Good evening, Singapore, and welcome to another episode of Sleepless in Singapore. I am Julian, and today is Sunday, March the 10th of 2024. Today we are going to continue with the big trip I started last episode, which will probably be from Bratislava to somewhere around Kiev or maybe Moscow. So please find a comfortable position, sit down or lie down, and let my voice be your guide to a restful night.

From Bratislava to Budapest, there is no direct train, so what we had to do is go back to Vienna, which doesn't really matter because it's a really short distance, and then we took a train from Vienna to Budapest. Most of the time, that train ride was very uneventful. But the one thing I do remember is that we were sitting there on our assigned seats. And then once in a while, a person was coming, sitting next to us or opposite of us, and then this person was leaving again and sitting somewhere else. And that happened, I think, three times in a row, which was enough that Philipp and I were wondering if we maybe smell funny or if something else is wrong. But we had showered in the morning, we're usually not the worst-smelling people, so I really hope it was something else. Luckily, person number four, a nice Japanese man, was finally the one who not only sat down but also stayed put.

Anyway, that's pretty much all I remember from that train ride, so I assume nothing much else has happened there. What I do remember is when we arrived in Budapest at our Airbnb, we were sitting together with a host for a bit, and he recommended different things, like different sites to see and so on. The place itself was not as nice as the last one but still good enough, and still Philip and I both had separate rooms we could sleep comfortably, and we didn't have any complaints.

So after arriving and talking to that guy, and, you know, like, unpacking a little and getting fresh, Philipp and I, for the evening, went out, and we went to look for the place. Not only our host had recommended, but also my friend Markus from Berlin had on his list of recommendations in like the first or second place of what to do in Budapest. The place I'm talking about is called Simpla with an SIMPLA. And so that was what we were looking for. So we entered Simpla in our phones. Google Maps seemed to work great in Budapest. And it wasn't too far, so we took some public transport and did some walking, and we arrived at a bar called Simpla, which is exactly what both the host and Markus were promising, a bar called Simpla. And we entered and we were slightly confused, because it was not a nice bar. It was not even close to being nice. I don't know how to describe that in English at least. It reminded me of one of these very old dark wood painted over German Kneipe, like a pub. But a pub where nothing is going on. There was... it wasn't a sports pub because there were no TVs. There was nothing else happening. There was nothing pretty in there. There was a waiter who was nice in all fairness he was nice he asked us what we want and we opted for a beer and we were sitting there with our beer nobody else in there around us like brown wood nothing happening a little bit of music playing, like not live music, just like music from the speakers. And we were very confused that this should be the recommendation that we both got very independently from different people.

And so we had our beer, we talked for a bit, and we decided, okay, been here, done that, let's go somewhere else. And we walked around a bit in the old town and it turns out that almost by chance we found the actual Simpla which is called the SimplaCart. I'll make sure to put a link and maybe also a link to Google Maps so you don't have the same problem that we have one day. And the actual Simplacard turned out to be great. It's a bit of an open space, bar, like an area for young people, actually for any kind of people. It was very hip, it reminded me a lot of Berlin. The same thing could have probably been in Kreuzberg or somewhere. And there were hundreds of people and very quickly you made friends and you got to talk to people and that is what Philipp and I did as well. We got to know Tony, who was kind enough to not only talk to us, but even perform a song for us, and who, due to a lucky coincidence, I got to meet again in the US last summer. And then obviously we met a big group of Erasmus students who did not hesitate to take us into their group and who partied the whole night.

