Sat 8 Aug, Budapest

My cabin mates on the sleeper train to Budapest were four mid 20s interrailing Danes. They were curious about Ukraine, but said their mums wouldn’t have let them. They thought there was no bar on the train but one of them expressed an interest, maybe in sympathy, so I set out on a beer hunt. I found the Romanian conductor in the very last carriage and a passenger kindly interpreted. It was forbidden by Romanian law to sell alcohol on a train. But I could get off the train when it stopped for 40 minutes in Arad and buy a beer in the station. It was technically forbidden but ‘allowed’. Nice attitude. What time would we stop there? 5am!

On arrival in Budapest, I went straight to the ticket office, but the sleeper to Germany was full so I was stuck there for 36 hours. What an ordeal! I thought I’d expand my thermal bath repertoire. Lukacs was great, but their Sauna World was closed because of electricity problems. It would never have happened under the lovely Orban, ofc. Just one dry sauna in operation (with a Putin powered gas stove) but no one noticed my шапка. Plus a steam room, four thermal pools, two swimming pools and a leisure pool with jets and rapids. I started swimming my usual km, but after 10 lengths I gave up on the 29x table. After a six hour session, I felt at once relaxed, refreshed and a bit spaced out. The adventure was well and truly over but I still had the long slog back, through Austria, Germany and France.