Paris in the springtime.. wait, summer

The student bus dropped us off at 7am on a nondescript street in eastern Paris. It was cool, overcast and I was wearing shorts, a T-shirt and jandals. My legs and feet were swollen and my left foot so covered in blisters that it felt like a grumpy hedgehog had been surgically implanted under the skin. I'd had two hours sleep, thanks to a passport check and two 'courtesy stops' and now I had nowhere to stay.

I piqued the curiosity of the few passers-by by changing my shirt and shorts on the pavement, then found the Metro.

I figured the Gare du Nord would be as good a place as any to ask about cheap accommodation, paid my €1.50 fare and headed there.


In twenty years the design of the Paris Metro has changed substantially. The trains are significantly newer - some are without their connecting doors, creating travelling tubes six or more carriages long - and the stations are on the whole cleaner and brighter. Shops, especially at the busier stations, include boutique eateries and the signage throughout has been revamped.

Taking a long-overdue leaf out of the London Underground's book, the Metro map has been redrawn in simplified format. The signs however were clearly designed by a Frenchman with English tourists in mind, as they lure you ever onwards before simply ceasing. In the Gare du Nord they took me to one side of the station and dumped me there. A station map showed the information bureau to be on the other side.

"Bloody frogs," I said, not for the first time in my life.

The Blue Planet Hostel (€21 as opposed to the more common €50) said it was at 28 Boulevard Diderot near the Gare de Lyon but that turned out to be a bag shop. I found the hostel tucked around the corner and looked forward to a lie down.

"Here's your receipt. Come back at three-thirty." It was 9.30am.

Definitely an old priests' hostel

My throat was sore again, probably aided by a good snore. My room-mate was in no condition to complain, he had come in drunk sometime in the wee hours and quickly gone to bed; he emerged at 1.30pm.

I wrote up notes and typed up blog entries, but I had a hangover and needed coffee.

They had changed the guard at the concierge’s station, a cupboard of a room containing a small bed, mini fridge, 14” TV, phone and a collection of keys.

“You like Turkish coffee?” I nodded and got instructions. Outside, walking through a rain that was so slight it didn’t wet the concrete and so fine you had to keep moving to get even faintly damp, I mused that for supper I’d been pointed at Chinese food and now Turkish coffee for breakfast. Hungarians didn’t seem particularly proud of their own cuisine.

I gave up for the search for the Three Guys coffee shop and traipsed back via the corner shop where I bought iced tea, as strangely popular here as in Romania.

“I couldn’t find One Guy, let alone Three Guys,” I complained when I got back.

“Sorry, I meant it was run by three guys.”

The hostel was obviously the priests’ lodging for the Catholic church over the way. Long since used as such, the floor tiles were faded and worn, plaster peeled from the walls and paintings of dead priests gazed down from on high. The stair rods and carpet were gone but the brass eyelets remained. The rooms had names outside, the ghosts of the last occupants, and inside, sometimes through two foot thick walls, lightly constructed bunk beds, tables and cupboards jostled for space.

The bathrooms on the ground floor were units of plastic. Shower cubicles, all curtainless, operated on timer buttons. On the first floor they were merely tiled, and blocked. Hair smothered the plug-holes in the sinks too.

Rudimentary kitchens, consisting only of a fridge, crockery, a table and a sink, were on each floor. Outside the barred windows of each room was a playground of sorts - an asphalt yard, caged off from the street and with a couple of benches and a hopscotch pattern cut into the tarmac. I revised my assumption.

Later on I told an American backpacker that the place must have been a church-run orphanage at one time. We were waiting patiently as the latest concierge, who spoke only Hungarian, contemptuously waved us away each time we tried to ask anything. He indicated we should sit and wait. The American had arrived after me and as he sat down, after being shooed away like an annoying fly, he asked me how long I'd been waiting.

"Fifteen minutes," I said and it suddenly felt like a long time.

"Sprichts du Deutsch" I said, using the too familiar form and was dismissed again, silently.
About ten minutes later, just as the novelty of the situation was wearing thin, the concierge from the coffee debacle turned up, apologising. The American booked in and I changed rooms, ready for Jan's arrival.