Which is basically what I remember from that evening, because it was a long evening. We were hopping from bar to bar, and then later on from club to club. That was back in the time I was still doing that. And then I remember even losing Philip for a while. And then I remember very late when most of the clubs were closed, some of these Erasmus students were still walking along the streets, including me, looking for yet another bar or yet another club we could go to. And then here's a travel tip: if it looks shady, it probably is shady because yeah that I remember now I'm thinking about it we went to this weird bar down in the basement and they did not have beer but they did have wine and it kind of looked like a bottle of wine was 15 euros which in hindsight admittedly is probably cheaper than it should be but it turns out that it wasn't 15 it was 150 just written in a very very strange way and the 150 bottle of wine which still was very sketch and very weird, so we made a run, and we almost got into trouble with a guy at the door, because obviously he did not like a bunch of guys going there and order the wine, and then the wine is there, not drink the wine and leave without paying. But long story short, there was no trouble. And we made our way out. And everyone was safe. And then also it started to get light again. The night was over. The morning was breaking. And I thought I should really go home now and I also texted Philipp earlier and he said yeah I made it home it's not far you can walk over. And so I walked over and I was trying to find our Airbnb and I did not immediately find it. And then I ran out of battery on my phone, which if you have nothing else to navigate is a little bit of a problem. But again, I got lucky and our Airbnb was just like around the corner. So I found it. And now I had the only problem to get in. Because Philipp had the keys. And I didn't. And Philipp was asleep. And my phone was empty. So I could not call him. And he did not hear the ring of the door and I had to use the bathroom really urgently and then finally I noticed that my back then brand new Apple Watch 1 or 2, I don't know, but one of the very first ones and one of the ones without 3G connected to the Wi-Fi of the Airbnb and I could walkie-talkie or send a voice message to Philip. And that, for whatever reason, he heard and he opened the door and he let me in and we slept through half of the day and only in the afternoon we continued with more serious and less partious sightseeing.

Now Budapest is beautiful. There is the Parliament. I'm pretty sure you know, if you don't know, look at any picture from Budapest. There is this parliament building down at the Danube river, which is absolutely beautiful. I remember Philip and I spent at least two hours walking along the river and just taking pictures of that. And then we walked up to that castle hill, which was also very very nice, the castle itself, but also the view from up there. And again we spent a long time up there taking pictures during the daytime. And then getting hungry, we made our way down and walked to the city center. And there is a place called Central Market where we went for a dish called langos, which is this like doughy thing that is baked in fat. It's a little bit like a roti prata or something like that maybe. And it comes with a yogurt sauce or... Maybe not yogurt, but something similar. I will have to look that up. Either way, it was absolutely delicious. Probably not the most healthy meal we had during our trip, but absolutely one of the best we had. Like, not meals, but the best snack we had during our time there. And then we followed another recommendation of many people. When in Budapest, you should go to a thermal bath. And our Airbnb host recommended a specific one, which I do not even want to mention here right now, because he said it's the very same as the crazy expensive touristy ones, but it's a local one. And what can I say? Philip and I both felt very uncomfortable. It was not very clean. It was very old. The water was not clear, which maybe is supposed to be like that. But in combination with all the other stuff, dirty water doesn't look like something I want to go in. And the whole bath itself, it looked like one of these horror movies where there is an abandoned hospital or something like that. So I guess it would have made for very amazing pictures if you wanted to take some horror pictures, but it did not make for a pleasant experience taking a thermal bath in Budapest at all. Later on we talked to people and they said, oh yeah, you probably should go to something called the Galert thermal bath or similar. There is a reason why ones are expensive and the other ones are not. We did not do that. If I ever go back to Budapest maybe I will try. But for that trip we had enough of the bath and so we went on to do something we enjoy a lot more, maybe our favorite thing to do while traveling at all, which is food, right? So we googled and in Hungary, I don't know if it's the national dish, but one of the most famous Hungarian dishes is of course goulash. And we googled where to get the best goulash and we found a place called Ghetto Gulash. Ghetto Guljas maybe. Guljas. I'm not sure how to pronounce it in Hungarian apparently Hungarian is a very complicated language anyway ghetto gulyash was absolutely amazing goulash best goulash I've ever had. I can highly recommend. The sides were very nice too. And that pretty much was Budapest. Then in the evening we left Budapest again by train to Bucharest. And that was our first overnight train. Not only on that trip, that was the very first time I spent a night in a train ever in my life I think. And it was nice after all. There was a six-bed compartment. That means there are three beds on top of each other, on each side of the compartment. There is a bottom bunk and then something in between and a top bunk. And on the other side of the compartment is the same. And there were five of us, there was Philipp and I and then there was a lady maybe in her 40s or early 50s who was called Susanna. And then there were two more people whose names I forgot, which doesn't really matter because they were working the whole time. They were on their computer. They never really looked up. I don't know if they slept. Who knows? They were nice. They said hello and then they started working. With Susanna, it was different. Susanna was quite talkative and she also was quite knowledgeable. And she told us her whole story about how she was born in Kronstadt, which was formerly called Stalin City, her hometown in Transylvania. Transylvania is this area in Romania many of you might know because of Bram Stoker's Dracula. And yeah, basically we got a two-hour history lesson from Susanna before we went to bed. But then when we went to bed, it was good. Of course, it wasn't the most comfortable bed and of course the train is moving and of course it wasn't the most modern train. But I like trains a lot and I slept very well.

