I imagined I might be sharing a compartment with some seasoned travellers, and that we’d exchange stories about our adventures long into the early hours.Of course, as it turned out, none spoke English – though one, a Romanian farmer, was happy to try out his high-school English. The others also looked as though they were on business rather than pleasure, so we were all in bed by 22:30.

In the morning the conductor woke everyone on the train to inform us that we would be arriving in Vienna shortly, and to get the beds retracted. My battery situation has become dire – camera was ok, but the phone was almost completely dead and I was out of charged batteries. I hoped that the hostel in Budapest would give me the chance to charge stuff – It might have to be a requirement.

Journey 4: Berlin to Budapest
1 leg, 850km, 15 hr 38 min. Average speed: 55kph
Origin/Destination	Departs	Arrives	Carrier	My Rating
Berlin Zoo Budapest Keleti	19:55	11:33	MAV

An hour or so after leaving Vienna we crossed the Hungarian border and a set of immigration officials came through the train. First and Austrian, who paid little attention to my British passport but stamped both of my companions’, then a Hungarian, for whom the situation was reversed.

This reminded me that I had left the EU, and with it that comfort zone where everything is just a little easier. As a prime example, Hungary’s currency is not the Euro, but sitting on a train with an hour to go before I’d arrive at the capital city I had no idea what currency they did use. I decided this must be because Hungary has a very obscure currency, not because I’d failed to do any research whatsoever.

As we approached Budapest my concerns were muted somewhat by an excellent showing from the Hungarian tourist bureau. A woman who spoke excellent English came aboard, gave me a free map, and explained various accommodation options, all conveniently (and no doubt expensively) priced in Euros. The Bureau even provides free transport from the station to the hotel/hostel of your choice, though I’m not sure if they’d do it if you chose one that was not on their list.

At the station a minibus was waiting as promised. I climbed aboard, and while I waited I was joined by a Texan student, an old couple, two girls from Mexico and Germany who were travelling together, and a young couple from Scotland. The minibus driver commanded his vehicle in much the same way as a fighter pilot on a low-altitude recon mission, but it still took some time to make the drop-offs. I checked in, showered, changed and emerged just before lunchtime with a map and a plan.

I asked the receptionist to pinpoint our location on my map, and she circled a building. What I didn’t know at the time was that the indicated building was not the hostel. It didn’t occur to me that a small hostel would not be the sort of thing that would make it onto a street map, even one issued by the tourist office. In fact the building marked on the map was the hospital, and since it was less than fifteen metres from the hostel, the receptionist had clearly adopted it as her unofficial entry on the map.

There was, however one very important detail that distinguished the location of the hospital from the hostel. The two buildings were on opposite sides of the road.

Two hours later I was back in the same area after having walked in the wrong direction and discovered only suburbs. Despite this initial setback I kept walking in the right direction and eventually found a metro station, though it wasn’t the one I was originally heading for.

Entering the metro station I was in awe of the escalators. This might seem a bit sad so let me explain. Almost everywhere in the world that I’ve seen escalators, they all seem to go at the same speed – a very slow and safe speed that still gets you where you’re going before you fall asleep. Now maybe the Hungarians have a particular problem with falling asleep on escalators, or maybe they’re just impatient, but clearly someone had pushed the turbo button. These escalators were going at least twice as fast as the ones on the underground in London, and just watching people use them was great fun.

People my age would start walking faster as they approached the escalator and hop straight on, but older people were more interesting. Some would stop, eye up the escalator as if to say “So, you haven’t slowed down then, have you?”, and then pick their moment to move quickly onto the steps.

Having made it to the centre of town, I found an internet café with a British keyboard, which made checking my mail a lot easier, and then ate lunch in a pleasant street café.

Since Castle Hill is considered the most popular tourist attraction by Lonely Planet, I decided to invest the rest of the afternoon in checking it out. There was a lift, actually a sort of very steep railway I suppose, built into the hill. I didn’t use it, preferring to save my florents (for that is the name of the rather anonymous Hungarian currency, which may well disappear soon if Hungary is admitted into the EU). The road gave some good views of the outer walls of the castle and the city, and I was glad of the exercise anyway.

At the top I spotted two girls asleep on a bench, and thought they looked familiar. After wandering around a bit and coming back I decided that they were the pair from the minibus that drove my to my hostel in the morning (though they were a bit less.. subconscious then). They were stirring so I went over and introduced myself. The three of us agreed to eat together and walked back down the hill in search of dinner.

Over a dinner of Hungarian beef stew, I learned that their names were Mariana and Dagmar, from Mexico and Germany respectively. Dagmar was a bit of a dark horse, but Mariana was talkative enough and said she was coming to London later in the month, so we might meet again.

After dinner I got the metro back to the hostel. There was no ticket agent available and there didn’t seem to be any machines. People were still hopping on and off the trains though so I wondered whether anybody bothered with tickets in the late evening.