I woke up on Monday and was really starting to get anxious about the next step. I went ou to the kitchen for breakfast and was talking to Tibi about the nerves of going to Budapest alone. Tibi told me he was Hungarian and they all spoke English. This made me feel slightly more comfortable. I had to check out of Casa Timar by 12:00 PM as they had another booking for the room. My train was not until 8:15 PM.
What was I going to do for 8 hours? I spoke with Milli about the possibility of staying until later in the day but she confirmed there was a booking and needed the room, but was more than happy for me to leave my pack there. "Ok, well at least that's something", I thought. I had to walk into Brasov and change my Lei for Euro and return the bottles to the store, hopefully that would eat into some time.
I got my laundry back from Milli and finished packing. It turns out one of my socks vanished, I guess that happens. I checked out of the room and it was 330 Lei (about $100.00 AUD), not bad for 3 nights, and Tibi and Milli are fantastic hosts. I left my big pack behind at Casa Timar and set off on foot for Brasov. It was daylight so it would be easier to navigate my way around town and back. I walked around Brasov for a little while. While walking down one street some elderly gypsy lady asked me something in Romanian. I said "I don't speak Romanian" and kept walking. She grabbed me on the arm to pull me back and said "Money, Money, Money", in English. I just ignored her and kept walking.
I walked up to the end of Brasov town centre and used the ATM. I decided to eat some McDonalds to pass the time. Then thought I should buy some cigarettes before I exchange my money. I found a cigarette booth and bought 2 packets of Dunhill Blues.
I walked around looking at all the exchange houses to find the best rate. They all offered the same rate, some took commission whilst others didn't. Some were down alleyways and I didn't like the look of them so I settled on Western Union. It's at least a name I know and it was on the main street. I had to keep some Lei for the taxi to the station and for food and drink while I waited for the train. I exchanged about 570 lei for 130 Euro and kept about 70 Lei for whatever i might need.
I still needed to return the bottles to the store on the way back to Casa Timar. The girl had told me to return them after 2:00 PM, by this time it was only 1:00 PM. I had to kill an hour. Brasov is not a big city, I must have done about 5 laps trying to kill the time. My legs were sore and I needed to piss. I remembered seeing some public toilets in the park on my walk in and thought I would go there to use them. I went downstairs under this cafe place in the park where the toilets were. As I got to the bottom of the stairs, I was slightly confused by what confronted me.
There was a turnstyle with some sort of device attached to it. It seemed I had to pay to access the toilet. I deciphered the sign and apparently it cost 1 lei (about 30 cents). "Ok, what the hell", i thought and fed a Lei note into the machine. The toilets were nice, clean and warm and I guess that's because noone payed 1 lei to use them. This was the first time I had used a public toilet in Romania outside of a restaurant or bar. It took me by surprise.
Anyway, mission accomplished, I headed back to the store to return the bottles. It was about 2:05 PM when I entered the store. I returned the bottles then went to Casa Timar to pick up my bag. I wasted a bit of time at Casa Timar, before asking Milli to call me a cab at around 3:00 PM. This meant I now ONLY had 5 hours to wait at Brasov Station.
The cab came, the driver didn't try to scam me. The fare to Brasov station was 5.70 Lei which at 1.30 Lei per Km for the 3.2 Km (approx) trip it was about right. I gave the driver a 10 Lei note and told him 'No change". Given the reputation of taxi drivers in Romania, I thought it was good to encourage those doing the right thing.
I grabbed my bag and made my way into the station. Now if you google Gara Brasov (Brasov Station), you will most likely see pictures of this nice looking glass panelled station. Maybe this was the case when it first opened, but the reality is something very different now. I walked through the main door and there were 3 gypsy women asking for money. I ignored them like everybody else did and entered the main hall. It was old looking and cold, and not well lit. It looked a little bit dirty too. I looked around for an indication of where to go, but had no idea. I went upstairs and sat down. My legs were still aching from the days before and walking around Brasov for 2 hours didn't help the cause.
I looked around for an empty seat. I wrote earlier about not really seeing any gypsies in Romania, but if you want to find them go to Brasov Station. It seemed like all the mutants in Romania gathered here not for reasons of getting a train but just because they could. I'm not even going to detail all the things I saw but it made me feel kind of sad that these people had nothing better to do then hang around the train station. They obviously weren't going anywhere because the same people were still there 5 hours later when I left.
I guess it's no different to the train stations in Western Sydney or the Central Coast. It seems for some reason these people just have nothing better to do than hang around the train station. I took a seat that was in a space clear of the 3 or 4 different groups that seemed to all know each other. I sat there for awhile and looked around. It's quite a busy station. A cute girl came and sat next to me. After about 10 minutes some grotty looking old man sat on the other side of her and started talking to her. She turned around to face me and I just gave her a smile and rolled my eyes. She smiled as to acknowledge she agreed with me and continued to watch the people stream through the doors.
I went down for a cigarette. I had to carry my backpack with me as I wasn't going to leave it unattended with all the people around. On my way back in I decided now would be a good time to find out where I was supposed to go when the time came. I went into the ticket office and asked the woman behind the counter. She explained to me I needed to go downstairs through the tunnel and onto platform 4.
I went down for a walk to make sure I knew where I was meant to go and it was easy enough. I stayed on the platform for about 20 minutes and had a cigarette. The temperature was dropping pretty quickly. It was meant to be -8 degress celcius that night and at about 4:30 PM it was already fucking cold. The station had no WiFi, so I was getting slightly bored just sitting there. I texted with Miss C for awhile. I found a toilet at the station and again had to pay, this time it was 1.50 Lei.
Anyway, the 5 long hours finally passed and I made my way to platform 4 to get the train. It was very cold by this time. It was now 8:00 PM and I was standing on the platform trying to keep my fingers from falling off even with gloves on. 2 gypsy kids were running around the rail yard and they came and asked me for money, They didn't speak English so I pretended I didn't understand. Eventually they went away, but they persisted for awhile. I smoked one last cigarette and the train came 5 minutes later. I was in Car 421, it was the last car on the train. It was a sleeper car with compartments made for 2 people. I got on the train and no more than 3 minutes after we left the station, the conductor knocked on my door.
He looked at my ticket and said "You didn't pay for the private room". I thought he meant I couldn't stay in there because I was the only one in there. I said "I paid for a double compartment". He said "Oh, so you payed the extra for noone else to come in here?". I said "No". He said, "Do you want to pay the extra for the private room". "Oh...here we go", I thought to myself. He went on on to explain that I could pay for noone else to come in the compartment. "Officially, it is 50 Euro", he says, "Unofficially, without paperwork, it is 20 Euro". I thought about telling him I would take my chances as I knew that the likelyhood of someone else coming was almost zero, but then I thought, in order to avoid any hassles I am better off just giving him 20 euros.
I read about this scam many times. It seems every foreigner who gets an overnight train in Europe will experience this. So once that was done, I locked the door and settled in, then fell asleep for an hour or so. I woke up at exactly 10:00 PM. I started to watch a movie on the laptop but decided I wouldn't finish it so I tried to go back to sleep and eventually did. Hopefully there would be no problems from now on. I would be in a whole different country tomorrow, but I will miss Romania.
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