Going Solo in Eastern Europe

We waved goodbye to Rob, along with his girlfriend Kat and little daughter Charlie, and boarded the night train for Hungary. I had unfinished business in Budapest - I was there in July before a music festival, but didn't get to see half of the main sights. The city is split by the Danube - the regal Buda on the Western side, and the busier Pest on the Eastern. We took what must surely be one of the world's great bus rides - the No. 16 across the bridge to Buda.

After a couple of days Mike left for home, and I was by myself for the first time. My loneliness lasted for less than an hour, as I got talking to a group of Scousers at the train station who were also heading for Istanbul. They were stopping at Bucharest for the Romanian leg of the journey, whereas I would be getting off at Brasov in the heart of Transylvania. We settled into our carriages in good time, and at 23:30 the train left Budapest Keleti station bound for Romania.

A quick glance at Google Maps shows the countless number of small villages spread around Romania, with names such as Prod, Smig, and - my personal favourite - Vulcan. Around 90% of the population live in rural areas, and from the train you get a pretty good look at their farming technology. For the most part it's little more than a horse and plough, with kids carrying bundles of corn over their shoulders. If you're lucky you might see a tractor sat beside a field, but no one ever seems interested in using one.

Most of the roads I saw were dirt tracks, and you can spot them a mile off - look out for the enormous dust cloud trailing behind each vehicle. Often the roads are wide enough for only one lane, so any tractor you actually see in use will typically be holding up ten other vehicles, all crawling along behind one another in a dusty haze. Maybe that's why there are so few tractors - anyone driving one knows that he's blocking off half of the town, who are probably of a good mind to smash him up his rear end. Now if that's not a deterrent, then show me one.

Another distinct feature of Romanian villages is that almost every one of them has put their graveyard on the top of a hill, overlooking the town. I don't know if this is a superstitious tradition, or that Romanians take a perverse joy in showing off their dead people to the train-traveling bourgeoisie, but I'm glad it hasn't caught on in Shropshire.

They have irony in Romania now

You only have to venture a few miles from dirt-poor houses with no electricity and you're in Brasov, the tourist hub of Romania. Here you'll find designer boutiques selling top-brand jeans for at €30 a pop, and big hotels offering overpriced day tours to the nearby castles. The town itself is very pleasant, almost Mediterranean in its look and feel. I ate out with some people at my hostel, and ordered Gypsy stew with Peasant Potatoes. You can live like a King in Brasov for peanuts, but I restrained myself from ordering fillet stake and Rioja. No idea if that goes together anyway...

Not poverty

The next morning I took a train through the Transylvanian mountains, which were so gorgeous that I forgot to take pictures. I then had a 40-minute stop-off in Bucharest, where I rejoined the Scousers. I managed to squeeze in my first encounter with something that will surely become a familiar friend on my trip - a squat toilet. It was hidden away in the bowels of the main train station, guarded by a beast of a woman with hands like John Prescott. The fare was the equivalent of 5p, which, given the condition of the place, was reasonable. I approached the exercise in a careful and methodical manner, so as to increase the margin for error. For the most part it was textbook - that is until my triumphant yank of the dangling flush chain, which somehow resulted in flooding the whole cubicle. By some miracle I wasn't wearing sandals for a change. Summary: don't go to Bucharest for a dump.

It also has the world's second largest building: the vast palace that Nicolae Ceausescu built for himself as supreme leader of Romania. He saw fit to award himself over 6,000 rooms - a tad opulent for a man who was 5' 5". Hundreds of people had their homes demolished in order to build it, most of whom were forced to live in one of the many tower blocks that clutter the city. I counted at least 20 in a row as we were pulling into the station, and all of them looked pretty grim. Ceausescu was executed in the end - although they've yet to work out what to do wıth that palace.

Shove that up your Singapore Airlines

Our train was a Romanian sleeper service, which passed all the way through Bulgaria and onto Istanbul. We weren't the only British people on the train - we were soon joined by an older couple from next door, who had brought a healthy supply of malt whiskey and toilet roll (alas, I only got my hands on the latter.) Another solo passenger, Robin, swelled our ranks to eight. It was starting to feel like an episode of Benidorm written by Agatha Christie. We slipped the Romanian conductor a few notes for use of his fridge, and stashed away our beers and wine. (He also requested cigarettes, but all we could offer was cheese.) The Scousers had stocked up with a mini-banquet, including two whole chickens. This was a good idea.

The remains of the buffet

The Romanian side of the border...

... the Bulgarian side

The party atmosphere helped compensate for the progress of the train, which was slower than death. It took 18 hours to pass through Bulgaria, yet according to my rail map our route was no longer than Southampton to Glasgow. The architecture didn't change a great deal as we awoke to Turkey, with high-rise buildings still ubiquitous ("from shit'ole to shit'ole" as Anne the Scouser delicately put it.) But most of the journey was spent looking at the simple, beautiful Bulgarian countryside.

Bedtime...

