Prague to Bucharest by Train...
Bucharest, Romania
So, a little bit about the train ride from Prague to Bucharest that I took Tuesday night. Normally, I'm pretty excited about taking the train. It's something you rarely, if ever, do in North America, so it's kind of an adventure to take train across Europe. To date on the trip, I'd already taken a train from Barcelona to Geneva, Geneva to Lausanne, Geneva to Lugano, Lugano to Zurich and Zurich to Vienna. No problems on any of them and they all went smoothly, I expected the same for the Prague to Bucharest train...
Well, first off, just about everyone that heard I was taking the train on that route kind of looked at me and without fail, the first words out of their mouth would be "Be careful". I guess, the further east you head, the more dangerous the trains get, especially when it comes to pick pocketers and luggage thieves. Thing is, you never stop hearing about stuff like that while traveling, so it kind of goes without saying that you don't leave your bag unattended and what not. I've got a pretty good routine of locking my luggage and making sure everything is pretty secure, so I wasn't all that worried about being robbed. What did get me on edge was the story that Nick told me Monday night back at this apartment.
Apparently, on some overnight trains, thieves board the sleeper cars and pump sleeping gas into the cabins, then, when they are sure you're sound asleep, they break into the cabin and basically steal whatever they want. Nick recounted his experience of being "gassed" and waking up to all his valuables being stolen. Apparently, the robbers had entered his locked sleeper cabin through a fake wall that they easily pulled back. Thinking he was making this shit up, I quickly went online and sure enough, there are numerous reports of this happening!
Getting robbed is one thing, getting gassed, then robbed is another. Now, to be sure, no one had told me that it had happened on the train I was taking, but the general idea was the Eastern European trains experience way more crime then Western European ones. So, this had me slightly on edge all of Tuesday to say the least.
Tuesday night comes and it's time to board the train. I'm of course checking everyone out, what good it will do me I don't know, but I figure if I see some guy carrying around a pressurized gas tank, then maybe I'd take the next train.
My reservation is for a 3 person sleeper car, so of course I hope I get the cute girl I saw in the train station, but of course she's nowhere to be found on the platform. Instead, I bored the sleeper behind this late 30's total Euro dude. Short, jelled up hair, (fake?) gold neck chain, six o'clock showdown, all the good stuff. He's got on a pair of jeans that either came from some Dolce and Gabana store in Italy, or from some cheap ass EuroMart department store, I suspect the later. For some reason, he thinks I'm rushing him (I'm not, fact I'm in no hurry to get on the train) but as he ducks into his cabin, he waves me past him in the hallway, muttering something that I don't understand... What I do understand is that he just went into my cabin, #31.
His plastic suitcase on wheels is occupying about half the floor space and he's none too pleased to see me coming in the cabin. Again, he says something I don't understand then I hear the conductor say "Come over here.". He opens up a locked sleeper cabin and says "You can use this one." Nice, scored my own sleeper cabin for the price of a 3 person cabin. Looks like just about everyone in the car got their own cabin, so I'm pretty stoked.
So everyone is getting settled in and the train pulls away pretty much on time at 11.23pm. The conductor comes around, takes our tickets, hands out some bedding and gives us the usual "lock your cabin at all times, beware of your luggage speech", which of course goes down like a lead balloon with me. So I know I have to go to sleep at some point, but I'm not looking forward to that. I stay up till around 1am, then finally decide to sleep, but not before being overly dramatic and "securing" my cabin. First up, I cover the ventilation panel to the hallway, no gas coming in through that panel. Then I secure the door between my cabin and the cabin beside me. (The door can be opened to create a "super cabin", assuming you knew the people in the adjacent cabin). I jam a ladder in front of the door, some duck tape over the door and lock my bag in front of it. Next up, I prop the window open with some more duct tape. I figure that if fresh air is poring into the cabin, then the gas won't affect me as much... /shrug. I then place my Swiss Army knife by my head and finish by covering the gap between the floor and the main door. I feel like an idiot, but hey, what are you going to do other then try and get some shut-eye...
Well, let me tell you that my ears were hyper sensitive that night. I think I reacted to leaves hitting the train, because just about any noise woke me up. I was on edge like I'd never been before, it was kind of crazy. Absolutely no reason to feel unsafe, other then from other peoples stories.
First moment of stark terror was when the tape holding my window shade down gave way (my shade was broken, so I had tapped it down). Jesus that scared the shit out of me. Pitch black room, I'm not sleeping, I'm on edge, and all of a sudden the window shade goes flying back up (it's one of those spring loaded things that winds up). Take a deep breath, get out twice the amount of tape as I used the first time and re-secure the shade...
