Istanbul to Bucharest - The Train-Journey from Hell.
I'm a keen InterRailer and have travelled on the trains of nearly every European country and can honestly say that the UK has worse train-transport than every other European country ... except Bulgaria.

On my first ever InterRail, I decided to make it all the way out to Turkey and then head straight for Romania. Being a novice backpacker back then and travelling all by myself, this may have been too much for me, but I have the habit of taking enormous steps (I do this sort of thing all the time) so I was able to put myself through this.

Before the train even left the station, things were getting off to a bad start. I was accompanied by someone from the hostel who had volunteered to be my personal tour-guide (the only language we had in common was German so I was given a tour of Istanbul in German). Completely out of the blue, he asked me for a fee (5000000 Turkish Lira). This came as a surprise as he had not mentioned it to me before and I had just assumed he wanted to show me the city out of his own keen-ness. On the one hand, I was determined not to be taken advantage of, but on the other hand, part of me felt he should be rewarded for his efforts. Needless to say, a compromise was reached and I paid 3/5ths of what he asked. But the whole exchange drained my Karma somewhat.

I was sharing my compartment with two Romanians. We soon established we had no tongue in common. The compartment on my Turkish coach consisted of six couchettes (places to lie down on) - three to each side. If you're familiar with European night-trains, you'll know that usually above the door, there are the controls for things like the lights. However, instead of the controls, there were just loose wires sticking out. The Romanians seemed to know instinctively which wires to jam together to make the lights turn off and on.

Around 2am, I was woken up by the Turkish border-controls. The Romanians were trying to make gestures that I should get out and walk around. Not being familiar with midnight border-crossings, I just assumed they wanted me to go and find the place to get my passport stamped but in hindsight, I think they were suggesting I get something from the duty-free shop. They certainly did - Vodka, bread and salami. They were kind enough to offer me some. I was slightly worried in case it was laced with tranquilizer (I did say I was a novice backpacker back then), but their hospitality got the better of me.

The next day, I woke up early and looked out the window. We were still at the same place on the Turkish border. Why had we been woken up in the middle of the night only for the sodding train to remain stationary until daytime? Gah! Went back to sleep. Was soon woken up on the Bulgarian side of the border by not only the passport control person insisting that I get a more expensive tourist-visa instead of a transit-visa because I had no visa for Romania, but also by the customs inspector who had a good look through my rucksack. Despite this, I went back to sleep again.

Woke up, looked out the window. This was the first time I had ever been behind the Iron Curtain. Normally, people's first visit behind the Iron Curtain usually just involves visiting Prague for a weekend, but I did it by crossing into Bulgaria from Turkey. Things were just like I expected - crumbling concrete blocks of flats in the middle of fields. Because the train was late, we seemed to spend insane amounts of time stuck in the middle of nowhere not moving anywhere. It seems like Bulgaria's strategy of avoiding train-crashes is to only have one moving train on the entire network at any one time.

The two Romanians then finished off their duty-free vodka and beer. They were getting obnoxiously drunk and throwing empty beer cans out the window (by then, the concrete laden fields had been left behind for some wonderful mountain scenery). They soon got tired of this and passed out on the beds above the opposite seat from where I was sitting.

By then, the ticket inspector came along. It turned out that when I got my InterRail ticket back, the guard had forgotten to give me the supplemental ticket I needed to pay for the train. Again, I had no language in common and the Romanians were too passed out to offer assistance so I had no means of explaining that the guard had my supplement. The Bulgarian ticket inspector insisted I pay for a piece of paper whose purpose evaded me completely. Not wanting to be sent to a Bulgarian prison, I paid for it out of my supply of Deutschmarks which I was hoping to make last until I next crossed the Iron Curtain. Nevertheless, I kept it as a souvenir and carried it in my wallet for several years to come (eventually, I met a Bulgarian who I showed it to and he said it was a fine for not having a ticket, but at the time, I assumed that the guard already had a record of my supplement having been paid for).

After yet more time spent standing still for what seemed forever, we were off again. The Romanians were beginning to stir. The window to our compartment was open (the gap at the top was only about 20cm tall). Completely out of the blue, one of the Romanians puked up through the gap in the window whilst lying down. He got pretty much all of it out but the outside of the window was completely splattered in his puke. Looking back, this seems like an impressive feat of vomit aiming but at the time, I was not in the mood for sick spewing shenanigans. Round two. This time, because of the wind, some of the puke went back in the compartment and a few bits even landed on my legs (was wearing shorts). Fortunately, there was no round 3 but I decided to get cleaned up anyway.

By now, we had reached the Romanian frontier. Even so, we waited for about two hours in the city of Russe for goodness knows what. The passport control people asked me a lot of awkward questions and the customs inspectors had another rummage through my rucksack (this happened a lot on that particular InterRail). It was at this point that I declared my arch-nemesis to be the Bulgarian borer-control staff. Meanwhile, the Romanians were somewhat hung-over. They had run out of drinkable water and for some reason, were reluctant to get out the train to refill their bottles. They were leaning out of the puke-smeared window trying to persuade some reluctant local kids to go and refill their water bottle and even had to resort to offering them cigarettes in exchange.

Eventually we set off across the Danube. The Romanians seemed to be feeling excited about finally returning home. However, at the border-town of Giurgiu, we spent another hour just waiting doing nothing. Once we got going, the Romanians were trying to explain that Romanian taxis were cheaper than western taxis. At the time, I was determined to brave the Bucharest public transport, but by the time we arrived, it was 10pm (some 10 hours late) and the tourist-information places would have shut down. Now, I wasn't even sure if my youth hostel still had places for me. I was approached on the platform by a taxi-driver. By then, I was too tired to care about being adventurous enough to try the trams and the two Romanians were chatting with the taxi-driver so I just went along. The icing on the cake was that I was ripped off by the taxi-driver. The journey cost 10 US dollars (which is a major rip-off by Romanian standards), but I was too tired to care. Fortunately, it was the right place and they had a spare bed for me. Didn't bother getting anything to eat so just went to sleep, but was kept awake by the sound of barking dogs.

While the Romanians were not the best travel companions I could have hoped for, I would have starved and dehydrated had I not been offered their Bread, Salami, Vodka and water.

Apologies for length and waffle.
( mistaspakkaman and the inedible shifting caterpillars, Fri 30 May 2008, 14:35, Reply)