Jan bails

Seems Jan isn't quite the action hero I thought he was..

Mike. You are crazy. The moral in Romania is zero, Police is not working at all, you can be killed for 10 $. Mike you need 3 days for Prague and 3 days for Mountains. Remember they are stealing via train windows. Other system is a 3-6 gypsies make a circle and take a knife on you, sorry don’t be idiot. Muslims have better moral then Romanians. Your chance to survive in Romania is 40% if you are going through country by slow train. People are killing for food cans. Sorry I am not willing to take this risk, is too high and in Hungary is totally nothing, totally flat country, only Budapest is OK. you are not pissing me off, but you are crazy, you have not idea what are you doing, that is like walk through Bronx in midnight. Save the time for CR and France. If you have problem I can give you some money in CR. CR is free, you are my guest. In Europe is not a difference between normal train and express, only extra pay is for luxuries express and TGW-Pendolino. Probably best is to meet you in Budapest if you don’t like something more secure. Jan

Well.. Diana did tell me to avoid Gypsies, but I think they are over-concerned. Do 60% of single travellers really disappear from the Romanian Railways system? I guess I'll have to find out..

OK, I've trawled the internet, starting with a Google search for "Romania unsafe" and, when all that appeared unsafe was abortions, "Romania unsafe -abortions". That still left an awful lot of medical entries and, after two pages, I gave up looking.

I did find http://www.travelpod.com/ and many entries asserting how safe Romania was (of course they may have been written by the 40% who made it..) so I sent Jan this raspberry:

You giant girl with whiskers! OK, just to make you happy I will NOT travel by train! I shall hitch-hike. See you in Budapest.