I mentioned to him my theory about the place being an old orphanage and he told me the real story. It was in fact a Lutheran boarding school in current use. The children would be back on September 1st and this was the second year that the school had been used as a cheap hostel during the holidays.

It was hard to imagine it being true - the weeds, the worn fittings, well everything.. but come September 1st, come the children, filling the high-ceilinged rooms and halls with their chatter and being hushed by priests..

Keleti Station

Budapest's Keleti station is the kind of station that train-spotters love and other stations aspire to. It is huge in the way that all good termini used to be before they got all modern and clever.

At one end is a giant window that would grace a cathedral. Down each side a jumble of stalls and shops sell kebabs, here called gyros, unbelievably creamy-looking ice-creams, tickets, newspapers, cigarettes, beer and all the necessities and paraphernalia of travel.

People hurry to and from platforms, look at the information boards and head for the Metro, the exits and the information kiosk, tucked away in one corner. In the melee a group of people play chess, an impromptu band plays and the occasional panicking traveller tries to work out where his train is. Taxi drivers pounce and people with rooms to let ply their trade.

A white haired granny tried to push a room for 7000 Hungarian Forints (HuF) – twice the going rate.

“Good luck, I’ve got no money.” I said. I went into the information parlour. Three or four sallow youths fielded the various woes and queries of groups of travellers, all foreign.

When I emerged, all the more knowledgeable, I made for the ATM and used my foolproof system for getting the perfect amount of cash out – I requested the second highest amount on offer. Regardless of exchange rates and costs of living, this usually does me for 2-4 days.

Outside the station a tangle of roads, tram-lines, zebra crossings and traffic islands played host to weeds, rubbish and a mess of traffic. Amongst the detritus of civilisation, the dust, the withered grass and the legs of pedestrians, down and outs slept in Hungary’s hottest weather on record.

All this played out in an area that could have housed a 50,000 seat stadium. Around the edges huge fin de siècle buildings boasted of past glory. At their height they would have looked upon the gentry riding past in their horse-drawn carriages , long before Europe dissolved into WWI. Now the glory was faded, but the spirit was unbroken even if the concrete often was.

The skyline, high above, was of huge roofs, leaded sheeted and tiled, with the odd onion dome frivolity. Two or three rows of windows in the roofs alone, hinted at the size within. Three metre windows lit high-ceilinged parlours and bedrooms. Closer to street level the unwanted was kept out by intricate wrought-ironwork. Great solid oak doors, battered from the decades, hid behind ornate gates. Occasional alleys allowed a glimpse into the courtyards secreted within.

At Astoria, where I had to get out of the bus, the massive scale continued. The buildings climbed skywards along wide avenues. At the crossroads formed by two giant boulevards a Metro station sucked people underground. Eight exits, one for each side of each of the four streets, confused me so I recourse to my other brilliant tactic, that of following the prettiest girl going in roughly the right direction. It didn’t work – it rarely does – but I got my bearings and re-emerged, meerkat-like, metres from a narrow side lane.

Concrete frontages blackened over the ages mixed with the sooty plane trees to darken the street several notches. Walking through a short tunnel I emerged into a courtyard. Balconies rose four or five storeys high, the sort that should have washing lines stretched from one side to the other. At the bottom, talking quietly on a pile of rubble, three workmen took a break.

Upstairs I looked out of the window as a helpful guy phoned around to find a place that did have room. In a doorway across the street I spotted some high-class graffiti – ‘Kiri te Kanawa’ – sprayed in foot high letters.

Following his instructions less than carefully I immediately got lost. Even following pretty girls held limited interest for me in the stifling heat. Eventually I found the bus stop opposite a heavily tiled synagogue and rode the bus the prescribed three stops. Opposite a twin-spired Catholic church a friendly troll was trying to lure two backpackers through the gates into a desiccated garden. Behind, a five metre door stood ajar.

Giving up on the others, he beckoned me in. They had a room, though I was lucky: the Formula One Grand Prix was in town and rooms were scarce and prices were climbing.

Like many Hungarians he spoke only German as a second language.

