The Long Haul – An Exhausting Journey To Oradea (The Lost Cities #6)

If you ever want to amuse yourself with a slightly sadistic activity, I highly recommend the travel journey planning website Rome2Rio. Type in your points of departure and arrival, then wait for a couple of seconds as the website works its magic. The site will give you train, bus, and car options to any destination they desire. These can be a source of fascination, especially when transfers are involved. Any search between two places that cannot be reached with a non-stop service will result in numerous options, some of which are scarcely viable unless you are willing to endure extreme fatigue.

I found one particularly exhausting option while searching for the most efficient way to travel between Uzhhorod and Oradea for my Lost Cities beyond the Hungarian border itinerary. There is no non-stop train service between the two cities. The fun really began as I looked through the options that were offered. One that got my attention was “Train via Biharkeresztes” because it offered the shortest travel time. I did not have the slightest idea of where Biharkeresztes was located other than in Hungary. Clicking on the option revealed a nightmarish itinerary that made me want to book my tickets just to see if I was up to the challenge. 

On-time arrival – Train from Puspokladany arriving in Oradea (Credit: Boldizsar Sipos)

Beyond Midnight – Ready For Departure
My fascination with a potential journey via Biharkeresztes began when Rome2Rio showed that it would take eight hours. I sighed. While I expected a lengthy travel time due to the lack of a direct connection between Uzhhorod and Oradea, seeing an eight-hour journey listed as the first option, made me realize the difficulty of getting between the two cities in a timely manner. There was no getting around the fact that this leg of my itinerary would take most of a day. Little did I know that the time given did not include transfers and waiting at stations. When I investigated the option further, I saw that the entire trip would take 14 hours and 14 minutes. I was astonished to learn that the details revealed the trip would be even tougher than the amount of time it took. I would spend two-fifths of the time waiting in stations, part of it in the dead of night at a station in the Hungarian town of Puspokladany.

Public transport stations late at night and in the earliest hours of the morning are something I generally avoid while traveling in Eastern Europe. For that matter, I try to avoid them anywhere I travel in western Europe or America. A railway or bus station around midnight or thereafter is an invitation for trouble. While I have never noticed any violent criminal element in the evening at stations I have frequented in Eastern Europe, the possibility is always there. After the sun goes down, there is usually a noticeable increase of seedy characters that look ready to commit petty theft at stations. In my opinion, they are more of a danger to someone’s belongings than they are to passengers, but why tempt fate unless it is absolutely necessary. My late-night experiences at stations are limited so I am no authority on the matter. The most memorable of these turned out to be completely benign.

Awaiting arrivals – Puspokladany Train Station (Credit: Tony Fekete)

Nocturnal Travel – A Marathon Journey
I arrived not long before midnight on my first visit to Lviv in western Ukraine. I went into the main hall expecting it to be deserted. Instead, I found a large crowd awaiting arrivals or departures. The worst thing I encountered on that occasion were the taxi drivers. In Eastern Europe, it does not matter if it is morning, noon, or midnight, the taxi drivers are always prepared to fleece foreigners. They haunt arrival areas in railway and bus stations waiting to confront bleary eyed travelers. In Lviv, the taxi drivers were no real danger to anything other than my wallet. Despite coming through this experience unscathed, I am still reluctant to take my chances by hanging around in a public transport station late at night. Nonetheless, this is sometimes unavoidable. For example, the journey from Uzhhorod to Oradea.

If I was to take the timeliest train option that Rome2Rio provided me, I would find myself waiting in a railway station late at night. The marathon journey begins at Uzhhorod in the late afternoon. That time of departure is never a good sign if you are traveling across three countries with three different languages while navigating two border crossings. This would surely be enough to induce plenty of stress. That might help me stay awake during what would be a long day’s journey deep into the night. One positive would be gaining an hour after crossing into a different time zone from Ukraine to Hungary. One negative would be losing that same hour after crossing from Hungary into Romania. Traveling is never easy in the remoter reaches of Eastern Europe. The toughest part comes when making a transfer at Puspokladany in eastern Hungary. The problem is that the train arrives there at 8:33 p.m. followed by a four and a half hour wait. I have made transfers at Puspokladany before. The station is in excellent condition and safe. Still, spending a considerable amount of time there long into the night is less than ideal.

