Brasov is a pleasant, relaxing tourist town in Transylvania, famous for
its 16th/17th century fortifications, nature park and the
nearby Bran Castle (which for some unknown reason is marketed as Dracula’s
Castle, though it has absolutely nothing to do with either Dracula or Vlad the
Impaler). It was a chance to stop,
relax, recharge before the expected insanity of Budapest.
Or it would have been had I not met Dr Joseph, the insane French
Canadian.
DAY ZERO
Upon arrival my first task was to get to the hostel. I’m a bit hesitant to use the actual name of
the place, to be honest, as I’m not entirely sure I wouldn’t get hunted down if
I did (that’s maybe a slight overstatement).
Anyway, it was night by the time my train arrived, so it was a
forty-five minute walk in the dark in Transylvania.
I’d love to be able to say it was a terrifying experience, but to be
honest Brasov is probably the safest-feeling nighttime location I’ve been in so
far (Eastern Europe generally has felt very safe). So instead of scuttling through the streets
waiting to be grabbed at any moment by the vampires that supposedly live in
Transylvania I stood around trying to grab photos of the silly Hollywood-style
Brasov sign on the top of the local hill overlooking the town.
Arriving at the hostel I had to, as is fairly common with hostels that
are really just renovated apartments, press the buzzer. Normally hostels immediately unlock the door
to let you in, so I was a little surprised when a voice came through the
speaker saying, “Who is it?”
“Hi, I… uh… have a reservation?” (Yes I said it like a question – I do
that sometimes).
“Andrew?”
“That’s right, yeah.” Also the
first hostel that had known my name before I even arrived.
“Come on up.”
I was greeted by a 23-year-old woman with a smooth, round Eastern
European face.
“We’ve been waiting for you since two o’clock,” she said. She didn’t say it with any particular anger
or frustration – it was just a matter of fact statement. I wasn’t sure how to take that entirely since
it could have been either disapproval or welcome (welcome in the sense that she
is suggesting they were looking forward to my arrival). When she immediately followed that with an
almost interrogative series of questions (friendly ones) I was a bit
surprised. Not many hostels have staff
that are so interested in their clients.
I was taken through to my room, which due to it being off-season was to
be empty except for me. So I had plenty
of privacy. Unfortunately, the poor
Romanian girl staying in the room next to me had to put up with me walking
through her room whenever I needed anything since they were attached and in
order to leave my room I had to go through hers.
Anyway, I was taken through to meet the gang – two Greeks whose names I
can’t remember so they will be referred to as Odysseus and Heracles; the
Romanian girl who was studying public service at one of those online
universities and had come to Brasov to complete her exams and whose room I
would regularly intrude into; Amalia, the Romanian girl who had let me in who
worked there and was going to the US to work on a cruise liner at some point;
and Joseph. Joseph was a bald,
middle-aged French Canadian man who had been travelling for five years doing
work for Cirque du Soleil, riding a catamaran through the Caribbean and getting
up to all sorts of crazy s***. He was
currently working at the hostel for some reason.
Joseph requires a bit of backstory – he was full of stories, some of
which I will share with you in a few moments, but it’s probably important to
bring up the reason for his travelling immediately so that some context for his
personality can be had. Joseph had been
some kind of dental surgeon or something along those lines and I assume had
made quite a lot of money doing that. He
was involved in a car accident (apparently he was hit by a police car…) and
lost 70% of his memory. After this he
could no longer do surgery, though he tried for a while before giving up and
deciding to travel.
Amalia and Joseph had a really bizarre relationship. Initially I thought they were an item (there
was definitely a lot of sexual frustration going on there) and they kept joking
like they were (Joseph would introduce Amalia as his girlfriend and you kind of
had to work out he was joking – though with the benefit of hindsight I suspect
it was more wishful thinking than joking).
Amalia just sort of flirted with everyone. Apparently Joseph had once warned her against
being flirtatious with so many guys and she had shrugged her shoulders and
said, “Why not? They’re not important.”
I guess that exchange neatly sums up the problems with both of their
attitudes towards one another and life generally.
Amalia brought up the idea of going out that night. I still had the remains of a cough, but
didn’t want to waste an opportunity to get to know the rather small group at
this early stage, so I agreed. The girl
there for her exams didn’t go and neither did Odysseus.
We went to a place called the Street Café, a poky little bar down some
steps in an alley that the hostel staff were regular patrons of. Regular as in they went there every
night. Particularly Joseph.
Is the picture beginning to become clearer?