Now the first thing to do in Bucharest when we arrived in the beginning was we were trying to get tickets to Chisinau which was supposed to be our next stop in the evening. We did not have an overnight in Bucharest. Starting from Budapest in the evening we had planned to sleep more in trains and do more sightseeing during the day, get our journey moving a bit to not spend too much time in countries that are very close to Germany and where we can go anytime, anyway. So we were trying to get tickets to Chisinau, which is the capital city of Moldova. And they did not really want to sell us the tickets or they couldn't sell us the tickets or they did not understand what we wanted, but it turned out to be a little more difficult than we anticipated, which made us even more relieved that we tried to do it in the evening, or actually the morning before. But then finally some policeman took us and he took us to what was the international counter. And the international counter was the one where, well, people spoke English, and they could help us, and we got our tickets for the night. So everything is fine.

After all that, it was almost lunchtime and Philipp and I did some research. I don't know if I mentioned that before, but one of our, well, weird self-opposed rules, or at least ambitions we had for the whole trip, was not only to only take public transport but also to eat a burger to figure out which is the best burger and then eat a burger in every major city or in every place where we stay more than for a couple of hours and in Bucharest we googled and found this place called Gravita Pub and Grill. And that place had great burgers. We both had very different burgers, a little bit fancy burgers with like special cheese and stuff like that. And we both liked it, both had a good time, both had a beer. And then we went on to start our sightseeing day. And I know that might be an unfair comparison again, because after Vienna and Budapest, Bucharest was maybe not the most... It wasn't the prettiest. Also in Bucharest for the first time, we really felt like we're in Eastern Europe. In Vienna anyway, but also in Bratislava and even in Budapest, it felt very Western European. And then in Bucharest for the first time, our feeling was different. It looked more Soviet. The buildings looked somehow, there was a different architecture. It was more gray. And even though there are some churches and some things to see, we kind of enjoyed the experience, but probably would not recommend Bucharest for its beautiful city center. What we did and what was really cool was to follow the recommendation of these two guys in the or actually of that couple we'd met in the train who was sleeping with us the two working all the time the only thing they said when we were talking about what to do in Bucharest in the city center, they looked up and they said, oh you should totally go to this place called Garden of Eden. And so we thought, okay we don't have anything to lose, so we go there and we walk through the dirtyish city center of Bucharest and we turn a corner and we walk into this garden and suddenly we are in a very different world. It's a mix of nature and some kind of German beer garden. There are tons of, you know, like these beer benches and there is a lot of shade and there are trees. I think trees is what I missed in the rest of Bucharest. I don't think we saw a single tree before we went to this Garden of Eden. And so we liked it so much there that Philipp and I just sat down, ordered at least three Bundaberg ginger beers for each of us in total. And we sat there and we were reading our books and we were contemplating life at least for three hours until our train was about to be ready for Chisinau. And then we paid and we left and we made our way back to the train station. And we found our train, which by the way also was starting to look more Eastern European, more not bad, but old. Somehow more interesting. Somehow a little bit more nostalgic. I would say old and different, but still in a good way. The train ride to Chisinau itself was pretty much unspectacular as well. But I do remember very, very well when we arrived at Kishinau main station, how we suddenly were catapulted into a different world.