Next moment of terror occurs with a loud banging on the door and some loud talking in language I don't understand. Shit, what the fuck is going on outside I wonder. There's no peep hole in the door, so the only way to find out is to open it... Another loud knock on the door. Finally I hear something I recognize "Passport Control". Ahh, we must be in another country. Sure enough, it's the passport control for Slovakia, in the middle of the night. Ok, show the passport, smile, get the stamp and then back to sleep.
An hour or so later, same thing happens, but of course I don't understand the first few words so I'm freeked out again. This time, it's passport control for Hungary. Anyways, we have a few more passport controls and train stops before the sun rises. By around 9am, I'm feeling pretty confident that I'm not going to get gassed so I get a little bit of sleep.
By noon, I'm up and about, and confident enough to open my door and see what's going on the hallway. Euro dude (remember the guy with the jeans?), he's outside my cabin smoking away, which is odd because there are no smoking signs about every 3 feet on the wall. Clearly that's only a suggestion because the conductor doesn't seem bothered by it. (Each sleeper car has it's own conductor who has a room at the end of the car). Turns out, my cabin is between Euro dudes cabin and Euro dudes sisters cabin. So he spends most of the time outside his sisters cabin, talking in what I know learn is Romanian, while smoking away. This basically means that if I want my door open, I get Euro dudes tight ass jeans in my cabin doorway with the cigarette smoke or I could just close my door and not deal with it, but I'm feeling safe so I leave my door open.
Time goes by. It's weird traveling on a train like that, especially when you have your own cabin. You can just sit back, put some earphones in and watch the landscape literally go by. It's a rather nice time to reflect on just about anything.
Anyways, I wander up and down the hallway again, hanging out of the cars door at each stop, pretending like I'm in some movie where the main character always seems to be hanging out of the door of a moving train. At some point, I start talking to the conductor. Just friendly talk in broken English but rather quickly we discover that he speaks better French then English, so we start talking in French. Well, it doesn't take long till I befriend the conductor. He's probably in his 50's, been working on the train for over 20 years, spends about 10-12 days a month on the road doing various routes out of Bucharest. Has two kids, a 17 year old daughter and a 10 year old son.
One thing about traveling is that you always have at least one topic of conversation... Traveling. When in doubt, pull out a map of the world and you've got an instant conversation on your hands. After awhile of talking in the hallway, Euro dude comes down to join the conversation. Turns out he doesn't speak much English at all, but from what little he does speak he's actually a really friendly guy. It doesn't take long before he starts calling me "My friend", followed by something in Romanian, which the conductor translates to French. This goes on for awhile.
It gets to the point where the conductor is hanging out in my cabin for a few hours, with Euro dude standing in the doorway smoking a cigarette of course. I ask the conductor, who's name I found out is Angelescu, has heard about the sleeping gas stories and the robberies and pretty much confirms them all. While he personally hasn't been gassed, he has been robbed by gangs of thieves. His simple advice was to let them steal your stuff, don't bother fighting them since they have "pistols" and don't bother calling the cops since they got paid off. Ok, so that makes me a bit more uneasy again, but with Angelescu on my side (and don't forget the Euro dude in tight jeans) I feel somewhat reassured that it won't be either of them robbing me.
Time goes by as the train makes around 20 stops on it's way from Prague to Bucharest. With no restaurant car on board, it's a good thing I stocked up on food in Prague before leaving. Euro dude wasn't so lucky and kept hoping off at every stop looking for something to eat for him and his sister. He found random stuff, but in the end it was the crackers and cheese that I offered him that sealed our friendship. He offered to purchase a beer for me from the conductor (Angelescu), no idea where he gets the beer from, but I declined and said the crackers were free. (I left like trading the food for all his cigarettes, but didn't have the guts too... ;)
Around 11.45pm Wednesday night, the train rolls into Bucharest. Pretty much on time, not bad for a 24 hour train ride with over 20 stops in it. Go Romanian rail system! Before getting off, both Euro dude (never did remember his name) and Angelescu gives me words of advice for getting around Bucharest. Neither knows exactly where the hostel is that I'm going to, but both know the general area and suggest the ride should cost no more then 5 Euros.
