This is the train that was made famous in Europe with the 2022 entry to Eurovision, a song called, ‘the train.’ The song is still played in Moldova, I heard it a few times and it was good to hear something I recognised. I have posted a link to the video here. You can click on translate to get the words in English.
I suppose the first thing to say is that my experience was nothing like what you see in the video, for one thing there was no restaurant car. Bring food and plenty of water with you because there is none for sale on the train. I had paid for a compartment for myself, as I reckon with my snoring, no-one would ever want to share with me. The cost was only £11.00 for a 14 hour trip. The first 15 minutes in Bucharest would cost me a lot more – but more on that later.
The station in Chisinau is lovely and it’s worth getting there a little early to look around it. I think it’s the only station I have come across that has a hostel within it. There are also some model railways and aquariums (both things that go around in circles!)
I needed to make use of the toilet at the station (damn this IBS) and it was 2 Lei to get in (about 10p UK / 13 cents US – make sure you have coins with you) and was a squat toilet. Ah well needs must!
The station has about 6 platforms and I was hoping that the train would be on platform 1 for easy access – but no … I had to pull my cases over the tracks and up onto platform 2.
It seemed a very short train for an international service, but I later found out that they add carriages in Romania, so when it arrives in Bucharest it is miraculously twice the length it was leaving Chisinau.
I needed help getting my case up on the train, luckily someone who was getting off (seeing family away) helped me with that. I’m often reliant on the kindness of strangers when I travel.
We left lot of people on the platform and I worked out that they were waiting for a later train in the opposite direction for Kyiv, Ukraine. That train runs every other day and given that you can no longer fly into Ukraine the train is still a popular way to go. I couldn’t help but feel that my journey in the opposite direction was going to be opposite in more ways than one.
Our train pulled out on time. My ticket had been checked on the platform and I found my compartment relatively easily. They all appeared to be the same, 2 berth in first class and 4 in second. There was a plug socket which didn’t work – a pity as I had brought my electric fan with me. But I was able to plug that into my computer and run it off the battery for a while. To be honest, once the train got going the air coming through the window was enough – but it did mean I couldn’t close it, so the ride was noisy.
The first part of the journey was really lovely … I do like travelling at sunset and this was no different. Moldova (at least from what I can see from the train) looks like a sparsely populated country but obviously poor from the standard of the houses and infrastructure. It was just turning to dusk as we approached the border station of Ungheni, as per my train into Moldova. The difference was that on this journey because the train was going forwards to Bucharest, there was going to be a wheel change as well as the customs and passport checks, so I was expecting to be there until darkness.
We stopped on the Moldovan side first and here the passport control people came into my compartment and took my passport (and all the others off the train) away onto the platform to process them. Once again I felt buffered by the fact that I had my other (UK) passport stashed away. Then came the change of bogies (the name for the sets of wheels.) This was quite an elaborate process. The locomotive pulled away from the coaches which were then separated and shunted into special sidings where they had machinery that could lift the carriages for the bogies to be pulled on and off. It felt quite weird to look out of my carriage window and be about 8 feet higher than normal. Sadly the light wasn’t great for taking photographs (dusk was descending) but there are some videos of the process on YouTube if you are interested like this one here. The whole process took about a couple of hours, much of it just standing whilst the other coaches were going through the same procedure. During that time my passport came back with a second Moldovan stamp in it, sadly partially obscuring the first one. And a customs officer came in to search under my now made up bed … he found nothing.
Eventually we did start moving again … very slowly across no-man’s land (and the Eiffel bridge) and into Romania. The border station there is called Ungheni Prut and once again the border people came on to take my passport. This was followed by customs officers checking my luggage. The officer asked what I had in my large case and I said, just clothes and … I stumbled as I wanted to say medication but I couldn’t think of any other word by drugs and I knew it would be NOT the right word to use. Luckily the officer came to my aid and smiled and said “and toiletries ?” “Yes … that’s right, toiletries!”
And that was it. It took about an hour for my passport to be returned but no stamp this time as I was returning to the EU.
New wheels on (and I think a new locomotive) and we trundled on through the night towards Iasi – the city I had come into Moldova from. We stopped in the main station this time and I think this is where the extra carriages were added to take the train onto the capital. By now it was about 2am so not much going on. It was difficult to sleep on such a bouncy train, but I did work at it and didn’t see much else until dawn.
As we got closer to Bucharest, we seemed to stop at more and more stations and I think we became like an early morning commuter train taking workers into the capital. We were due into the Gard du Nord station at 6.30 but that time came and went and when we arrived at a fairly large station at 7am I was already to get off, but not many others were fetching their bags and I realised we were still on the outskirts of the city and had another 30 minutes to go.
At 7.30 some 14 hours after we had left Chisinau we arrived in Bucharest Gard du Nord. A bus would have taken just over 8 hours and by plane around 3, but where would have been the fun it that.
The final twist to this story is that as I emerged from the large main station in Bucharest I saw that the bus I needed to get to my Airbnb was waiting outside. Without thinking I jumped on and then realised that my Romanian SIM card had run out whilst I was away and so I was unable to pay online. I made the mistake of sitting just sitting there instead of exploring other options. About 3 stops in and the inspectors came on. I tried pleading that I was hours into the city and that I didn’t know the drill, but got no compassion and instead a (amount) fine which was more than the cost of the ticket from Chisinau. I was also given a temporary day ticket, “in case another inspector comes on.” I thought what are the chances of two on the same bus – but a couple of stops later I found out he was right … They were the only inspectors I ever saw riding the buses and trams of the city for 3 weeks, until my last day when I was going back to Gard du Nord station. What a co-incidence.
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