“Ah, New Zealand!” he said when he saw my registration.

“Sehr gut. Australia nicht so gut.”

Disfigured by an unfortunate collection of facial warts big and small, including one which formed a permanent drip under his nose, he pointed at some containers of food.

“Kina” he said, using the Hungarian for ‘Chinese’.

“Ist gut?”

I was still a little confused by what I thought was a sudden splash of Maori in the conversation, but recovered enough to get directions. As a side trip I went to a small corner shop: I had to try a Hungarian beer. They were all cheaper than Coke.

In mime I was told that the one I had chosen was okay, but improved markedly the more I drank Five was the recommended number. I bought one and headed to the takeaway.

Eight dollars bought more than I could eat. Back in the hostel, the troll saw my supper and with a great flourish, bowed and wished me “Gut appétit.”

Afterwards I checked my emails, showered and slept properly for the first time in four days.

Welcome to Hungary

Hungary welcomed us with immediate delays. We sat and watched goldfinches bathe in the puddle of a leaky pipe for thirty minutes.

When we moved it was into a very different country. New roads were under construction, new houses, even new railway track was being laid. Pylons waited empty for cables to be slung, factories had new roofs, cars and trucks were busier, cleaner, newer. Graffiti sprung up in great swathes and rubbish was everywhere. Beyond the towns fields were the hedgeless expanses of Western Europe.

I asked the guard in my best mime whether we should put our clocks back. He assured me we shouldn’t and I passed the information to my fellow travellers. We were two hours from our due arrival time. An hour later I approached the guard again.

“One hour to Budapest?” I asked, making one circuit of my watch with my finger.

“Yes, yes. Budapest, one,” he agreed.

Again I passed the news to the others. An hour later we pulled into Szolnok; we were two hours from Budapest. And the station clock was an hour out..

I decided to beat a retreat into the toilet. After six countries and three days I was getting a bit ripe. I locked the door and put my bag on the toilet seat. A tiny metal washbasin was fed by a thin spout operated by a foot-pedal. In the rolling train there were only two positions, off or full on, the latter causing the water to slam against the basin and scatter everywhere.

I stripped for action and the train promptly stopped. No using the toilet while the train is in the station – everyone knows that; to do so would attract a knock at the door. I waited while feet climbed up the steps and then receded. We started again. Barely had I shaved when we again stopped. Still unmolested but definitely disturbed – I had visions of arriving at Budapest naked and wet – I soaped what I could as we rolled off.

Sudsy water washed to the floor. Slipping and squirting, dabbing and splashing, I did the best I could, packed up my stuff and left with what dignity I could muster.

“Achtung, liebe!” the hairy German said as she surveyed the dripping scene.

As we slipped through the outskirts of Budapest I threw the CRAP down the toilet. It seemed appropriate: it tasted as it was labelled. I kept the lid as a souvenir.

Transylvania by moonlight - no vampires!

I felt a bit of a cheat leaving Romania immediately but the truth is I could never stay there long.

Travelling alone is always a series of gambles with calm periods amongst the storms. Go with the wrong guy to change money, find a cheap hotel or an internet cafe and you could lose more than your shirt. The result of knowing this is that you are always on your guard – for the guy slipping up to the next ticket window, for the piece of luggage left momentarily unattended, for the directions that seem wrong, the advice that seems suspect, the eyes, the hands, the body language..

After a while it overwhelms your ‘holiday’, taints your views, prejudices your notions.

It had been a long time since my nine month trek across the world but the nerve-tightening awareness was all too familiar. Thus when I found myself alone for a 17 hour journey in a compartment I could lock, I did so and enjoyed an oasis of pure bliss.

I love trains more than any other form of transport. They offer the scenery denied by planes and ships and a relentless rhythm that cars can never achieve. True they are inflexible in direction and destination, but within them they offer an unequalled freedom of movement.

I watched as Bucharest went by. It’s hardly fair to judge a city by an airport, an arterial route and a railway station, but I did so. The houses near the airport were alike in that their roofs wouldn’t stop a light shower, such was the state of the tiles. The Gara de Nord was stationed in downtown Beirut and the houses I was now looking at had little or no glass in many windows, judging by the broken reflection of the moon.

