I awoke knowing that I still had to decide what I was going to do that day. Having spoken to my brother the night before, who had told me pretty much that I had done enough and to get the train into Bucharest. I decided to do exactly that and spent the morning sorting out the rest of my trip. I booked my flight home, went and bought my train ticket, confirming that I could take my bike on the train, yes.

Woohoo! Progress..... So I spent the rest of the morning walking around Drobeta, which is a bit of a dump, drinking coffee and eating ice cream.

When it was finally time to go down to the train station, I packed up my bike and rode off. I KNEW things were going to smoothly. When I got down to the station, I asked the driver where I should put my bike. He proceeded to tell me that there was no bike wagon and that I couldn't take my bike. Like hell I wasn't. The woman that had sold me the ticket early that day, did speak English so I went off in search of her. I found her and told her the problem. I followed her out to the train where she told me to wait. I waited and waited and waited. About 30 minutes in the end, before I saw her come down off the train, walk to the front of the train and then back into the station. Not a word, I still didn't know what I was supposed to do with my damn bike. I asked the conductor, he said "no bikes". The train was leaving in ten minutes and I still didn't know what to do with bike. The idea of throwing it under the train was looking more and more enticing. Then all of a sudden the woman that spoke English, opened the window and said "Yes, you get on the train, you pay bike on the train, have a good trip". 

So now to get the bike on the train; steps going up, very heavy bike. As I struggled to get my bike on the train, a man with cerebral palsy helped me, speaking to me in English, asking me where I was from, where I was going etc..... The bike was on the train, but then I was told by a guy who was speaking Italian to me that the bike was on the wrong wagon and that I would have to take it off again and put it in the right place so that it didn't get in the say of anyone. Dammit. 

Okay, bike on, bike off, bike back on. I sat down sweaty and exhausted and satisfied myself with the knowledge that at least my bike was on the train. The fact that it was resting against the back doors which were ajar didn't bother me in the slightest, if the bike fell out, it fell out.

The journey was four and a half hours so I settled myself in hoping that the air conditioning would kick in once on the move. Nope. I was sweating, fanning myself trying to keep cool. Next the conductor came through the train, looked at my ticket and then asked me if that was my bike. Time to negotiate prices. She kept looking at me, winking at me, looking at her papers, then from somewhere she wrote down that she wanted 2lei/kg and she was assuming that my loaded bike was 20kg and therefore she wanted 40lei. To start with she was underestimating the weight of my bike but I wasn't about tell her that. I handed her 20Lei, pretending that I didn't know what she wanted and thankfully she took it, slipped it in her purse and walked off. Done.

About two and half hours into the journey the conductors passed through the carriage again. I thought that they were coming back for more money seeing as they had seen me on my iPad and probably thought that I could afford to give them more money. Instead we started talking, the female conductor didn't speak a word of any other language, the male conductor could speak the odd word in English 'Chelsea, Manchester United and Arsenal' were a few of them. Another passenger who spoke French starting asking me questions. So our conversation was in French he would then translate it to the conductors in Romanian, there would be the odd English word thrown in and this is how we conversed for about an hour. Of course they wanted to know where I was from, what I was doing, if I was married, why wasn't I married and if I wasn't married then would I have a coffee with the male conductor when we arrived in Bucharest. It went on and on like this until we all tired of the effort of conversation and turned our heads to look out the window.

Finally we arrived in Bucharest, 37c so I was pretty glad I wasn't on my bike. Found my hotel, wonderful place and settled in for the night. I felt content that there wouldn't be that long to go and that this was finally coming to an end.