Can You Guess Where I Am? Part 4

There's nothing like a refreshing 12 hour train ride to help remind you just how long a day can be. Fun.

Today was our epic journey from Romania to Hungary, via just about every single little town we could pass on the way. Add an hour or more for passport inspection at the border, twice (once by each country). Not getting hassled at the Brasov train station by some gypsy children. This girl of about 10 or so came up to us while Stephanie was buying Hungarian forint at the exchange window, but we just shook our heads and ignored her and headed for our platform. We knew it was going to be a long 20 minute wait for our train when we saw her crossing the tracks and climbing the fences across the tracks to get to us. Sigh. Not knowing any Romanian, we attempted to ward her off with shakes of the head and saying 'nu inteleg' (which means 'I don't understand'), and she finally walked off with the banana peels left over from our breakfast on the platform. Odd. We think she was offering to throw them away for us for spare change. Anyway, she finally left, but her younger brothers (we assume) came round and tried their schtick. Not as clever as their sister, they both gave up after we told them we didn't understand Romanian. Tough situation.

On the upside, we did get our own train compartment for the trip, with 8 seats and just us 3 travelers. I've never seen an actual train compartment (except in Sherlock Holmes shows on PBS) much less been in one. Rustic and 70s-tastic, but comfy. Though we did get a little stir crazy after several hours. Napping, studying, and iPod wars ensued, with me taking gold in all events: I napped the most, studied, and my iPod died first.

Needless to say we arrived in Budapest all in one piece and found our way easily to our hostel (for once!). As we were walking off the train platform, an American woman approached us and asked, "Do you speak English? Oh, yes, Canada!" commenting on the deceptively placed Canadian flag luggage tag on Stephanie's backpack. Before we could even say anything, she handed us three validated metro day tickets and told us they were good until midnight. Welcome to Budapest, indeed. Since our hostel was within walking distance, we took a joyride on the trams just to see if we could find a supermarket that was open. We didn't, but enjoyed the trip and felt like we used the tickets.

From what we've seen in our limited wander around, it looks very nice and I'm excited to be in a more... developed (is that PC to say?) country.

Looking back on Romania, I'm glad we went there first. It would be sort of a shock after seeing Budapest, since the country's so dirty and much less developed. The difference was apparent immediately as soon as we crossed into Hungary -- there wasn't trash strewn all over the place, houses were in proper shape, fields of livestock had fences around them, no horse-drawn wagons... even the bicycles looked nicer and in better shape.

Anyway, my trip here is sadly almost over, as I'm leaving to go back to London on Tuesday. I get the next couple days here (Easter Sunday and Easter Monday, wooo.... better go hang out in the Jewish Quarter...) and then returning to Edinburgh to be able to study enough for my finals. Steph and Clancey are going on to Sarajevo and Croatia, following our original itinerary. I'm glad I came along and would love to see the rest, but I'm not going to lie, I will really appreciate the 9 extra days to study.

As always, pictures to follow. :)

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