I Missed Romania.

The Ukraine is behind me.  My last image of this country is this sleeping man behind the exchange counter.  I woke him from his slumber, got some new currency, then got on the old train to Romania.  My sleeping car was dark and had a strange odor inside.  There was one lone, strange man in the bunk above me.  He didn't look like anyone I wanted to be friends with. 

I could give you a detailed route on how to travel from Lviv, Ukraine to world-famous Brasov, Romania.  But that was before 2 Costa Rican convicts jumped off a motorcycle and robbed me at knife-point right outside Castle Tam hostel (more on the robbery later.)

The bag they took from me included a notebook with all of my train, plane, bus and hitchhiking routes that I used to get efficiently lost around Eastern Europe.  Oh well.  For now I rely on memory and what information I can find online.  The ticket from Lviv to Sofia was around $60 and it did not matter whether I took it all the way to Sofia or got off earlier.

I wanted to get off at Ploiesti, Romania.  From there I had a half-hour to catch a train transfer to Brasov where I would get to see Brasov Castle, the source of all of the Count Dracula vampire stories.  The train left Lviv 10 minutes late, and within 2 hours the slow-moving train was already 30 minutes behind schedule and still losing more time.  I quietly resigned to continue on to Sofia, Bulgaria and leave Transylvania for next year...

What I didn't see in Romania

It was a sad situation and the dark, dreary train added to the feeling.  I made my way up to the dining car while listening to the creaking wheels.  I expected a Western tourist or two but not once did I hear English, French, German nor other "Western" languages as I wandered the long aisle.  Every car I passed was filled with bedraggled, sweaty, frowning citizens from who knew what part of Eastern Europe.  Bad, tinny (but sexy) Romanian pop music drifted out of many of the small rooms.

The dining car complimented the depressing train.  Four small, yellowed tables were crammed into one side of the car.  One of the tables had two large, heaving men who were well into their forth glasses of vodka and showing it.  The waiter/cook looked annoyed by nothing in particular.  He tossed me a menu which was in Ukrainian and something that looked like English, but not enough so that I actually understood it.  After waving my hands and spluttering out random Slavic mongrol phrases at the cook, I procured some kind of Chicken Cordon Blue - with emphasis on the Blue.  Its most notable feature was its dryness.

There's a reason I always order alcohol when I eat on trains. 

On the plus side, skipping Romania meant I was not so rushed to fit a million things into a limited time schedule.  It also freed up my canceled credit card-strapped budget.  I choked down my Chicken Cordon Dry then returned to my cabin to sleep away the remainder of the trip.  I didn't miss anything.