The hostel had provided me some pretty clear instructions on which taxis to take from the station and which to ignore. Basically, if someone comes up to you, ignore then. If they stay in the taxi, then they are probably ok. Sure enough, I get off the train and about a half dozen or so people offer me rides. I blow right past them like a seasoned traveler, I'm not falling for that scam. I wander around the station for a bit to get my bearings and to find an open currency exchange booth. Of course I don't look like a seasoned traveler (or local for that matter), so I keep getting approached for offers for rides. No, no and, you guessed it buddy, no. I walk outside, follow the hostels instructions to get a taxi on the side of the station and flag down one that is going passed (figure if he didn't plan on stopping at the train station then he must be legit).
It's an older driver sporting one of those awesome Soviet Hats that you always see in old Soviet movies. I don't even know what they are called, but I'm sure you get the idea. Just think old-school Soviet hat. I show him the address I want to go to and he pulls out some pretty think glasses... Makes me wonder if maybe he should have those on while driving. He keeps telling me to hop in, I keep asking him how much. After what seems like forever but was probably no more then a minute, he says 100,000 Lei. A quick calculation puts that under 5 Euros, so I go for. (More on Romania's currency in another post). He does a U-Turn, heads down a few streets and pops out at some big intersection which is apparently close to the street the hostel. Instead of having this guy drive around, I just pay him and hop out.
I'm close, but not close enough to see the side street I need. I wander around some market area (remember, it's about 12:30am right now) where there are a few people cleaning up. No one has heard of the street I'm looking for... Not good, but I'm sure the hostel is right so I keep on. I ask third shop keeper who is watering his flowers. He doesn't know but asks the last person I would have asked, some bum on the street. (Maybe he wasn't a bum, but he sure looked liked one hunched over on the bench watching the guy water his flowers). The bum, starts pointing across the street at several side streets. He's using that same sort of vague direction pointing accuracy that airline crews use when pointing out the emergency exits on a plane.
Anyways, telling me to cross the street and head in "that" direction is enough for me. It's all residential streets and after a few blocks I end up stumbling into the hostel, the bum was only 2 blocks off, which very likely puts the street inside the vague hand waving gesture he had made...
Checked into the hostel around 12.45am, small, "homey" hostel but just about everyone was still up. Met a British traveler named Dave who quit his software engineering job to go traveling. Turns out he's interested in making games for mobile devices, so we chat about the mobile space for a bit before going to bed around 2.30am.
So yeah, that's how I got to Bucharest from Prague.
Kenny
So, a little bit about the train ride from Prague to Bucharest that I took Tuesday night. Normally, I'm pretty excited about taking the train. It's something you rarely, if ever, do in North America, so it's kind of an adventure to take train across Europe. To date on the trip, I'd already taken a train from Barcelona to Geneva, Geneva to Lausanne, Geneva to Lugano, Lugano to Zurich and Zurich to Vienna. No problems on any of them and they all went smoothly, I expected the same for the Prague to Bucharest train...
Well, first off, just about everyone that heard I was taking the train on that route kind of looked at me and without fail, the first words out of their mouth would be "Be careful". I guess, the further east you head, the more dangerous the trains get, especially when it comes to pick pocketers and luggage thieves. Thing is, you never stop hearing about stuff like that while traveling, so it kind of goes without saying that you don't leave your bag unattended and what not. I've got a pretty good routine of locking my luggage and making sure everything is pretty secure, so I wasn't all that worried about being robbed. What did get me on edge was the story that Nick told me Monday night back at this apartment.
Apparently, on some overnight trains, thieves board the sleeper cars and pump sleeping gas into the cabins, then, when they are sure you're sound asleep, they break into the cabin and basically steal whatever they want. Nick recounted his experience of being "gassed" and waking up to all his valuables being stolen. Apparently, the robbers had entered his locked sleeper cabin through a fake wall that they easily pulled back. Thinking he was making this shit up, I quickly went online and sure enough, there are numerous reports of this happening!
Getting robbed is one thing, getting gassed, then robbed is another. Now, to be sure, no one had told me that it had happened on the train I was taking, but the general idea was the Eastern European trains experience way more crime then Western European ones. So, this had me slightly on edge all of Tuesday to say the least.
Tuesday night comes and it's time to board the train. I'm of course checking everyone out, what good it will do me I don't know, but I figure if I see some guy carrying around a pressurized gas tank, then maybe I'd take the next train.
My reservation is for a 3 person sleeper car, so of course I hope I get the cute girl I saw in the train station, but of course she's nowhere to be found on the platform. Instead, I bored the sleeper behind this late 30's total Euro dude. Short, jelled up hair, (fake?) gold neck chain, six o'clock showdown, all the good stuff. He's got on a pair of jeans that either came from some Dolce and Gabana store in Italy, or from some cheap ass EuroMart department store, I suspect the later. For some reason, he thinks I'm rushing him (I'm not, fact I'm in no hurry to get on the train) but as he ducks into his cabin, he waves me past him in the hallway, muttering something that I don't understand... What I do understand is that he just went into my cabin, #31.
