On the train 6/5/06

We left Budapest from Keleti Station at 2:00 this afternoon Central European Standard Time. I’m sitting on the train right now just inside the Romanian border, and it is 7 p.m. Eastern European Standard Time. We have been stopped for a while for customs, but now I see a man coming down the car to give us our passports back. My passport now has a red stamp in it that says “Polita de frontier, Episcopia Bihor, Romania.” This is a very exciting moment. I am sitting across from Jared, and we are sitting near a Romanian woman who is going home to a town near Tirgu Mures, a German man going to visit his parents in a town in between Cluj and the Border, and a Hungarian-Romanian man who is going home to Tirgu Mures after filming a wedding near Budapest. We have been having very interesting conversations about Romanian history and ethnic relations in Transylvania. At first I was disappointed that I wasn’t sitting with people from our group, but I have enjoyed talking to the people sitting near us. We are finally moving again, and I think we have about three more hours until we get to Cluj. I have been trying to get my reading done, but the scenery and the conversation have been too distracting, and I haven’t gotten very far. I can’t believe that I am finally in Romania.