By now I had spent about a week or so in Hungary, and I was feeling like it was time to move to the next country – Romania. However, I wanted to start in the north of Romania, and right now, being in south-eastern Hungary, I was pretty far away from there. I figured that the best thing might be to stop overnight near the border, so I chose to go to Debrecen [daybretsen], Hungary’s second largest city. Unfortunately I couldn’t get there directly, and I would have to go through Budapest to get from one side to the other. It was a significant detour, but a necessary one.

After boarding the train fairly early in Pécs, I arrived at Budapest-Keleti train station around 1pm. The train to Debrecen would leave a bit over an hour after I arrived, but to get it I would actually have to go to a different station in the city. It was not really far, so it should have been quite easy, however thanks to some idiots holding up the ticket line both at the metro station and at the actual railway station, I made it there with only a few minutes to spare.

It had taken a little over three hours to travel from Pécs to Budapest, and it would take almost the same to get to Debrecen. The train trip was straightforward enough, although by the end I was starting to get drowsy and I ended up dozing off. Then, at one point I woke up and realised the train had stopped. I looked out the window at the station, but it didn’t look that big and as is common in Eastern European train stations, the signage was awful. I felt fairly secure I hadn’t arrived yet. Then suddenly I saw some rusted, faded yellow paint on a wall on the platform: Debrecen. Oh crap, time to get off! As I stood up the train whistle blew, I grabbed my stuff as quickly as possible and ran for the door. By the time I got there a conductor saw me and realised I wanted to get off. The train had already started moving slowly, and he leant out the window and screamed at the people on the platform to signal the driver to stop. Fortunately, the brakes slammed on and I just about had to jump off. The conductor was yelling at me in Hungarian for holding up the train, and when I got onto the platform everyone was looking at me, but at least I’d got off at the right place.

After a fairly long walk down the main street, I found the pension I would be staying in. It was more expensive than I would have liked, but there was not a wide range of accommodation in Debrecen, as it’s not the most touristic place despite its size. Nevertheless it was extremely comfortable, and gave me the chance to catch up on some writing, read some stuff and wash off my travel stink. Later on in the evening I went out to see the main street properly and eat something. It was very pleasant; certainly much cleaner than what I saw in Budapest. Nevertheless, there was not really that much to do or see here, so I retired to the hostel again and ended a fairly long day of travel, confirming my Couchsurfing place in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Tomorrow I would leave for there, and in doing so would also be leaving the safety of the Schengen zone into the wilderness. I was looking forward to it.