The conductor came and went and I relocked the door, made a bed of the bench and turned the light off. Brasov and other stops came and went in the small hours. No-one disturbed me.

At 4am I got up and looked out of the window. In the moonlight we sneaked through the low hills and woods of Transylvania.

At 6am I woke to a dry mouth and sore throat. My underwear had about 25,000kms on the clock and I ponged. I was happy.

For the next few hours I watched the rural Romanian countryside wake up. The sun rose about a dozen times as it ducked and dived amongst the hill tops. Fields of sunflowers raised their heads, mist cleared, school-kids wandered down dusty roads, men and women went about their chores.

Insanely long, thin strips of crops flicked by. From the air they had looked like the teeth of thousands of combs hachuring the landscape. On the ground they might measure five metres by several hundred.

Maize, fallow, sunflowers, grass or freshly turned earth, each showed signs of the oppressive heat. In neighbouring Moldova they were waiting for the worst drought in 60 years to break.

Romania had scores of heat-related deaths, Hungary hundreds. Even at 7am and 100km/h the air was warm and sweet.

I gave up bear-in-the-woods spotting – Romania has half of Europe’s bear population – as we came down onto the plain again. All too soon we left behind the bucolic charm of a lost century, the haystacks built around a central stick and capped with a little waterproof hat, like great thimbles, the cattle byres, horses and carts, dusty roads and the vegetable gardens. This was a place even Caucescu had limited success in penetrating. As a goodbye, a gaggle of twenty or more geese walked unhurriedly along the hard earth of a village road and the train said goodbye.

Now we approached the border at Arad and Romania tried harder to be modern. I didn’t like it. We passed two cooling towers waiting for a power station to be built. They had been waiting a while, judging by the state of them. I slept again.

Somewhere along the way I gained a room-mate. As the train was being reshuffled a guitar-toting, hair-over-his-eyes youth got in: he’d been in the wrong carriage and narrowly avoided an unwanted tour of Romanian parts unknown. Alex, from Guernsey, told me he had come directly from 6 weeks in Moldova as a volunteer.

“Was it nice?”

“Beautiful!”

Impeccably polite, he told me to let him know if he disturbed me, as he put some earphones in to listen to music while I got out. On the platform an anxious German lady, whose idea of a holiday clearly included not shaving her armpits, fretted that the train wasn’t going to end up in Budapest.

“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” she asked a guard. He shrugged and indicated that he didn’t. She ignored this and jabbered away in German until he shrugged again and walked off.

“A lot of Hungarians speak German,” she said. We were still in Romania.

As the train neared the border crossing we were shooed into first class by a very uptight guard who didn’t appreciate one little bit my pretending first not to understand and then to prefer second class. To be fair, she was a little less uptight before my antics. Later it became clear why we had been moved, as school-kids and Hungarians started to occupy our old quarters. I felt a little bad - she should have left me there to suffer the fate of a thousand children!

For now, passports were checked at a station with ‘Romania’ in huge letters and a bigger flag complete with eagle rampant.

Evening on the Gara de Nord

I was pounced on almost immediately by a stocky guy with ID hung around his neck, although even a cursory examination revealed it to be nth generation photocopies. I asked where the train would go from as even the ticket lady hadn't known.

"Probably 10, but check later"

Where could I find a phone? He pulled his cell phone out offered me its use. I had to get in touch with Jan: I needed to let him know I would be early.

After digging around in my rucksack I found a string of numbers and he punched them in. He passed me the phone and I heard a recorded announcement. In Chinese. We checked the number: it was what I'd told him. He started to chuckle about how many digits there were - 15 - and wondered out loud whether that could be right. He'd already braced me for a big bill by telling me how expensive calls from Romania were, but I figured he'd just played with the phone's cost multiplier and I'd replied that I wouldn't go over 10 Lei. For someone who knew all about international call costs, he seemed unduly excited by punching in so many numbers.