Somewhere down the line – Beside the platform at Puspokladany (Credit: Tony Fekete)

On-Time Arrival – Before The Break of Dawn
The train from Puspokladany to Oradea does not leave until 1:01 a.m. This is a sleeper train traveling between Budapest and Brasov. I would be at risk of falling asleep on this train. There are worse things in travel than missing a long-awaited stop and waking up in Transylvania. One of them happens to be trying to stay awake all the way to Oradea where the train arrives at 4:17 a.m. That just might be late enough that all the miscreants and ne’er do wells have either passed out, stolen their quota of cigarettes, or gone to bed. I would be left searching for a bed of my own while wandering the streets of Oradea a couple of hours before dawn. Is there anything worse than those final hours of the early morning before dawn? I am not sure, but I intend to find out. This might not sound like fun, but it is an adventure.  

Click here for: Whisper To A Scream – The Door In Nagyvarad (The Lost Cities #7)

Time Management – A Race Against The Clock To Oradea (The Lost Cities #5)

There are the trips not taken, the routes not followed, and the timetables that cannot be worked out. I rarely write about my stillborn sojourns. It is painful to recall aborted plans that started with hope and ended in hopelessness. These chances not taken can be summed up as an inversion of the famous Sinatra lyric from My Way, “Regrets, I’ve had a few…too few to mention” into “Regrets, I’ve had many, too many to mention.” My way ended up being the wrong way.

What worries me the most about my itinerary for the lost cities beyond the borders of Hungary is that it will never come to fruition. That is why I have tried to trick myself into believing the itinerary is for armchair travel only. Nevertheless, my underlying and unspoken aspiration is to make this dream become reality. The reason it might not is a matter of time. As I plan this potential journey, I am becoming acutely aware just how much time plays a part in the choices I make while traveling in Eastern Europe.

Managing time – Oradea City Hall Tower

Road Weary – Crossing The Upper Tisza
There is Eastern Europe, and then there is far Eastern Europe. I define the latter as places in the region that are remote from the popular tourist routes. The westernmost stretch of the Ukraine-Romania border is one of them. I consider this to be the wildest of the wild east.  This is not just because of both countries’ association with some of the most volatile European history since the beginning of the 20^th century, it is also because a stretch of the border is naturally demarcated by the Upper Tisza River. When I learned this a decade ago, it astonished me. My image of the Tisza had been informed by numerous crossings of the river on the Great Hungarian Plain. I had always thought of the Tisza as a broad, languid river flowing through flat land as it heads south to feed the Danube. That was until I saw photos of the Upper Tisza along the Ukraine-Romania border that showed a narrower, faster flowing river. The photos led me to daydream about one day crossing this natural border.

While developing my Lost Cities itinerary, I thought that there might be an opportunity to cross the Upper Tisza when I traveled from Uzhhorod to Oradea. That was until I looked closely at a map and noticed that the Ukraine-Romania border was to the southeast of Uzhhorod, whereas Oradea was directly to the south. Trying to find a way to cross the Upper Tisza between Oradea and Uzhhorod would require a detour. On the map, this detour did not look that difficult, but railways in the area are few. Roads are often the only option. I have been on enough to-lane highways in Ukraine and Romania to know that traveling on them is time consuming due to their narrowness and condition. Despite these drawbacks, I researched a potential trip routed through the small city of Satu Mare in northwestern Romania.

