We spent a restful afternoon waiting for the midnight train to Budapest, thinking we would have a sleeper car to use for a good night sleep and arrive in Budapest well rested with plenty of time to make our next connection to Brasov, Rumania. Wrong!!! When the train arrived, we found out that part of the train went to Prague and part went to Budapest. We were told the last car was the one we needed, so not knowing how long the train would stay in the station, we ran with our luggage to the last car, asking every conductor on the way, whether we were going correctly. When we got to the last car, the conductor there, who spoke no English, just yelled at us to “GO HOME”. We didn’t know what to do. A man in the next to last car, stuck his head out and yelled, “get on this car and you can change trains at the next stop”. We had no idea if he knew what he was talking about, but we had no hotel to go back to, so we got on the train heading for Prague. Maybe Prague would be our next stop.
The train car was filled to capacity. So instead of having a sleeper car to Budapest, we crammed into any spare space we could find going to Prague. People were sleeping in the aisles, and standing in the bathrooms, We were lucky enough to find standing room on the platform between the cars with five or six other people along with their baggage.
Even dark clouds have a silver lining. Ours came in the form being cooped up with a bunch of friendly, helpful people including three high school aged boys who insisted on carrying some of our bags when we got off. About getting off, the “next stop” turned out to be 3 stops later, about 2 hours later. Standing on the platform, talking to kids and asking at each station whether we were supposed to get off there, or stay on, and hoping the people we asked actually understood our question.
When we got off where we were told we could get a train to Budapest, we had no idea where to go from there. We were a party of 7 now, all lost. We did find out the info and got on an almost empty car, with rooms for 6 people to sit. We had one room to ourselves and we tried to sleep. Duane could, he always can, and Arleen didn’t. About 4am people started boarding our car and filled up the other seats.
One man, who spoke no English (a common situation) let us know that he was going toward Brasov on the same train we were changing to. We should follow him for the connection. How great, since we had no idea what track our next train would be on or what complications we might encounter. And our Hungarian is non-existent. He led us on a fast jog from track 16 to track 1, quite a distance at the huge Budapest train station.
As you can see, we had room……
Now we were on another train with friendly people. In spite of being among strangers who spoke a language we did not know, we found ways of connecting. Arleen saw that the man who led us to this train was reading a bible and found out he, too, was a minister, a Baptist minister. We could not understand each other but recognized each other’s calling. The man sitting across the isle from us had a big bottle of some liquid. He offered us some, and it turned out to be home made wine. He let us know that it was all natural. He motioned that we should drink some and then go to sleep. He didn’t realize that we had been awake since 8am the previous morning and it was now, after boarding the second train, 30 hours later, with no bed in sight. We also met a man who spoke a little English with a great deal of exaggeration. He said he was going near our hotel and would share a taxi with us. Great he could speak to the driver in Romanian. Then we met a couple who speak English beautifully and talked to them for some time. They offered to show us Brasov the next day. Wow!
We finally arrived at Brasov an hour late, 11:30pm, made our way to our hotel, by taxi, and found the reception open. It was a concern since the train was so late. No problem, lovely room with air conditioning and a lift. Heaven. We slept well.
Did I mention that it was over 90 degrees all this time, no? well it was.
No comments:
Post a Comment