That night was trivia night. Amalia
flirted a bit with the guy running the trivia, Joseph flirted ferociously with
one of the bar staff (they all knew each other of course) and they kind of just
stared jealously at one another.
We’d also come across a chubby thirty-something French fellow named
Frank, who was one of Joseph’s friends.
He wasn’t particularly interesting that night, so more on him later.
Trivia was divided into three sections – the first was twenty general
knowledge questions, followed by ten movie quotes to guess, followed by another
twenty general knowledge questions.
The first batch was dead easy. Two
were specific to Romania so I couldn’t answer, one I got wrong because Amalia translated
‘densest’ as ‘hardest’, so I answered silver instead of gold, and the only
other one I got wrong was the city with the highest population, which turned
out to be Tokyo.
Amalia started acting like I was a total genius and I was in a bit of a
pleasant beer haze so enjoyed the compliments and attention (actually, scrap
that, I’m an attention whore when I’m sober as well).
I thought we had movie quotes in the bag, but unfortunately, what with
Valentine’s Day being just around the corner, they decided to do romantic
comedy quotes, of which I guessed one.
In case you’re wondering, the one I got was Notting Hill, and I haven’t even seen that movie.
After being decimated there, I had renewed determination to get as much
as possible in the final round, though it didn’t really help too much anyway.
By this point I had had maybe two pints of beer, which I knew I could
handle. The problem was that Joseph kept
ordering tequila shots for everyone (because he was a crazy alcoholic but also
refused to do shots alone) and I have to tell you, the others were far more
used to this kind of liver punishment than I was. And… well, it was tequila. I freaking hate tequila.
I kept doing the shots (four of them in total – yes, I know that’s not
much for you alcoholics out there) for two reasons. One, Joseph would just order them without
mentioning it to anyone, so they kept turning up on the table. Two, I was still in total control of my
faculties and concluded that I was doing ok.
Actually, there is another factor that I believe contributed greatly to
how the night ended. That was the
smoking. Holy f***monkeys. Every single person in the bar was a chain
smoker. I’m pretty sure I got instant
lung cancer as soon as I got to the bottom of the staircase. The fumes hung thickly and were absorbed by
my clothes and skin (I smelled of cigarettes for ages after – in fact, one of
my shirts still has the smell). I am
certain that I took in more chemicals in that night than in the rest of my life
combined.
So how did it end, you might be wondering. When we left the bar at a bit before midnight
I felt fine, having just the regular lightheadedness that a few drinks
brings. When we got back to the hostel I
still felt fine and went to my room, got into my pajamas and brushed my teeth.
Things started to go wrong when I got into bed. I started to feel sick to the very depths of
my stomach. I jumped up and raced to the
bathroom, locking the door behind me.
I didn’t turn the light on, went straight for the toilet bowl, then for
some reason decided that actually the shower was a better target (it’s a bit
hazy around this point, but for some reason I legitimately thought the shower
was a better spot for a vomit – maybe because it was a bigger target?) This was followed by a coughing fit that took
me to the actual toilet (which was right next to the shower anyway) and ended
with another stomach purge.
At that point I’m pretty sure I blacked out, waking up again at
1am. My forehead had been resting on the
toilet bowl for the whole hour I had been in the comatose, semi-conscious state
and it actually still hurts there when I poke it. I had one final vomit into the toilet before
getting up to turn the light on and see the damage.
It was then that I discovered that in my drunken state I hadn’t actually
locked the door. In fact I hadn’t even
closed it. See, it was one of those
slide locks that fits into a little metal patch to prevent the door opening. I had locked the latch before closing the
door, making it simply bounce off the door frame. So I had been sitting borderline passed out
with my head on (almost in) the toilet bowl in the dark for an hour with the
door not quite closed. Oh yeah, and the
door led straight into the Romanian student’s room.
Fortunately the damage was not too bad, so I just flushed it and washed
it down the drain before waddling off through the poor girl’s room back to my
bed.
So. A good start to my time in
Brasov.
DAY ONE
I was the first up that morning.
I had a much-needed shower, got dressed and went to the kitchen. Joseph soon came and joined me, followed by
the student.
“I heard you coughing last night,” she said.
“Yeah… sorry.”
Well, if all she’d heard was the coughing then I’d dodged a bullet
there, though it’s likely she was simply being tactful.
Joseph started on breakfast.
That’s right. At this hostel you
got a cooked breakfast, today it was toasted baguette slices, omelet with
mushroom, tomato and kiwi fruit. I
approved.
