Post thirty, Official Traveling Day Three

From Debrecen, full of a kind of brittle and exuberant optimism, we took a bus to Berettyóújfalu (still obviously in Hungary), and from there walked to the train station (past a gloriously fragrant powdered hot-chocolate mix factory),

and got money, just (really just—you have no idea) in time to catch the daily train to Oradea, in Romania, and to experience the charming Hungarian border guards.

It is thus described: “Of all the cities of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Oradea best retains its 19th-century romantic style.” It is shockingly lovely. The city seems almost like an abandoned structure (a la Calvino) that has been overtaken by a foreign civilization; the current inhabitants seemingly have little to do with the faded grandeur of the buildings.

We had lunch in an art-nouveau arcade

and continued on our way—taking the train across the exceedingly beautiful (I think I remarked on its beauty, on average, about every 20 minutes) Romanian countryside,

(Haystack taxonomy)

to Cluj-Napoca. We ate a disappointing pizza dinner (why is pizza the only dish any restaurant serves these days? What happened to regional dishes?), Emma discovered that her bank card didn’t work in Romania (“Too Dangerous”), and we settled in for the night on our train to Iaşi (Yash). Romania is large enough that the train took all night. I noted only sleepily that an elderly man shared our compartment, but apparently Emma spoke with him; he was our guardian, and kept trouble at bay. I wish I had—however blearily—thanked him for it.