Day Twelve and Thirteen. The return to Cluj.

Our train arrived, and we had a bit of a panic that our coach, and hard fought reserved beds didn't exist.  But after a bit of charades with a train conductor we realised that our carriage was to be added to the already long train, and a few minutes later it was added to the front of the train.

We asked our guard (Sasha) if we could be in a compartment
together, and he said he would see what he could do.  A Romanian (Michael) joined us who was on his way to Constanta, a even longer journey than ours, in the far north of Romania.  Also a very drunk, very loud man arrived, I think Carolyn had his bed.  After some shouting Sasha moved him on, all three of us were pretty relieved.

The journey was actually quite comfortable and we both slept well, we were joined by a Bulgarian lady at some point through the night, although she was very quiet in getting herself settled, but she still woke me.

The border crossing was again slow.  The Ukrainian border guards asked us a few question, most of which they directed at the Bulgarian lady.  At one point she raised her eyebrows and looked at us, we asked what was happening, she laughed and said "Not now, later".   We never found out what happened, but we got the impression she'd saved us some hassle.

We were largely ignored at the Romanian border, this time with some words from Michael smoothing the way.  A guy in the next compartment was South American, he had the third degree from the Ukraine border guards about any money, Vodka or books he was carrying, was now been interviewed by the Romanian official.  "We have BIG problem" says the guard, which got our attention, "in Romania you have Cancer, you are DEAD.  How is this so?"  It was the guards black humour, probably a bit too black, and maybe also a bit too close to the truth for many of the Romanian population.

On arrival at Suceava we found most places to be closed, but we needed to eat.  Eventually we found a Kebab bar, not far from the train station, and had a okay, but filling meal.  We decided to head back to the train station and have a drink at the bar on the platform.  Whilst enjoying our drink a drunk joined us, he had a very loud argument with the bar staff, and then slumped outside, I took his photo and felt I wanted to buy him a drink, but as I got up to buy one, the lady from behind the bar appeared with a bottle which she gave him for free.  He then sat, looked at his undrunk bottle for a few minutes and left quietly.

I didn't expect to enjoy the return journey over the mountains as much as we did coming, but I wasn't prepared for just how uncomfortable our final leg would be.  The train was heavily over subscribed, our reserved seats had been sold to several people, every station we stopped at, brought a new argument as more people boarded. This was made worse by the fact we were sharing a compartment with four Roma, and their large luggage. Their case took half the floor space, and a young child slept across two seats, they only had three tickets, but took five spaces. Eventually the Mum took the hint, and when the child woke, she made him sit up, which helped a little, but it was nothing compared to the number of people boarding at each station. The journey was very hot (not helped by the Roma insisting on having the window closed) and tiring, and we were relived to arrive back in Cluj just after midnight and then only a short taxi ride was keeping us from our much needed beds.