While the others slowly started to drift in I listened to some of
Joseph’s stories. I was in no rush
because Amalia, the Greeks and I had agreed the previous evening to go to Bran
Castle that day, so I needed to wait for them anyway.
So. Joseph had some interesting
stories, mostly surrounding picking up young Swedish girls on exotic Caribbean
islands in his friend’s yacht or something similar. He made sure to show me plenty of photos of
his previous (worryingly youthful) girlfriends, and generally sounded
possessive and chauvinistic.
He wanted to tell me about some of his more dangerous travels, so he
brought up a tale that he claimed had happened to him in Jamaica. While in a taxi (after picking up a cute
Jamaican girl of course) he had been stopped by a gang, who had dragged him out
of the taxi to rob and possibly murder him.
Apparently the girl he had picked up was in on it. Anyway, out of the taxi he was dragged,
trying to fight them off. He eventually
ended up flat on his face, arm being wrenched up behind him.
At that point an armoured vehicle arrived belonging to US military types
– not sure of the specifics, some kind of embassy guard or something? – arrived
and an armed SWAT team leaped out. One
of them shot the gang member holding Joseph in the chest with a shotgun blast. All that for a Rolex (Joseph made sure to be
very clear about what brand of watch he had been wearing, and also told me many
times about the brand new Mercedes or whatever brand it was he had parked in
his garage in Canada, unused for five years).
Amalia finally got up and we were able to make for Bran Castle. To get there we needed to catch a bus. Normally I would walk to the bus station but
this time I was accompanied by some lazy buggers (and it was after midday so we
wanted to get there fairly quickly) so we took a taxi. The driver was a madman, or maybe I just
couldn’t figure out the road rules in Romania.
He certainly went 80kph along a narrow street in the middle of the city
centre. He also had a large crack on the
windscreen, apparently from some kind of impact, though admittedly that doesn’t
mean anything necessarily seeing as the one we got back on our return had a
cracked windscreen as well.
We had to wait at the bus stop for about twenty minutes before our bus
came, but we were soon on our way, racing down a bumpy, windy road that really
did a number on my stomach. The driver
was a smiley, friendly bloke who let a schoolkid on for free.
The actual township of Bran is actually really, really small. In fact it seems like the whole place is made
up of a few scattered houses, a street of tacky trinkets trying to cash in on
the Dracula connection and of course the castle itself, which sits less-dramatically-than-one-might-think
on a steeply rising hill. It’s not
enormous, but has a definite presence, probably because it isn’t competing with
much.
We started off by going in the wrong direction and ended up at a museum
that had nothing to do with the building itself but was instead a small place
containing some of the furniture that was confiscated at the collapse of the
monarchy. We were given a free guided
tour by a very sweet lady who provided a lot of historical information about
the area, Romania’s monarchy and the furniture.
Unfortunately she only spoke Romanian, so the version I heard was a
truncated translation from Amalia. It
was also tainted by Amalia’s political spin, I suspect, as it painted the
monarchy in a very good light. I mean, I
have no reason to believe that the Romanian monarchy was bad (hell, there were
only three of them) but it was a pretty golden picture being painted for me.
From there we walked in the opposite direction to the actual entrance to
Bran Castle. To get there you have to
walk down a little pedestrian street that is totally chockers with Blood Cafes
and Haunted Mansions (with 5D video technology!), hats, fridge magnets,
t-shirts and cheese.
Photography was included in the ticket price, but not videography, but
seeing as my camera looks like a photography camera and no-one seemed to check
I didn’t bother paying the extra.
Bran Castle is kind of a small fairytale castle, what with its spires
and ornate architecture. There have been
fortifications there for a while, I suppose, since there must have been
something around the time of Vlad the Impaler, but the current building is from
like the 18th or 19th century. So not that old.
It has a cool, labyrinthine interior that takes you up bendy staircases,
into oddly-shaped courtyards and through narrow passages. There’s at least one secret passageway, and
the whole thing feels like it fits a lot more into itself than its exterior
would suggest. It didn’t have much
furniture, though. It all got
confiscated and some of it ended up in the museum we went to earlier.
So what does Bran Castle have to do with Dracula? Jack s***.
Absolutely nada. I got the
feeling that they looked at it, went, “Yeah, it kinda looks like it could be
sort of Dracula. Ish.” Then they went ahead and marketed it as
Dracula’s Castle. It doesn’t even really
have anything to do with Vlad the Impaler.
They even have a small room talking about Dracula in the castle, which
flat out tells you that the castle has nothing to do with the character.
