Hungary/Romania (March 17-26, 2007)

Complete Set of Photos

Well, I just got back from my main side-trip of the year - traveling alone to Hungary and Romania for 9 days! I had a great time, especially in Romania, because it was the most "different" country I've been to so far. Budapest was also a cool city, and it was the only thing I saw in Hungary, aside from the cities the train stopped at. What I'll do for this trip, because it was so long and interesting, is split up the blog entry into three chronological entries. I'll give an overview here and then the rest will come after this entry.

Saturday morning, I got up to go the the Stuttgart Airport to fly to Budapest. I went straight to Budapest because it was the cheapest, farthest east place I could get to directly from Stuttgart with a discount airline. It turns out the plane we were going to take had mechanical troubles, so we had to wait for another one - which hadn't even left Düsseldorf yet! So, two hours late, we finally took off for the one hour flight to Hungary.

After two nights in the best hostel in Budapest(!), I took a night train to Brasov, in Romania. This was my first experience with a night train (I couldn't get the GNR song out of my head!). I didn't get a bed because it was a lot more expensive, so I just got a normal seat. It was in one of the little compartmentalized cars, so there were six seats in a little room. I was all alone! I read my book and enjoyed the peace and quiet. At the Romanian border, the customs guy comes in and asks where I'm going. I tell him, and then he says "OK, I have to check the rest of the train, but I'll come back in 10 minutes and show you where you should go!" He did come back a few minutes later, actually sat down with me in the car, and showed me some cool places to go! He was very nice! Then, there was a Romanian college student who walked by and heard us speaking English, so later he came to my compartment and gave me some more advice about what food to eat and what wine to drink, and so on. When we went to bed, we just raised the armrests and stretched out along three seats each!

From Brasov, I took a train to Bucharest, the capital of Romania. After a night there (there's really not that much to do in Bucharest), I headed to Sighisoara, the birthplace of Vlad the Impaler, arguable the source of the Dracula legends and such. This was a really cool medieval town - I even stayed in a hostel that was within the old fortified walls!

After Sighisoara, I went to Cluj-Napoca, the "capital" of Transylvania. I found a web site called Couch Surfing, where (many students, but other people too) offer up their couch to travelers for a night or two. Then, they get an interesting visitor and the traveler gets a cool, interesting place to stay and usually some cool insider information about the location! I stayed a night with Iustin, a Romanian university student who was very nice and helped me get back to Budapest. I had to leave Cluj at 5:14 in the morning though!

After arriving in Budapest 8 hours later, I had 8 hours to waste, so I walked around some more and then went to the baths one more time. Then, off to the airport! I sat down in a chair by the gate to wait and it turns out it was right next to an exchange student to Stuttgart from Budapest, who had gone home to visit and was flying back on the same flight I was. This plane left more or less on time, so I finally made it back to Stuttgart to go to bed!