The place to be – Satu Mare Railway Station in 1911
(Credit: Brück & Sohn Kunstverlag Meißen)

Clock Watching – Taking My Time
Bus travel in the remoter reaches of Eastern Europe is often the only means of transport. That is the case for anyone looking to get from Uzhhorod to Satu Mare. It requires two potentially exhausting bus rides. That is followed by a three-hour train journey between Satu Mare and Oradea. All this adds up to at least a twelve-hour journey. Timeliness is not the strong suit of public transport in Romania. Neither is a border crossing from a country at war, to one that is a member of the European Union. Specific travel times are rendered meaningless. The best that can be hoped for are rough estimates of arrival times. In this context, a couple of hours can easily double. For this potential journey, time was working against me.

Sitting in an armchair months or years away from an actual trip between Uzhhorod and Oradea, it is easy for me to delude myself into believing anything might be possible. Pushing the boundaries of endurance is appealing from a distance. I know from experience just how different reality can be, especially when bus travel is involved. I love riding on trains because I find even the worst ones to be more comfortable and relaxing than traveling on a bus. The trains I have been on in Ukraine and Romania are slower than buses, but they have everything else to recommend them. For instance, on a train I can stretch my legs while not worrying about the numerous near misses that occur on bad roads with drivers who love to risk everyone’s life. Furthermore, I do not have to sit in cramped quarters among fellow passengers whose clothes are permeated with the smell of cigarette smoke. Avoiding these annoyances makes the slower pace of train travel more tolerable.

There is also the historical accuracy that comes with train journeys to the lost cities on my itinerary. When Uzhhorod and Oradea were known as Ungvar and Nagyvarad in Austria-Hungary, those who traveled to them would have done so by train. Contemporary railway lines still follow much of the network laid down by the Hungarian National Railways network during the last half of the 19^th century. Taking trains offers me an opportunity to follow the exact same routes in many cases. I am seeing the same landscape, as citizens of the empire saw it over a century ago. It is possible on these journeys to relive a semblance of the past while traveling at the same speed as citizens of the empire did long before me.

A New Direction – Puspokladany Railway Station (Credit: Aspectomat)

Mental Sanity – A New Direction
My love for train travel led me to decide that my best bet for efficiency and mental sanity will be to travel in a straight shot south from Uzhhorod to Oradea. This will not be easy. Traveling through rural areas that have changed little since the days of Austria-Hungary takes patience. The one thing that has changed is national borders. This inevitably leads to delays. Add to that, the usual issues with poor infrastructure found in some of the poorer parts of Eastern Europe and my journey from Uzhhorod to Oradea will either be an adventure or a nightmare. In this case, probably both. I began researching more straightforward and expedient options for the journey. This led me in another bizarre direction, the town of Puspokladany in eastern Hungary.

Click here for: The Long Haul – An Exhausting Journey To Oradea (The Lost Cities #6)

Hospitable Nature – Romanian Roadside Assistance (Eastern Europe & Me #18)

There are several life experiences I want back. Not because I regret them, but because I would love to experience them again. One of these was a bus trip from Brasov to Sibiu. The trip sticks in my memory for an unexpected reason that has little to do with the stunning scenery of Transylvania, nor for the many quaint and historic towns the bus passed through along the way. While that bus trip was only a couple of hours long, I can still recall specific details of the trip eight years later. That seemingly innocuous journey was a window into the best of Transylvania and Romania.

Final destination – Sibiu Bus station

Visceral Reaction – Less Than Hospitable
When I think of hospitality, Eastern Europe rarely comes to mind. Like everything else in the region, recent history explains why customer service has a lot of catching up to do with the rest of Europe. Communism was anti-customer service to its core. The individual was subordinate to mass movements. Communism was concerned with centralization and industrial development. Pleasure was reserved for the most powerful, at least when compared to the western world where anyone was and still is free to enjoy themselves (sometimes to their own detriment). Entertainment in the Eastern Bloc often had an ideological edge to it. Cultural centers were places to cultivate like-mindedness. Groupthink was all the rage,

This included vacations, where the masses went to concrete conurbations by the seaside. These vacations were workplace perks. Crowds are bad enough during holidays without having co-workers forced upon you. Nonetheless, many of those who grew up in the Eastern Bloc look back at those times with rose tinted nostalgia. Seaside holidays are a fond memory of quality time spent with family and friends. This meant summers along the shores of the Black Sea, Lake Balaton or the Adriatic. Anyone I have heard recall these holidays never mentions the level of service at the hotels/resorts or restaurants. I often wonder what it must have been like because I have witnessed some less than stellar customer service in my travels across Eastern Europe.