But what would all those vampire teeth salesmen do if the truth was
revealed?
The others wanted to warm up before we went back to the hostel (actually
we planned to go back via Rasnov Fortress, which was a site I was more
interested in than Bran, but ran out of time) so we popped into a little café
that did nice thick hot chocolates. They
had a lot of variety of hot chocolate flavours, though I of course went for the
dark one. Yummy yummy.
After an easy bus ride (and crazy taxi ride – what can I expect for 1,50
euro?) we were back at the hostel. I
wanted to cook something up for myself that night so went to the cornerstore to
see what I could find.
I’m not sure I’ve really come to terms with the idea of appropriate
cooking on the road. I desperately
wanted goats cheese and rocket risotto, but of course the little cornerstore
doesn’t have all the right ingredients for something like that, so I ended up
grabbing a few unidentifiable bits of meat (frozen), some cheap feta, rice and
a couple of random bits and pieces I thought might work in the risotto context.
Other than a strange, hard white thing that I almost broke my teeth on
that was in the meat (pretty sure it was a bit of bone) I was pretty pleased
with the result. I did make way too much
of it, and consequently ate way too much of it, with way too much still left
over, but that just left me satisfied.
Joseph was beginning to display some of his more sociopathic tendencies,
with a passive-aggressive campaign to try to make me finish up with the kitchen
so he could cook. The nice thing about
being a guest, though, is you get preferential treatment, so his only outlet
was continually asking, “Are you almost finished? Because when you are, I want to cook.”
There was a reason for his agitation, however. He had been visited that day by two men who
claimed they had a friend coming to stay at the hostel later that week and
wanted to be shown around. Joseph
thought they
I went to bed early that night. I
was not ready to take in any more cigarette smoke or alcohol at that time, and
was focused on having a good day the next day.
DAY TWO
After breakfast the next day I was not ready to wait around for the
others to get up for another day trip (there had been a suggestion that we
would go to either Sibiu or Rasnov that day).
I still hadn’t really seen Brasov, which I thought of as a bit of an
oversight seeing as I was – you know – staying there.
You may remember from my walk in the dark to the hostel when I first
arrived I mentioned the presence of a giant Hollywood-style sign up on a mountain
(the name of the mountain is Mt. Tampa) and I decided the day would be well
spent if I managed to work my way up to the top of the mountain and to the sign
itself.
Off I went, doing my best to walk towards the mountain. Fortunately it wasn’t too difficult seeing as
there was literally nowhere in the entire town from where you couldn’t see the
mountain. I hadn’t gone far up before I
started to slip back down. The path (quite
a steep one) was completely iced over, so I yanked out my slip-on shoe spikes
and went on my way.
The trip up was fairly easy, quite picturesque (it was snowing) and
hot. I had put thermals and everything
on, expecting to freeze because… well… it was snowing. About halfway up I ripped my coat off,
sweating. A couple more metres and I
ripped my jumper off as well.
The path was marked by little blue circles painted onto rocks and
trees. Occasionally they would be kind
of difficult to spot, so I would just go up in a direction that looked
reasonable until I rejoined the path. There were a couple of fake peaks, the first
of which I reached at the peak of the snowstorm, thinking, “So much for getting
a nice shot over the town.” I could
barely see two metres in front of me.
There was some kind of campfire with seats around it, but when it’s been
snowing you kind of don’t sit down unless you want a wet bum. I didn’t, so I continued up.
It had felt like I was moving away from the sign, so imagine my surprise
when I rounded a corner and saw it.
Yay! Just as I got there the snowstorm
cleared, too, and the view was spectacular.
Maybe one day I will manage to fix my harddrive and post it.
I decided to go back a different route, one that took me on a winding,
back-and-forth path down the mountain.
Well... that may not have been the best idea. The route was slippery. Very slippery. Impossibly slippery. It took me about forty minutes to get
up. It took me over two hours to get
down. It was kind of embarrassing to be
stumbling down the path while other jogged by no problem, though I was more
worried about my life than my dignity. Once
I got down I walked along the wall for a bit.
See, Brasov is a walled medieval city, with a wall that wraps around it
with various towers that were in control of the different guilds and were used
to defend the city. As with York, you
can walk around the walls for a nice series of old buildings and structures.
Needing the toilet I went back to the hostel (sometimes this is the only
place available). Joseph was the only
one there – I assume the others went on their trip to Rasnov. Since I was there I heated up some of the
leftover risotto for lunch.
