A wild ride to Cluj-Napoca

I followed through with my trip to the bath house in Budapest. I suppose I really had no expectations but was awe-struck by how many only people were there. Also, I felt ill-prepared because I forgot to bring flip flops and shampoo with me. The baths were pleasant, and fun - at least the one that's jets sent me cruising around a circular pool. It was a little overwhelming because of the numerous pools and saunas. Instructions or better signage would have been a godsend. Speaking of godsend, I had my first massage. It was only 15 minutes but it did wonders for my back that has grown tired of lugging around a heavy pack.

A day after the riots, everything seemed relatively peaceful, and the city did an amazing job cleaning and hiding any evidence of what had occured the day before. I have found that like clockwork, after about 2 weeks of travel, my body hits a wall. I hit that wall in Budapest, or maybe the bath/massage made me too relaxed. Either way, I needed a few days to relax. I spent the next two days in Buda overlooking Pest, and hanging out with folks from the hostel.

For some reason it totally slipped my mind to buy a ticket from Budapest to Transylvania the day before and I only rolled up to the station 30 minutes before my train was scheduled to leave. The international ticket window was a zoo and it was clear I was not going to be able to buy a ticket in time. The next train was 2 hours later. It turned out the girl in front of me was Romanian and needed to
catch the same train. She said she would take her chances on the train with the conductors... I didn't feel like hanging out at the stations and decided to stick with her.

She had to work real hard to negotiate and pay off three different conductors along the journey and was even nice enough to front the cash for me because I had planned on charging my train ticket and did not have much leftover Hungarian money. When we converted how much I owed her in Romanian money it turned out that we got from Budapest to Transylvania for about half the price of buying a regular ticket would
have been. Next time, I will certainly buy ahead of time because there is no way I could have done that without her doing all the talking for me!

Today was a gorgeous day in Transylvania. The Gothic architecture is neat, but unfortunately the treks that the hostel organizes are not running this month... bummer because there is not a ton to do in the city. I went to the graveyard right around sunset today which was awesome! The atmosphere was exactly what a cemetery in Transylvania should feel like. I think I will find a good cafe and read my book
tomorrow and explore a few new corners of the city that I didn't make it to today, and then leave early Sunday morning for the city a few hours south where I will be meeting up with Danny at the hostel later that evening.