By train through Europe - 15th August - Budapest

Romania had been beautiful, and @alexdory promised us that there was much more to see, but our train left before noon, which gave us time for a nice breakfast, but not to see more things.

Still, the time with our friend had been great and we waved him goodbye as our train continued to Budapest.

Now, those who saw the map of our trip in the first post might stop and wonder “Budapest? But that wasn’t even on the list!”

Yep, it wasn’t. While the original plan was to go Romania – Sofia – Belgrade – Zagreb, construction work in Belgrade ruined that. I couldn’t find two sources of information that agreed on how to get in- and out of Serbia. Given the fact that all convenient connections from Sofia to Zagreb went THROUGH Belgrade, I had to remove both cities, even though I had really wanted to meet @svemirac .

Our new route was Romania – Budapest – Zagreb, which looks a bit unnecessary and gives us several more days in Zagreb than originally planned, but that happens.

_{Instead of doing this...}

_{We ended up doing this}

While crossing the Hungarian – Romanian border (again! We did that when we left Austria!), we encountered border control twice. Again. At least it wasn’t the middle of the night this time, right?
The control caused the train to have some significant delay, but the moment we entered Hungary the train sped up and we ended up being almost on time!

After dropping off our backpacks at our Airbnb, we headed out to eat something and then explore the city at night. This included hiking up a mountain to have the absolute perfect view!

We ended the evening in a small café that gave me strong “Alice in Wonderland” vibes. Absolutely lovely, with great lemonade and cake.