While I was doing that, two men knocked on the door. More visitors. Joseph let them in and they told him they
were visiting to have a look at the place for a friend. Remember this story?
Joseph showed them around a bit, repeatedly explaining that he didn’t
work there, he was just a guest. They
asked how many beds there were and Joseph shrugged. “I don’t know, I’m a guest. There’s my bed, then there are some other
beds.” He waved to me and introduced me.
“This is Andrew. He’s cooking now.”
I greeted the two suspicious men and they were soon gone. Joseph came over to me.
“They’re looking for me. I had to
come here after what happened in Bulgaria – that was a crazy time. But I’m glad I’m moving on soon.”
I never found out what happened in Bulgaria. I never asked.
Needing to return to a little sanity, I went for a walk around the other
part of the wall, saw the white tower and the black tower and returned.
It was Valentine’s Day, so Joseph was dead set keen on getting stupidly
drunk. I wasn’t against going out,
though I was definitely going to pay very close attention to the amount of
alcohol consumed. The Greeks and Amalia
said they would join us, and Frank (the Frenchman I mentioned briefly before,
remember him?) was also in.
Amalia arrived in a flustered rush and said she would find us later as
she had to visit the salon. Joseph
nodded and made a joke, but turned to me bitterly when she left.
“You know when a girl goes to the salon what that means. She’s had her eyes on [random guy from the
bar] for a while now. She can’t slip
anything by me. I wrote the f***ing
book.”
I was a little taken aback by the seriousness in his tone and felt like
it was probably not a good idea to suggest that maybe she just wanted to – you
know – go to the salon.
At the bar (I started off being stuck with Joseph and Frank since the
Greeks had been a bit too slow to get ready) Joseph kept claiming that Amalia
would definitely be turning up with this guy, that the ‘salon’ was just code
for having sex with him, blah blah blah.
It was that is-he-joking-or-is-he-a-raving-lunatic (if he had been
joking it would have been tasteless misogyny, something I could have
challenged, but if he was serious I suspect the most dangerous thing to suggest
at that point was that it was none of his business).
Anyway, Amalia turned up without the guy but in a huff. See, she had left her mobile in the taxi on
the way to the salon. Joseph suddenly
got very serious.
“How could you leave your phone in the taxi? Why would you even put it down?”
“I don’t know. Does it
matter? It’s gone. It’s not the phone, it’s facebook and all my
contacts.”
Joseph was taking all this very seriously, giving me the impression that
there was something more to the phone than there seemed. I was imagining some kind of drug deal or
dirty business dealings when Joseph pulled out his phone and announced that he
would call his contact and have the phone back the next day.
I started to see it wasn’t about the phone. It was about an opportunity to exert power
over Amalia. It was an opportunity to
show that he had the power and the reach to fix the fairly innocent problem she
had gotten herself into.
So he called his contact and told her that the head of the Brasov police
would be notified.
I just sat not saying much.
With that done, and Amalia resigned to the fact it was out of her hands,
they all decided it was time to get drunk.
I was making my way as slowly as possible through a beer, but of course
Joseph was pulling out the shots again.
It was very difficult to outright refuse the shots (which were tequila
again – why is it always tequila?) but I did manage to space them out a bit by
skipping rounds and then taking the shot when they did the next round.
As such I was pretty much completely sober when they decided to move on
to a club (Frank was a dead man walking at that point, while Joseph’s already
loopy mind was pickling in a bath of ethanol).
One cool thing that was done was a flaming vapour shot thing – not sure
what the alcohol was but the bartender put it in a brandy glass, lit it on
fire, swirled it, poured the flaming liquid into another glass, put a napkin
over the brandy glass, sucked the liquid up through a straw, stuck the straw
through the serviette and sucked up the vapours in the brandy glass. Joseph did about three of those. I was easily content to watch.
The club was a busy place, but not really a fun place. For some reason everyone was seated at tables
and drinks were served by a waitress.
The music was too loud for conversation like you can have in a bar, but
the atmosphere wasn’t right for dancing like most clubs I’ve been to. So I went back to the hostel (taking an
opportunity while Amalia was in the toilet – didn’t feel like having her try to
persuade me to stay).
So… the night was an experience, anyway.
DAY THREE
I was kind of glad that this was to be my last day. Things were starting to get uncomfortable,
and I decided the less time I spent hanging around the hostel the better.
I was only mildly surprised to walk into the adjoining room to see a
semi-naked, unconscious Frank lying on the bed.
Hmm…
I’d kind of seen most of the stuff around Brasov, so my plan that day
was literally to just walk around a bit, though I did have quite a bit of
Romanian Lei left over that I wanted to change to Hungarian Forints.
