Look at you, travelling in style, first class and all! 😂
I have taken this very same train and you are right, there's no question it's a better idea to take the longer, slower journey than the cheap flight. When I visited Romania and Moldova for the first time, I flew to Sibiu for less than a tenner on a whim and then made my way around by train: Chisinau-Tiraspol, to Odesa (by bus), to Simferopol, to Kharkiv, to Kyiv, to Lviv, to Łódź, to Bydgoszcz (this was in 2010).
I've been on some shocking trains in terms of conditions (3rd class Ukrainian ones, mainly), but that's part of the fun and adventure I find. From what I remember by Bucharest-Chisinau train was fine, except I almost got arrested upon arrival. I got chatting to a nice guy from Chisinau and he offered to show me around after we arrived. When we stepped off the train, he lit up a cigarette, which was a big no-no. Because I was standing next to him on the platform, the police took us both to their little office at the station and they were perfectly pleasant to me, less so to him. He got hit with a massive fine and that put him in a bad mood and he suddenly didn't want to show me around anymore, leaving me to do my own thing, which is totally fine, that's how I prefer to travel usually, solo and making little attempt to befriend fellow travellers.
Anyway, I'm rambling...I'm now sorely tempted to dust off my old travel stories - they're all on my old blog from my pre-Substack days. You've inspired me to revisit some of these tales!
I also agree that trains need to figure out how not to break too much at night so as to interrupt people’s sleep. But glad that you seemed to have a fairly restful time there?
Look at you, travelling in style, first class and all! 😂
I have taken this very same train and you are right, there's no question it's a better idea to take the longer, slower journey than the cheap flight. When I visited Romania and Moldova for the first time, I flew to Sibiu for less than a tenner on a whim and then made my way around by train: Chisinau-Tiraspol, to Odesa (by bus), to Simferopol, to Kharkiv, to Kyiv, to Lviv, to Łódź, to Bydgoszcz (this was in 2010).
I've been on some shocking trains in terms of conditions (3rd class Ukrainian ones, mainly), but that's part of the fun and adventure I find. From what I remember by Bucharest-Chisinau train was fine, except I almost got arrested upon arrival. I got chatting to a nice guy from Chisinau and he offered to show me around after we arrived. When we stepped off the train, he lit up a cigarette, which was a big no-no. Because I was standing next to him on the platform, the police took us both to their little office at the station and they were perfectly pleasant to me, less so to him. He got hit with a massive fine and that put him in a bad mood and he suddenly didn't want to show me around anymore, leaving me to do my own thing, which is totally fine, that's how I prefer to travel usually, solo and making little attempt to befriend fellow travellers.
Anyway, I'm rambling...I'm now sorely tempted to dust off my old travel stories - they're all on my old blog from my pre-Substack days. You've inspired me to revisit some of these tales!
Please do! I’d love to read them!
I also agree that trains need to figure out how not to break too much at night so as to interrupt people’s sleep. But glad that you seemed to have a fairly restful time there?
I slept really well! It was quite an experience all round.