The cost, when he showed me was 14,2 Lei. I made him sweat by asking about internet cafés and said, in passing as we walked to the exit, that 10 Lei should be enough. He pointed and gestured at where I should look for the internet cafe and then looked hopefully expectant. Fifteen Lei came out with some reluctance and as my reward he shook my hand and pointed at a cabin selling "cheap beer, my friend." Then he was gone.


Gara de Nord is a wide length of concrete roofed by an arched Victorian-style iron and glass roof. At right angles the arse end of fourteen tracks abut. On the platforms fixed plastic seats are given scant shelter by small roofs angled in a way last popular in the 1950s.

On the platforms proper, quiet groups awaited their trains. Dogs begged for scraps and a group of gypsy children ran sorties away and back for no apparent reason.

On the main concourse things couldn't have been more different. With exits to the Metro at either end and one in the middle, there was a constant flow of people. Serving their needs are diners, pizza shops, kebab stalls, a supermarket and a 'non-stop pani pat'. In the best position, straddling a corner, was a McDonalds. Tables and chairs gave it a Champs Élysées café look and as the sun went down and shadows swallowed the dirt, the station became almost pleasant.

For the smokers and drinkers, which seemed to include everyone, small kiosks displayed their smokes and snacks. Fridges of beer, arranged like outstretched arms, embraced the thirsty.

I wanted the internet. I was coming a day early to Budapest and I still needed to let Jan know. Now well after hours, the shops that were open plied their trade through small serving hatches. The internet café was not one of them. It was firmly shut.

Back inside, the night had erased the harshness from the day and the people seemed more relaxed.

In the cafés and diners the patrons lent an air of permanence that the masses had none of. Here and there eddies formed in the flow, around sweepers, the policeman, those checking the departure board and around the headscarved, black-dressed lady who sat, bad leg outstretched, her crutch to her side, calling out a conversation and laughing at the responses.

It was 10pm: no sign of 'Budapest' on the board.

I had a 'cheap beer, my friend' : at 2,5 Lei (NZ$1.40) it was cheap. When that was finished I took another, plus a kebab (8,5 Lei) and wandered up an unused platform. Opposite me a group of girls waited for their train, laughing and looking. A gypsy boy, no older than 7, cart-wheeled up to me, said something and cartwheeled on. His older brother did cartwheels on another platform. Inside the kebab, amongst the usual suspects, were cold fries. It was 11pm.

I went to the supermarket and came out with 2 litres of imported beer (5,5 Lei), a packet of chips and a small tub which caught my eye. It wasn't the legend 'Salata de Icre' that did it, it was the word below, in big red letters: CRAP.

11.15pm and I still couldn1t see Budapest on the board. One line, all the other details correct, displayed Arad as its destination. I checked it out - the train changed there, but I was to keep my seat while it changed around me.

There was one last thing to do. Down some stairs tucked behind the pizza shop was the tiled splendour of the station toilets. I peered down and saw a troll on guard. Turkish music blared from a cassette recorder which nestled amongst a mass of papers on a desk. Behind the desk sat the troll, old and fat and the ruler of all she surveyed. I went down and handed her 1 Leu. I paused for my 20 bani change but she dismissed me with a wave.

Inside was no place to loiter. When I came out a girl was paying. She got her change then picked two pieces of paper from the desktop and went in.


The train arrived. I walked up the length trying to find carriage 142. There were more than one carriage with second class seat number 75, so it seemed important: I didn't want to end up in the wrong section and find myself in Venice.

I asked a uniform.

"Three from engine. Three, three."

It was a first class carriage. I asked another uniform. He looked confused and asked his friend. I allowed myself a small panic.

"Yes," he said pointing to the same carriage.

"It's first, prima," I said.

"No, first, second. Half, half."

And indeed it was. I swung myself aboard and walked the corridor. I was the first to arrive.

Seat 75 was in a six-person compartment consisting of two opposing benches. Above each seat was a print showing some an in Hungary. Keeping the travellers apart were raisable armrests. two tiny tables jutted from the open window.

I hung my arms on the window and leaned out, watching the train load. It wasn't busy and the few rucksacks that got into my carriage didn't make it to my compartment.

As the train pulled away, doors wide open, it confirmed what I had hoped: I had the carriage to myself!

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..