But first I had some breakfast – eggs and bacon (I actually had to cut
the bacon from a big slab of it – awesome).
Joseph was already up and was calling taxi companies.
“Hello, do you speak English?
Yes, hello. My friend caught a
taxi yesterday, number fifty-six. No,
fifty. Fifty-six. Yes, that’s- NO! FIFTY!
FIFTY. SIX. Not sixty-six. FIFTY.
FIFTY-SIX. Ok. She left her phone in the taxi. Can you please give me the phone number of
the taxi driver of cab fifty-six at 7:30pm last night. No, it wasn’t a woman, it was a man. NO!
NOT SIXTY-SIX! FIFTY. FIVE ZERO.
FIFTY-SIX. Yes, ok. And he will call me? Ok, thank-you. Now, please, ok, you’re very kind, but can I
please explain something to you? My name
is Dr. Joseph. I’m a French Canadian
citizen. I have a diplomatic
passport. Now, I know the driver has the
phone. He locked it as soon as he found
it. We know when he locked it. Tell him, if he doesn’t call me, I will find
him and he will regret it. Do you
understand? We know he has the
phone. I will come and I will find
him. Do you understand? Make sure he returns the phone. Ok, thankyou.”
He hung up the phone and turned to me.
“I saw the taxi on camera footage.
We have the number. Do you know
what I’m going to do? If he doesn’t call
me, at 7:30 tonight I am going to call and ask for taxi 56. And I’m going to get in the front of the taxi
– oh boy, he won’t know what hit him.
He’ll give back the phone after that, let me tell you.”
Oh. Great.
My route for that day took me east, parallel to the mountains. It seemed like the whole area was residential
districts (and dilapidated ones at that) until I reached a muddy road, mulched
up by melting snow and tyre marks. I
followed the road, curious, until I reached a snowed-over picnic area. From the snowed-over picnic area I continued
into the mountains and ended up having a walk similar to the one the previous
day. Not that I minded – it was good to
have a bit of a break from the insanity.
I was having a lot of fun with the snow as it was quite deep and my foot
would pass through down to my knee.
After about an hour I started to get tired. After another half hour I started to realize
that the path was leading to the opposite side of the mountain to where I
needed to return – I had assumed it was a round trip. The path disappeared. The fun disappeared. I only had a couple of hours before all the
exchange offices would shut their doors, so I decided to turn back.
The trip back was nowhere near as fun as the trip there. I was totally over falling through snow and
having to drag myself from the holes created.
Then I saw bear tracks and tried to go a bit quieter since wrestling a
bear was not how I planned to spend my last day in Romania.
Well, I didn’t find the bear (or, more to the point, get found by it),
got some forints, went back to the hostel, got my bags, saw Joseph heading off
with a bunch of new Greek guests to the Street Café and left myself. There was a bit of a panic since Joseph was
supposed to be rostered on, I had already handed in my key and he was off
getting drunk, so I couldn’t actually get out.
Luckily I managed to find a key that unlocked the gate and escaped.
At the train station I came across the only example of gypsies I had
seen my entire time in Romania. A bunch
of kids were messing around in the station, throwing babies down stairs and
stuff (that’s only a slight exaggeration – the six-year-old in charge of the
baby was not being terribly gentle).
The train was the regular type I have become used to – not the awesomeness
of the Russian-styled one from Bulgaria.
When I entered my couchette, there was already a big Romanian man
sleeping in my bed. I didn’t want to
cause any fuss or anything, so took a different bed.
There was a woman sharing the cabin with the three Romanian men (who had
taken up a whole side of the cabin, including my bed obviously) and
myself. She was some kind of Taoist
follower, reading a spiritual book written by an Eastern mystic. Then she pulled out an iPad and started to
have skype sex with some guy. Neither of
them were native English speakers, but their skyping was in English (“If you
were alone right now I would come in and I would f*** you all night”). Scarred for life. FOR LIFE.
The border patrol were probably the friendliest I have come across (I
guess they recognized that 5am is a really painful time to be woken up). The three Romanians disappeared a stop before
the crossing. Hmmm…
After that it wasn’t long before I was in Budapest, where I would meet
my Dad, get drunk, see castles, crawl through caves and be confused by the
money. But all that is for when this
story is
TO BE CONTINUED
Which may be quite some time, since quite a lot happened in
Budapest. I’ll see how I go, I’m finding
it more and more difficult to find time to write these.
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