Sunday, August 2: After an overnight in Budapest, it's onward slog to Targu friggin' Mures, Romania. Around noon I board a squarish, slab- sided passenger car of what looks to me like an awful, third-world train -- in fact, a typical Romanian model -- at Nyugati (Western Station), the most run-down of Budapest's three railway stations, and things suddenly get very real.
Including delays, the journey to Targu Mures takes a full ten hours (not allowing for the hour ahead that I set my watch upon reaching the border), two hours behind schedule. For the entire trip I sit opposite an old Romanian woman, one of those who could be anywhere between 60 and 90, with her face frozen in an expression of permanent disappointment. What she's disappointed about I don't find out (but I guess it has something to do with nobody else in the car speaking Romanian).
I soon regret buying a second-class ticket. The compartment boasts elderly vinyl seats and threadbare curtains bearing the Romanian Railways logo, and in the August heat it soon becomes a sweatbox. I stand at the windows to get some relief, alongside a group of about 20 students from Palermo, Sicily, heading out on a group Dracula tour. I ask one of them about towns to visit on their island, since I've never been. A young man tells me something that sounds like "Vipettera." I've never heard of this place and ask him to say it again. "Vipettera," he responds. "Vipettera." Finally, he asks for a pen and writes: "Can you repete please?"
(For the record, the towns they recommend are Palermo, Agrigento, Segesta, Taormina, Selinunte, Sciacca, Erice, and Siracusa. "There are many beautiful towns in the western end," the students add.)
The train is held at the Romanian border for half an hour. My passport is taken by a Romanian customs official, who then, to my chagrin, spirits it away into a building on the other side of the tracks. " Politie [police] - prost!" the old Romanian woman emphatically spits at me. (I know that "prost" means "free" or "available" in Slovene, but as this doesn't make much sense and I know she's not speaking Slovene, I make a mental note and later find out that "prost" is Romanian for "stupid.")
As soon as we cross the border, the buildings appear shabbier, the people poorer and more colorful. (In terms of living standards, Romania is to Hungary what Hungary is to Slovenia, or what Slovenia is to Italy or the USA.) The men wear cheap brown felt hats that perch ill-fittingly on the top of their heads. The women wear head scarves and lug around heavy loads in bags made of cheap woven material. Eventually, my passport is returned (as a fortunate American, I am not charged for a visa) and we chug onwards into the new land, the old country.
Once over the border, the level Hungarian plain immediately gives way to low hills and factories with giant smokestacks. I gaze at endless rows of horribly ugly railroad cars, seemingly of World War II vintage, resting along sidings. A few hours later we pass through a factory town where the smoke is so thick it obscures all scenery, and bluish-gray toxic fumes invade the cabin despite my shutting the windows as tight as possible; coughing in disbelief, I hold my handkerchief tight against my mouth. It's like rattling around inside an automobile muffler. Fortunately, after a few minutes (which seemed, of course, like an eternity) the pollution abated.
Eventually we leave the factories behind and I see a green landscape out of time, with haystacks shaped like upturned baked apples, with a long stick protruding upwards from the center. I see grazing cows and the odd goat, charming cottages and leafy meadows, not unlike parts of rural Slovenia.
In the Cluj-Napoca station in Transylvania, in the boxy blue train stopped opposite ours, a fat man stands shirtless with his belly pressed against the dusty window. I notice a Coke machine in the station, and a sign advertising Hollywood American cigarettes.
At 10:19 p.m. in the Razboieni station, somewhere in Transylvania, a young man strolls by wearing a wide-brimmed black hat and a cape. (Most of the traditional costuming in Europe is done as a show for tourists. In Romania, by and large, it's the real thing.) Inside our car, an accordionist rests his instrument on the seat facing me. Toto (or is that Tito?), I don't think we're in Slovenia anymore. As the train draws closer to its destination, I try to concentrate on the paperback novel I've brought.
We finally chug into Mures at around a quarter past 11. I collect my baggage and trudge across the dimly lit tracks, not knowing what to expect. I only know I feel as if I've reached the end of the world.
About five of us travelers are met by Attila (it's a common Hungarian name), the lead Outward Bound guide, and a tall man whose name I don't catch, and walk the half-mile or so to the OB HQ in downtown Mures, located in one of those Central European urban courtyards set a ways back from the street. We're all beat from the journey and without too much ceremony, brush our teeth in the office sink and sack out in our sleeping bags in the back room of the small two-room office. I unroll mine across the narrow yellow couch I've been assigned, crawl in, and manage to get a small amount of fitful sleep.