I could not understand much of the departures board. It’s a sign I’m getting to the margins of the part of Europe that I know. I could however read the word “Bucharesti”, and headed for platform 7 about half an hour before departure.

From what I can see it’s an all Romanian train, and I’m in the only sleeper carriage, number 422. There is also a couchette carriage next door, and beyond that a restaurant carriage. That’s a good sign, and it’s staying with us for the whole journey. Up front there are several more seated carriages. This is a much longer trip than the “Kalman Imre”, leaving Budapest at 19.05 and arriving at noon the next day in Bucharest. Once again it’s a train going to more than one destination, and only part of it is going to Bucharest. My first impressions are that its the perfect train for me. It’s modern, clean and I have time to relax this evening and no dawn arrival.

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There is, however, an immediate problem after we depart. It’s a minor point, but apparently I have no ticket. The person at SNCF who sold me a ticket has actually just sold me a bed reservation. I put my peaceful and positive hat on with the steward and we came to a special arrangement. I’m relieved that he’s a good chap and speaks pretty good English. Another minor hurdle in the mission quickly solved. It’s my fault for not spotting that this ticket said just “reservation” and not “ticket and reservation”. I didn’t spot it as the three other tickets SNCF sold me were fine. I did smile tonight when I heard the station announcer declare that “optional seat supplements are obligatory on this train” Glad that’s clear then.

I had a picnic in my compartment consisting of my cheese roll, some pretzels and a rather fine Hungarian red wine made in a Portugese style. In a schoolboy packing error I forgot my plastic collapsible wine glass, so I purchased a plastic cup for 20 Florints. I seem to be rapidly turning into an InterRail peasant.
A morning update. I have woken after some reasonable sleep in a pretty comfy berth. After assuming that there would be no border formalities, I was glad that I hadn’t gone to bed, as an immigration officer knocked on my door at just after midnight. Romania may be in the EU, but this is the end of the Schengen zone. My passport was scanned on the Hungarian frontier, and then we made a short hop into Romania, where a policeman just checked my passport and copied a few details by hand into his notebook. I worked out there was a one hour time change here too, so turned in just after 01.30am. It was a noisy night with lots of tooting and horn blowing and a few engine changes, but the ride is very good and the line is mainly straight. No suicidal breaking on this train.

I headed to the restaurant carriage for breakfast. Sadly it’s a fairly dead place, and the only thing buzzing were the flies. I had a luke warm thick black coffee, but didn’t linger as the windows were to dirty to see out of, and the views of the Carpathian mountains were quite good. The staff were friendly enough, but chef didn’t seem too keen to cook anything. Most of the other travellers got off at Brasov, no doubt off for some Count Dracula based tourism. The scene outside at first is of bare rock mountains, old steam engines, and wooden buildings, but this changes to chicken factories and petrochemical plants as we pass the open plains nearer to Bucharest.

We arrived in Bucharest Nord on time and I said goodbye to our excellent steward and also to the well travelled passenger in the next compartment, who by chance was English. My mission now was twofold. Firstly, not to get scammed (me, get scammed in a Romanian railway station?) and secondly, to see if I could get some onward tickets to take me to Istanbul, the next leg of my Orient Express journey. I’m pleased to say that I succeeded on both counts.

After queuing at the ticket counter and fending off several people who didn’t believe in queuing, I realised I was at the wrong ticket office. Never mind, I’ve done that before. When I finally found the hidden international ticket office, I got to speak to a younger and very slightly more friendly ticket lady through a little hatch. I had written my cunning plan on a card, so I just handed it over and let her read my transportation requirements. I’m clearly not the first to make such an audacious request as she immediately passed back a bit of paper telling what I knew, that the journey to Istanbul is currently using two trains and two busses and takes at least 18 hours. I smiled and told her that this was indeed what I wanted, and once she had done her best to talk me out of the idea, the booking was made without fuss. It cost 195 Lei, about £38, all major credit cards accepted.
Happy to have this done I then prepared myself for the station tourist taxi scam again, but with renewed determination and confidence in my ability to win. Bucharest station is world class in taxi scam leagues, and some would be horrified that I was attempting to get a cab without pre booking it. First the touts came, then the feeders, then the fake porters – they all converged on me and I swatted them off one by one staring ahead and making random swerving manoeuvres. Finally I came face to face with the kingpin, the commission tout himself, on the taxi rank. I ignored him and tried my first cab. He refused to take me. 1-0. The second cab wanted a fixed price, so I moved on, 1-1, and I got into the third cab before the tout could get between us. My fare was on a meter and about £3.50 for a 15 minute downtown journey. 2-1 to me.
I have a couple of days here to recover and prepare myself for the next leg.