His plastic suitcase on wheels is occupying about half the floor space and he's none too pleased to see me coming in the cabin. Again, he says something I don't understand then I hear the conductor say "Come over here.". He opens up a locked sleeper cabin and says "You can use this one." Nice, scored my own sleeper cabin for the price of a 3 person cabin. Looks like just about everyone in the car got their own cabin, so I'm pretty stoked.
So everyone is getting settled in and the train pulls away pretty much on time at 11.23pm. The conductor comes around, takes our tickets, hands out some bedding and gives us the usual "lock your cabin at all times, beware of your luggage speech", which of course goes down like a lead balloon with me. So I know I have to go to sleep at some point, but I'm not looking forward to that. I stay up till around 1am, then finally decide to sleep, but not before being overly dramatic and "securing" my cabin. First up, I cover the ventilation panel to the hallway, no gas coming in through that panel. Then I secure the door between my cabin and the cabin beside me. (The door can be opened to create a "super cabin", assuming you knew the people in the adjacent cabin). I jam a ladder in front of the door, some duck tape over the door and lock my bag in front of it. Next up, I prop the window open with some more duct tape. I figure that if fresh air is poring into the cabin, then the gas won't affect me as much... /shrug. I then place my Swiss Army knife by my head and finish by covering the gap between the floor and the main door. I feel like an idiot, but hey, what are you going to do other then try and get some shut-eye...
Well, let me tell you that my ears were hyper sensitive that night. I think I reacted to leaves hitting the train, because just about any noise woke me up. I was on edge like I'd never been before, it was kind of crazy. Absolutely no reason to feel unsafe, other then from other peoples stories.
First moment of stark terror was when the tape holding my window shade down gave way (my shade was broken, so I had tapped it down). Jesus that scared the shit out of me. Pitch black room, I'm not sleeping, I'm on edge, and all of a sudden the window shade goes flying back up (it's one of those spring loaded things that winds up). Take a deep breath, get out twice the amount of tape as I used the first time and re-secure the shade...
Next moment of terror occurs with a loud banging on the door and some loud talking in language I don't understand. Shit, what the fuck is going on outside I wonder. There's no peep hole in the door, so the only way to find out is to open it... Another loud knock on the door. Finally I hear something I recognize "Passport Control". Ahh, we must be in another country. Sure enough, it's the passport control for Slovakia, in the middle of the night. Ok, show the passport, smile, get the stamp and then back to sleep.
An hour or so later, same thing happens, but of course I don't understand the first few words so I'm freeked out again. This time, it's passport control for Hungary. Anyways, we have a few more passport controls and train stops before the sun rises. By around 9am, I'm feeling pretty confident that I'm not going to get gassed so I get a little bit of sleep.
By noon, I'm up and about, and confident enough to open my door and see what's going on the hallway. Euro dude (remember the guy with the jeans?), he's outside my cabin smoking away, which is odd because there are no smoking signs about every 3 feet on the wall. Clearly that's only a suggestion because the conductor doesn't seem bothered by it. (Each sleeper car has it's own conductor who has a room at the end of the car). Turns out, my cabin is between Euro dudes cabin and Euro dudes sisters cabin. So he spends most of the time outside his sisters cabin, talking in what I know learn is Romanian, while smoking away. This basically means that if I want my door open, I get Euro dudes tight ass jeans in my cabin doorway with the cigarette smoke or I could just close my door and not deal with it, but I'm feeling safe so I leave my door open.
Time goes by. It's weird traveling on a train like that, especially when you have your own cabin. You can just sit back, put some earphones in and watch the landscape literally go by. It's a rather nice time to reflect on just about anything.
Anyways, I wander up and down the hallway again, hanging out of the cars door at each stop, pretending like I'm in some movie where the main character always seems to be hanging out of the door of a moving train. At some point, I start talking to the conductor. Just friendly talk in broken English but rather quickly we discover that he speaks better French then English, so we start talking in French. Well, it doesn't take long till I befriend the conductor. He's probably in his 50's, been working on the train for over 20 years, spends about 10-12 days a month on the road doing various routes out of Bucharest. Has two kids, a 17 year old daughter and a 10 year old son.