My opinions of customer service and hospitality in the region have undergone a radical transformation across twenty plus trips. My initial reactions to what I perceived as a sullen rudeness was one of shock and surprise. At times, this led to confusion and anger. The indifference with which a Hungarian waitress can place a plate of food in front of you is impressive. The silence of a Riga bookstore clerk was deeply unsettling. The penetrating stares of Germans on the bus in the countryside south of Dresden left me feeling isolated and alone. The dutiful distance of Slovenes was a study in arms-length ambivalence. Older Bulgars looked as though they were still guarding state secrets. A Ukrainian attendant at a museum marched me back to the front desk for snapping an image without a photo ticket. These experiences were the epitome of intimidation. I came to expect this treatment, albeit in a less visceral form.

On the go – Bus trip between Brasov and Sibiu

Revelation & Relief – Romanian Hospitality
Perhaps that is why I love the Balkans so much. I find the hospitable nature of its inhabitants heartening, especially in lands that were once part of Yugoslavia. Bosnians, Croats, Serbs, and Montenegrins may have been at each other’s throats for centuries, but I have found them to be some of the most pleasant people I have met. This came as both revelation and relief after traveling in other parts of Eastern Europe. I include Romanians among those whose dispositions I have found engaging. Romanians are outgoing, helpful and accommodating, particularly by the standards of the former Eastern Bloc. Their Latin-based language connected Romanians in my mind with other extroverted peoples in southern Europe and the Mediterranean world.

After spending time around Romanians, I began to wonder how these people could have ever produced Ceausescu. Some might say I was duped, but I beg to differ. Their demeanor was disarmingly positive, particularly when compared with their neighbors. I can see why Romanians and Hungarians have trouble finding common ground. Hungarians are uber-serious, and they would probably say Romanians are frivolous. Romanians are much more laissez fair about life. They might say Hungarians need to loosen up. The two personas are diametrically opposed. I admire and respect Hungarians, but Romanians have an air of romance about them that can be positively intoxicating. In my experience, they also tend to be more extroverted. How could I ever forget the woman in Sibiu who took it upon herself to walk me from a bus stop to a sporting goods store in a shopping mall so I could procure a jump rope. Such small acts of kindness go a long way in making a foreigner feel welcome. A smile, a nod of acknowledgement, taking a few extra moments to provide much needed assistance, all were common occurrences during my visits to Romania.

Worth the trip – Sibiu

Bathroom Break – At A Moment’s Notice
The kindness and warmth that so many Romanians showed to me is something which I will never take for granted. To be sure, I have met my share of rude Romanians (specifically taxi drivers in Bucharest and a woman in a renovated palace in Oradea who made me feel like taking a photo was an act of espionage), but my experience has largely been positive. The most memorable example of this occurred on my bus ride from Brasov to Sibiu. Midway through that journey the bus suddenly slowed down and pulled off the road. This was done despite the fact there was scarcely a shoulder. I immediately began to wonder if this was due to mechanical issues with the vehicle.

There was a rustling among my fellow passengers. A side door suddenly swung open. An older man climbed out of the bus, walked a few meters into the grass and proceeded to relieve himself. The bus waited for him to finish, then the man climbed back inside. Soon we were on our way. The driver had adhered to this man’s wish for an on-the-spot bathroom break. This small act of hospitality amazed me. An entire journey had to come to a halt for the comfort of a single man. The bus driver provided a level of service I have not seen before or since. I will never forget that moment. This was Romanian hospitality at its finest.

Click here for: Less Than Sunny Disposition – A Storm In Trieste (Eastern Europe & Me #19)