We got up early and took a taxi – how extravagant – to the station, although we could’ve taken a tram, except that there was nowhere we could buy tickets – and we didn’t fancy finding out if you can buy tickets on the tram or not.
Anyway. I was particularly excited because there was an ÖBB first class carriage for us to sit in this time; I was concerned we’d chomp through a day of our travel pass for a second-class carriage, but this was not the case. As I knew the seat numbers I wanted when we booked the ticket at the station in Oradea, we were in a Business compartment with only four seats, although a slightly sombre probably-teutonic gentleman who had (presumably) booked the window seat somehow managed to occupy it while my back was turned. He broke a smile when I discovered – by accident – that the reats reclined flat. Revenge schadenfreude was served when his seat wouldn’t, because the window seat bin stopped it from sliding forwards further than the table.
We spent our last few moments in Cluj stocking up on coffee, croissants, and focaccia at the station; there are not many good things to say about about the place, but the station has two bakeries and a supermarket, and you can get a decent coffee – and whiled away the hours watching the world go by, much as we did on Tuesday.
To be fair, we’re probably doing Cluj a little bit of a disservice because, while it didn’t thrill us, particularly, it did give us the opportunity to take the train over the mountains, twice. That was thrilling, and for that, we were grateful to have been to Cluj.
The 07:35 IR 144 Transilvania to Vienna left on time. One thing I noticed about this train – and this is true of some of the others too – is that the compartment carriages have handrails along the corridor, so you can stand and watch the world go by at all its 65kph glory. It’s such a novelty – what with trains I’m used to all being open saloon-type carriages – that I had to take a photograph, just in case. The handrails are probably acutally there to help people stay upright when they’re walking down the train at hight speed, but large sections of the line are so straight and so slow there’s no really danger of that.
The windiest part of the journey is the section of track between Cluj-Napoca and Oradea, where our ascent into the misty early-morning Oriental Carpathians made the handrail worth every penny/centime/ban. Of course, it was the same route as Tuesday but the morning light somehow made the landscape outside the window even more glorious still even when some of the landscape hit the window. This is possibly another reason the train doesn’t exceed a modest speed; branches hit our window a couple of times, but the man in the seat we wanted didn’t flinch.
I took time to study the timetable on the Interrail rail planner app as we journeyed westward, and discovered that there are a few scheduled long stops along our route where companion could alight for a crafty cigarette and I could get some riveting prictures of exciting things like trains while things happened.
At Episcopia Bihor, the last stop in Romania, and Biharkerezstes, the first stop in Hungary, we had 30-minute stops for passport controls and a locomotive change, then at Püspökladány, where the locomotive was changed again, there was another long stop. These stops gave us time to observe people dragging their luggage and/or children across the tracks to the train, rather than using the platforms.
In Biharkerezstes, a slightly stern older woman with no neck dragged her shopping trolley across the platform and boarded, then joined us in our compartment – announcing something none of us understood, taking our silence as compliance. Once she’d abandoned her trolley bag in the middle of the compartment rather than putting it into a luggage rack, she spent the rest of the journey either sleeping or eating sunflower seeds that she didn’t drop on herself.
The closer we got to Budapest, the less interesting the view became, so I finished my Bill Bryson. In Szolnok, I got the opportunity to take a picture of the vast network of rails in the station that must dispatch trains in all sort of directions, though a lot of them looked as if they’d just been parked and abandoned.
We arrived in Budapest-Keleti on time. I think it is a magnificent station, atlhought if you look too closely you realise bits of it are a little shabby. In the first class lounge, a nice woman missold us back-dated 72-hour travel passes, then we made it to the Airbnb on the bus – easiest public transport arrival yet, I think – where we decamped before a tram (2) ride along the Danube and a wander around.
With little energy to not be tourists, we had a burger in the Black Cab Burger place opposite the Airbnb. It was probably the nicest burger I’ve had in a long time, but possibly not the most authentic Hungarian cuisine to start our stay. Hey ho.
Looks like you are having fun.