My carriage is number 263, in the middle of the train. It is a distinctive and rare looking Hungarian sleeper, painted light blue. At one end a steward called Oscar greets genuine passengers and stops drunk German’s looking for the last train to Stuttgart from getting onto his carriage. His face says he is used to this. He studies my paperwork and ushers me aboard. I’m in berth 11, which happens to be the very first one in the carriage. That’s bad news for me as it will be a bumpy night over the wheels, but at least the toilets are at the other end. The carriage next door is locked off to prevent any InterRailers heading to Croatia sneaking in. I have booked a single berth compartment, which in effect is just blocking off a three berth one and using it for single occupancy. As I booked it at the last minute I have had to pay an exorbitant “full” fare (£170), but all my other plans work around this train so I have taken the hit. By comparison, on the Romanian leg later in the week, the same set up and nearly twice the distance, cost me £80.

On the plus side the sheets are clean and the air conditioning works. It’s slightly grubby, but not really dirty. The bin contains a few cigarette butts. So much for non smoking. I lay my things out and settle in.  We set off on time, and it’s immediately clear I should have taken some sea sickness pills. The carriage bounces along, swaying from side to side as we accelerate. There isn’t much to do, and it’s been a long day so my plan is to sleep for as long as possible.

Oscar comes to see each passenger to explain how the lights and the door locks work. There are three locks on the inside of my door, and I’m not sure why we need to be locked down like Fort Knox tonight. With that done he wishes me goodnight, but before he leaves I ask him for a spare pillow. He stares at me blankly, so I show him my single pillow and hold up two fingers. “One bed, one pillow” he says. “But I have paid for three beds..” I remind him. He ignores this and retreats down the corridor. I thank him for his help and go digging in my bag for the secret key. If you have followed my adventures before you will know that I can open pretty much any door or compartment on most trains. All I need to do here is unlock and pull down an unused berth and then get a pillow myself. I hope you don’t think this makes me a bad person. With this secretive pillow hijack completed, Oscar then surprises me by returning with the fabled second pillow. I don’t think he notices what I have done, which is just as well. This has happened to me before, and my guess is that he had not realised I had bought a single compartment, maybe he was thinking I was just a lucky lone passenger in a triple. After this incident he seemed much more helpful..
As directed, I locked up my door, and turned in straight away. It was a good plan but after about half an hour I had to rethink a few things. The problem was that the train was constantly speeding up then braking. Braking much harder than I had ever experienced on a train – this was the deceleration of a jet aircraft landing on a short run way. Surely trains would have seat belts if this were envisaged? I was okay as my berth was across the direction of travel, but everything else in the compartment was hitting me or something else as the driver braked. Even my bag was landing on my bed. I put the light back on and decided to just lay everything flat on the floor so nothing could fly away. With this done I wedged myself into the narrow bed and tried to drift off.

The train had other ideas. Over the next six hours I was put through some fairly intensive Hungarian train passenger crash test dummy testing. Every time we stopped the steward dropped the steps to pick up non existent passengers. This made a noise like a small family car being dropped upside down onto concrete from about 10 feet. The alarm kept on going off – I didn’t know what this meant, so like everyone else I ignored it. The train decoupled and recouped five times (that I counted) – with the unsurprising banging and crashing that usually accompanies such a procedure. Several times we must have switched engines as the power went off. In the compartment this was signalled by loss of lighting and air conditioning. The quality of my sleep was thus probably on par with a foot soldier on night sentry duty in the Vietnam (American) war. I only got few short bursts of fatigued sleep, but I made the best of it.

For some reason I had imagined there would be border formalities during the journey, but of course I was wrong – this journey was all inside the EU and the Schengen rules were in play. We spent much of the night in Austria, and after leaving Vienna at 06.00 we then crossed into Hungary at about 07.30. I lay on my bed dressed and ready for action but dozing occasionally until Oscar served me a breakfast tray at about 08.00. This consisted of a risky chicken sandwich, a croissant in a sealed bag that was guaranteed to be fresh for several years, and instant coffee. I passed on the food, but needed the caffeine badly. We pulled into Budapest Keleti station at 09.24. As The Four Seasons would say, “Oh what a night”..

Oscar, still in nice first class mode, helped be get my bag onto the platform and wished me a good day. The sun was shining, and the station felt different to those of the day before – less ordered and full of people selling random things. This included lots of books. I contemplated picking up a cheap copy of “The Greatest Chess Moments of the Twentieth Century” before deciding I needed to find a shower as a priority. Shopping for exotic paperbacks could come later. Doing my best to avoid a classic train station taxi scam, I still managed to fall for a mild version of the train station taxi scam, but it was just a non metered slightly inflated price in Euros, nothing to feel too bad about.

Time to explore Budapest, which was looking amazing in the late September sunshine.