There was a small hitch when crossing the Turkish border, which could have landed me in a lot of trouble. All UK nationals entering Turkey are required hand over a ten pound note at customs to have their visa stamped. Earlier I had stuck a tenner in my passport so as not to forget, as the border crossing was scheduled for 2:30 in the morning. I was awoken by the usual knock on the door by passport control, and I groggily crawled out of bed and got dressed. I had yet to realise that this was only the check for leaving Bulgaria, and not for the Turkish visa. I handed over my passport to the Bulgarian officer, who was surprised to find a crisp £10 note nestled inside. I'm not sure whether that's enough to bribe a Bulgarian, but he returned my passport unimpressed. I sheepishly removed the tenner and apologised for the mix-up, although he still gave me a thorough looking-over.

Turkey's fridge graveyard

Click and look for the far horizon...

Istanbul's answer to Sidcup

Istanbul!

All roads lead to Munich...

An enthusiastic companion

Welcome to the easy part of the trip - Western Europe. Many Germans have a basic command of English, but I felt like making a stab at German, since there'll be plenty of other opportunities to bark pigeon English at foreigners in the next few months. After a few days in Munich I had gotten my head around some essential German phrases, chief among them zwei helles bitte (two lagers please.) Now don't write off me and my brother as a pair of lager louts - drinking beer in Bavaria is pretty much the standard tourist experience. And what beer!


There's no such thing as bad beer in Munich. Even if you go to a tiny newsagents in a metro station at midnight, the cheapest beer you can buy will have won about five world beer awards. They usually cost around €1.50, so the equivalent in England would be a can of Strongbow (not that you'd be allowed to drink it on the train anyway, unlike Munich.)

We went out a couple of times with our cousin Rob's mates from the Max Planck institute, where he's doing his PhD. One of them was a Portuguese guy who spoke English in a thick Scottish accent. He explained that his Grandma had been Scottish and he got it off her. Unfortunately no one except for Me, Mike and Rob could understand what he was saying. Poor guy.

In terms of public omnipresence, this man appears to have replaced the swastika

All German trains are run by the government-owned Deutsche Bahn company, and represents a considerably better customer experience than having to choose between Arriva Trains Wales or London Midland, depending on how late I want to be. We took the BOB (Bayern Oberland Bahn) train to Tegernsee in rural Bavaria, near the Austrian border. The town itself was lifeless, but the views around the lake were beautiful. We were so bored in the town that we decided to walk up and down the hill, which was inadvertently a good idea.


Back to Munich - here they design their public spaces for its minimum purpose and nothing more. Nothing is superfluous or wasted. On the U-Bahn (underground), none of the doors will slam open at every stop like London - each one has to be manually pressed by a passenger. The Germans can't get their heads around the purpose of a door which opens only for no one to walk through it. And to be honest, they have a point. Nor are there are any St. Pancras-style lovers' embrace sculptures here - what's the point of that in a train station?! Maybe if it was a solar powered sculpture which fed electricity to the train lines, then it might be condidered.

"YEAH, I'M IN MUNICH......... NAH, IT'S RUBBISH"

Unlike London, every U-Bahn will, arrive in exact 5/10/15 minute intervals, depending on the line. They are never early and most certainly never late. This means that your typical Bavarian can be sat at his breakfast table each morning before his daily commute and know the exact second in which leave the house, the exact pace at which to walk to the station, and the exact moment he will arrive on the platform as the train glides up. The downside to this is that if your timing is shoddy you will have a to wait much longer by London standards for the next one. But, says our imaginary German friend as he rides away, if you miss the train then that's your fault. Bye!

The Rathaus

Sometimes, though, certain aspects of Munich's drive for efficiency backfire on the average person. For instance, if you want to take an elevator to a different floor, you have only a 50:50 chance of going in the direction you want. There is only ever one lift and one lift shaft, so you are effectively competing with people on a different floor. You press the button and an arrow will illuminate, either Up or Down. You have no choice - it's entirely down to which direction the lift is currently headed. This results in a system that, in both the short and long-term, is unsatisfactory for pretty much everyone. I say it's a 50:50 chance - I swear it never goes the way you want it to. I must have tried about ten times in our hostel and only two or three times did I get where I wanted.

So the Germans have devised a system which, for an individual to achieve his short term aim, another person is screwed over. It's pretty similar when queuing - Rob says that he has queued up in a bank, only for the person behind him to form a "second queue" and leapfrog him. I suppose this is the same in most countries outside of Britain, where we bloody love a good queue. There are some traits which are just plain rude though - at an Art Brut gig in Munich on Friday night, I was pushed almost off my feet by a German woman. I'm not exactly a powerhouse myself, but I've yet to be physically debased by a female like that. Up yours Frau!

Munich is altogether the cleanest, safest large city that I've ever been to. The flip side to this is that it's not as 'cool' as Berlin, or London, or Prague etc. The kids here dress kind of the same, and there's not so much expression of individualism. Berliners, for instance, are much more adventurous with their fashion 'statements'. Bavarians are aware of this cultural rivalry, so much so that one nightclub event here is called 'So Not Berlin.' This is a pretty trendy name for an event, until you imagine a German person saying it.

At Haptbahnhof, and it's goodbye to clean, orderly Western Europe

Budapest & Transylvania up next. I forgot to pack a crucifix....