We waited for our freezing train which came 10 minutes late. We had no idea what to do. All I know is when we got on and found an empty cabin it was warm and I was more happy with it. It was so warm, but it started feeling colder the longer we were sitting there. I layered up in everything I had and we fell asleep. Every so often someone would come check our passports and leave. At a certain point someone came in and let us know we were in the wrong section, first class. We should have known better that the seats were way too nice.

It would have been nice to have the private little space to lie down the whole ride there. Actually, that should have been an indication for us… the warmth and comfort… clearly we didn’t belong there. Our $50 wouldn’t have bought us warmth! It was an intense feeling walking to the 2nd class cars alone… in the cold… in the pitch black… with men with guns…who weren’t happy. We passed a bunch of men in the back standing in the isles, their hoods up, cigarettes in their mouths. There was no electricity, no heat, and the windows didn’t even close. This…. this seemed about right for what we paid. It was FREEZING. I layered every piece of clothing from my backpack and shivered. I think I slipped into hibernation. The only benefit to all the interruptions waking us up every hour or so was that we at least knew we were on the right train in the right direction.

We had four hours left in this frozen hell. At least this time when they came in the guards said “Good Morning Sunshine”. We saw we were at the Budapest stop and as we were walking to the door to get off the train we started moving again. Are you kidding me?! All that and we missed our stop!! Ironically, the next stop was actually the ‘right’ Budapest stop. The station was beautiful.

We basically just walked around the city for hours. It was so beautiful out I didn’t even wear a coat. Budapest is so cute and adorable. I thought it was going to be totally rundown. But besides the graffiti everywhere, it is so cute. I bought a few gifts and some post cards.

We stumbled across this huge church and I climbed the 299 musty and sometimes creepy steps to the top. It was the most breathtaking view. It was like going to the top of St. Pauls in London. We walked along the River Danube and crossed the Szechenyi lanchid bridge to get some dinner. The bridge over the river connects two cities: Buda and Pest.

There was a bunch of shoes by the river. It wasn’t until later that I found out it is to honor the Jews that were killed in the Second World War. They were lined up along the river and shot so that their bodies would fall into the river and wash away. The memorial represents the shoes left behind on the bank. It was beautifully haunting.

We ended up back at the train station trying to determine where to go next. The places we wanted to go didn’t have trains leaving at the right time. There were trains leaving within two hours to Serbia and Romania. We didn’t really have any idea where either country was. The woman at the counter was very friendly and also told us Servia was safe so we bough the tickets. We went to McDonalds (free wifi) and I emailed home so they knew where I was going to be going next. I emailed my friend Ivana to see if we could get together in Croatia and she was more than excited to meet up! How fun is this going to be. There were no empty cabins. We walked past an empty cabin with a guy standing outside of it smoking a cigarette “You can sit with me if it isn’t weird. I work in a hostel’ Well – it could have been worse I suppose! We obliged. We closed the open window and felt relieved it wasn’t as cold as the first night.