It was actually on Day 0, October 8th, that I packed my bike, cleaned my apartment (as a friend of mine, Erika, was to stay there while I was on the road). I have to say I have quite a practice in packing for a bike trip, I have had quite a lot of trips in the past. Throughout the trip, there was next to nothing missing, the only item I had forgotten was a reliable head-lamp, oh well.
As mentioned in the Introduction, I wanted to get to Bucharest (and maybe even further) by train, but all the websites I checked did not cater for the transportation of a bike, the furtherst point I was able to find online was the Hungarian-Romanian border. No issues, I thought, this will be possible at the counter in Budapest.
So, let me get to Budapest. There are many Railjets a day, but these are very expensive, costing like €65 for the the carriage with a bike. There is a Czech company, called RegioJet, that carries you for the fraction of this, for around €12, but does not carry bikes. Here is an advice free of charge: if you are carrying a bike, you can catch a train from Vienna to the Austro-Hungarian border, Hegyeshalom, by ÖBB for €11, get off there and continue on MÁV, the Hungarian railways, to Budapest, for another €11, so with one change and a bit of waiting time, you end up paying just around €22 - a better deal than for €65, I believe everyone would agree.
Around 9 am, I was on a rather empty train to Hegyeshalom, this was the Train Ride #1 (journey time: about an hour), where I would have had to catch a local train to Budapest after an hour or so of wait time.
Full riding gear
It was then that a Railjet from Vienna pulled in - and I had an idea: I pleaded to the Hungarian ticket collector if I could jump on that train; to my surprise, he said yes. So there I was once again on a very empty train, Train Ride #2 (journey time: about two hours), cruising to Budapest.
At around noon, I arrived to the station of Kelenföld, a bit outside the city center, where my I immediately visited the ticket counter, hoping to be able to buy a bike ticket to Bucharest. My fear was confirmed - this train, actually not only this train, none of the trains - do take bikes from Budapest to Bucharest, even though the name of the two cities are sooo similar. I was a bit disappointed, but thought of just taking a train to the border, crossing it by bike and then catching a local train in Romania, that would be option B. Well, I did buy a bike ticket to the border, just to be sure.
My uncle lives close to the train station, so I paid him a surprise visit, he was quite shocked to see me in full biking gear. We had a quick lunch together, then I rode to Keleti, the main railway station in Budapest. I tried my luck again at the ticket counter, but after a lot of checking by a helpful lady, I was yet again turned away. She was nice, knew the area and gave me tips for the best border crossing places for Option B.
If you look at the map, Hungary, just as Romania, lie in the eastern part of Europe, with a long history of socialism and Soviet occupation - these countries do not top the list of corruption-free countries. About half an hour before departure, I found the rather long train bound for Bucharest, mostly with Hungarian carriages and Hungarian staff, but the very first carriage was a Romanian sleeping car, with a caretaker from Romania. I approached him and what happened next was a bit of symbiosis.
Without discussing prices, he looked at my bike, told me to board the train and showed a compartment where the bike could be stored, provided I took off the front wheel, which I did. The bike fit perfectly. He also showed me an otherwise empty 4-bed compartment, where I could travel all the way to Bucharest. This was the nice piece. The ugly part was the price - €100 was quoted. I was prepared to pay around €50, he told me to take the bike and to buzz off. We both knew I would not even think of leaving, I was really happy about the arrangement. Well, we finally agreed on €70, more than I had anticipated, but taking into consideration that I had a compartment of my own, with the bike safely stuffed away, this was not such a bad deal. A night in a hotel would have cost around €30, so my ticket was just €40, I explained to myself.
To my surprise, we left right on time at 3 pm, this is Train Ride #3 (scheduled journey time: 15 hours or so) and I spread out comfortably, reading, napping, nibbling - altogether, enjoying the trip. We reached the Puszta, the Great Hungarian Plain, by sunset, it was quite a view, all the passengers left their compartments to marvel at the colorful play of nature, with the rays of the sun painting the seemingly endless plains in fifty shades of red.
It was dark by the time we reached the border and as Romania is not (yet a full-fledged) Schengen-member, we had looong waits on both sides of the border. I remembered to switch my clock one hour ahead, the first of the many time-zone changes that would await me. Then I dozed off and got up only the next morning, but that belongs to Day 2.