Gara de Nord

Gara de Nord, the hub of the Romanian railway system and my way out. I had to stay somewhere that night; it might as well be on a train. And if it was it would have to be somewhere on the way to Hungary. Beyond those criteria I didn't much care.

I asked the ticket clerk about Brasov. It was 7.30pm: I'd just missed it. She pointed at the screen. The next one got in around midnight. I made her give me both the first and second class prices.

"Cluj?" She tapped the buttons and checked the prices and times. Again.

"Timisoara?" Again with the tapping. Each time, I hummed over the timing or haaed over the cost. First class, second class, sleeper?

"Oradea?" She smiled. It had just dawned on her that I was going to list every town I'd ever heard of, and that this could be a long evening. A rather pretty young girl behind asked for a pen, agreed that she spoke English and was roped into the madness.

When it was clear I was headed for Budapest the International train was suggested, not least because it wasn't handled by that clerk, I suspect. We traipsed, the girl and I, through the huge halls, decaying and emptied, headed for the information clerk, were sized up by a sharp-featured youth who could barely keep his eyelids at half-mast, exited that building and entered another, equally past its prime. There the girl left me to buy her ticket for the next day's train to the Danube Delta, back to her family. We had spent an hour together; she seemed eager to get away.

I, ever unsure, launched into my insane questioning again. It boiled down to this: either I paid 174 Lei for a second class seat to Budapest, leaving at midnight, or headed to the border, paying who knows what and tried to get to Budapest from there.

"Hang on," I said after about 15 minutes. I went back to the first clerk who entirely failed to suppress her emotions on seeing me again. She smiled wanly. We both knew what was coming, me because I'd failed to write down anything at all during our previous hour's fun, and she because after her years in the job she knew a berk when she saw one, and for the second time today, she was looking at one.

"Timisoara?" I said, trying to sound like I'd made a decision. Sort of.

She pulled the prices up and I recalled there was no second class available.

"Cluj?" It was 87 Lei.

"Ok," I said with uncertain finality. She tapped some more. I panicked. When I'd mentioned going to Cluj to the airport taxi driver, he'd simply asked "Why?" I would get there at 5.45am and my plans for Cluj were as magnificently malleable as all my other plans.

"No!" She looked up.

"Um, sorry." I fled.


Back at the other hall I tried to buy a ticket to Budapest.

"Just two minutes, my computer's broken. Five minutes."

Windows XP! No calling IT technicians, though, she fixed it herself while I loosely held my two 100 Lei notes. To my left a slim and muscly youth whom I'd noticed hanging around on my first visit slipped up to the next window. He was built for speed and in his cut-off T-shirt obviously wasn't going to Budapest.

I gripped my notes and prepared to throw them into the ticket office. His chance gone and the other ticket lady obviously ticked off by his stupid questions, he sloped off. I walked the other way.

I had a midnight ticket and three and a half hours to kill. I entered the world that is the Gara de Nord proper..