One thing about traveling is that you always have at least one topic of conversation... Traveling. When in doubt, pull out a map of the world and you've got an instant conversation on your hands. After awhile of talking in the hallway, Euro dude comes down to join the conversation. Turns out he doesn't speak much English at all, but from what little he does speak he's actually a really friendly guy. It doesn't take long before he starts calling me "My friend", followed by something in Romanian, which the conductor translates to French. This goes on for awhile.
It gets to the point where the conductor is hanging out in my cabin for a few hours, with Euro dude standing in the doorway smoking a cigarette of course. I ask the conductor, who's name I found out is Angelescu, has heard about the sleeping gas stories and the robberies and pretty much confirms them all. While he personally hasn't been gassed, he has been robbed by gangs of thieves. His simple advice was to let them steal your stuff, don't bother fighting them since they have "pistols" and don't bother calling the cops since they got paid off. Ok, so that makes me a bit more uneasy again, but with Angelescu on my side (and don't forget the Euro dude in tight jeans) I feel somewhat reassured that it won't be either of them robbing me.
Time goes by as the train makes around 20 stops on it's way from Prague to Bucharest. With no restaurant car on board, it's a good thing I stocked up on food in Prague before leaving. Euro dude wasn't so lucky and kept hoping off at every stop looking for something to eat for him and his sister. He found random stuff, but in the end it was the crackers and cheese that I offered him that sealed our friendship. He offered to purchase a beer for me from the conductor (Angelescu), no idea where he gets the beer from, but I declined and said the crackers were free. (I left like trading the food for all his cigarettes, but didn't have the guts too... ;)
Around 11.45pm Wednesday night, the train rolls into Bucharest. Pretty much on time, not bad for a 24 hour train ride with over 20 stops in it. Go Romanian rail system! Before getting off, both Euro dude (never did remember his name) and Angelescu gives me words of advice for getting around Bucharest. Neither knows exactly where the hostel is that I'm going to, but both know the general area and suggest the ride should cost no more then 5 Euros.
The hostel had provided me some pretty clear instructions on which taxis to take from the station and which to ignore. Basically, if someone comes up to you, ignore then. If they stay in the taxi, then they are probably ok. Sure enough, I get off the train and about a half dozen or so people offer me rides. I blow right past them like a seasoned traveler, I'm not falling for that scam. I wander around the station for a bit to get my bearings and to find an open currency exchange booth. Of course I don't look like a seasoned traveler (or local for that matter), so I keep getting approached for offers for rides. No, no and, you guessed it buddy, no. I walk outside, follow the hostels instructions to get a taxi on the side of the station and flag down one that is going passed (figure if he didn't plan on stopping at the train station then he must be legit).
It's an older driver sporting one of those awesome Soviet Hats that you always see in old Soviet movies. I don't even know what they are called, but I'm sure you get the idea. Just think old-school Soviet hat. I show him the address I want to go to and he pulls out some pretty think glasses... Makes me wonder if maybe he should have those on while driving. He keeps telling me to hop in, I keep asking him how much. After what seems like forever but was probably no more then a minute, he says 100,000 Lei. A quick calculation puts that under 5 Euros, so I go for. (More on Romania's currency in another post). He does a U-Turn, heads down a few streets and pops out at some big intersection which is apparently close to the street the hostel. Instead of having this guy drive around, I just pay him and hop out.
I'm close, but not close enough to see the side street I need. I wander around some market area (remember, it's about 12:30am right now) where there are a few people cleaning up. No one has heard of the street I'm looking for... Not good, but I'm sure the hostel is right so I keep on. I ask third shop keeper who is watering his flowers. He doesn't know but asks the last person I would have asked, some bum on the street. (Maybe he wasn't a bum, but he sure looked liked one hunched over on the bench watching the guy water his flowers). The bum, starts pointing across the street at several side streets. He's using that same sort of vague direction pointing accuracy that airline crews use when pointing out the emergency exits on a plane.
Anyways, telling me to cross the street and head in "that" direction is enough for me. It's all residential streets and after a few blocks I end up stumbling into the hostel, the bum was only 2 blocks off, which very likely puts the street inside the vague hand waving gesture he had made...
Checked into the hostel around 12.45am, small, "homey" hostel but just about everyone was still up. Met a British traveler named Dave who quit his software engineering job to go traveling. Turns out he's interested in making games for mobile devices, so we chat about the mobile space for a bit before going to bed around 2.30am.
So yeah, that's how I got to Bucharest from Prague.
Kenny
posted by Kenny Carruthers at 11/03/2005 11:46:00 AM
<< Home