television with a selection of movies and music. We even got breakfast and lunch. There was an in-route attendant that would bring you drinks and such on a little cart throughout the trip. I’m not going to lie, this bus had better service than all US domestic flights. He even came by and personally made sure we were alright and knew what was happening when we went through passport control and that we didn’t have any questions.

He just kept bringing things on the cart. It got to the point where we would both look at each other and wonder what he was bringing next. The best part was that before we even left Sofia he brought Matt a cup of water without him even asking. Matt must have looked thirsty or something because no one else on the bus was given water. We were a little confused but Matt happily accepted his “gift water.” If you are going to travel by bus do it from Bulgaria to Greece!

Greece
We arrived in Thessaloniki late afternoon and spent the rest of the evening exploring the boardwalk and the sea. Oddly, it took forever for us to find a place to eat dinner. All we could find were cocktail-type bars serving coffee drinks. We found out later that in Greece dinner doesn’t really start until about 7. We did eventfully find a spot where we had gyros and, of course, a little ouzo! We even finished off the walk back to our hotel with a tasty bite of baklava from a corner bakery.

Some of the views from our walk along the boardwalk in Thessaloniki

The next day we boarded a quite colorful train for a five hour ride to Athens. The scenery on this trip was absolutely beautiful! We got to ride along the coast, saw fields full of cotton, and even went past Mount Olympus. We were even surprised to find out that we were given a complementary lunch. Mind you it was kind of like an airline meal but it was welcomed seeing that we were prepared for pretzels.

Our colorful train to Athens!

All in all, the train travel was a different and interesting experience but not one that I’d choose to repeat. We are both looking forward to the exciting things that await us in Athens!