It is 10 a.m. in the morning and we arrive at Kishinau main station, which is this giant Soviet building and you arrive there it's very clean there is no ads or no McDonald's and no Burger King and no Coca-Cola signs it's a quite pretty huge huge building with a huge hall in there and we arrive there at 10 a.m and we get out of the train and together with us mind you this is the capital city of a country and it's the only train arriving that day leaving that train together with us were maybe three or four more people presumably locals who quickly disappeared and then we are alone in this giant giant train station hall and we don't really know what to do. We had the whole day in Chisinau to spend for sightseeing and eating and then in the evening we were going to get train tickets to Kyiv. And so we thought it's only reasonable to leave our luggage at the train kind of a window in a room with a very big very Russian grandma looking like a person so we walk over there and and we ask her hey can we leave our luggage here during the day and she's looking at us and pointing at the backpacks and looking like with a question mark in her eyes. And well, with hand and feet, we try to make her understand that we are leaving our luggage here. And when she understands that, she's like, Da, da, no problem. Bucharest? We say, no, Bucharest, where are we coming from? We need to leave our luggage until the train tonight to Kiev, which is at 11.30 p.m., by the way. And the lady looks at us and she says Kiev da da da which we assume means yes at least that's kind of the Russian I know so again she says Kiev da da okay okay and then she walks out of her little uh office with a window and she locks the door and she looks at us again and she says da da and then she walks away and I don't know we decided to wait and see what's going to happen. And the thing is, nothing happened. Nobody came back. We wait there five minutes, maybe 10 minutes, maybe longer. And Philip says, come on, let's leave. She's not coming back. And I'm a little lazy and weak and I don't want to carry my whole backpack for a whole day of sightseeing. So I tell him, hey, look, you go check out the train station and I will wait for a bit more for this lady. And then I'm standing there, and I look at this giant train hall, and it's very hard to describe, but it's completely empty, but now there is a Russian lady sitting on one of these cleaning machines, and she's going up and down, and she's the only one in this whole train station except for Philip who is walking to find a bathroom and I'm looking at that and it feels super surreal to me it feels like out of a novel or out of some Kafka story. And then I hear some shouting, which apparently was because Philipp was using the staff toilet, which he was absolutely not supposed to. So the lady was scolding him. But also on his way back from the bathroom, Philipp told me, hey, the lady who was supposed to take our luggage, she's sitting there in the break room smoking and talking to another lady. She's not coming back for us. Let's take our luggage and let's leave. And that is what we did. We took our luggage, we left, we went out there. And there was a whole other experience. There was some kind of local market but everything was sold from the floor. So around the train station, not only around the train station in the street where the train station is, but like all the streets around the train station there were people sitting on the floor having a big blanket in front of them and on top of the blanket there was a little bit of everything mostly electronics I think we saw hundreds of Nokia 3310, which even back then were old. And we saw old computers and cassette recorders and LP systems. And there were a ton of clothes. And everything was crazy cheap. And I'm not sure who's supposed to buy any of that, because, like I said, nobody left the train. And by the way, there were only two trains on the whole schedule for the day, two trains on the whole schedule for the day. And one train was the one coming in from Bucharest, the one we had. And the other train was the train leaving for Kiev, which was the one we were going to take at night. And in between, they closed the train station. They cleaned it up, they closed it down, because, of course, if you only have a train in the morning and one in the late evening, no reason to keep it open the whole day. Anyway, I guess some people must have bought the stuff out there because there were so many of these dealers. There must be a reason for it right so we didn't buy much mostly because we weren't in need of any floppy disk drives or screws or soap or toys or a huge amount of clothes and that meant we just started walking with our stuff, like the backpacks. And a couple of hundred meters further, we found a little cafe, which was called the Notabene. And we got hungry and the breakfast looks good. And it looked good on the menu. It didn't look that good in real life, but it was perfectly edible. So we had a breakfast there. We recharged our batteries because overnight in the train there was no electricity, so we kind of hooked up all our stuff to all the power sockets we could find in that restaurant or in that cafe. We charged our staff, we had breakfast and then maybe two hours later we decided, okay, we're only here for a day. We should at least see something. And so we walked down the main street, which was interesting as well, because there is no markings on the road. There's just like a big road, asphalt road, with zero markings and cars just go however they feel they want to go. By the way, we see everything, mostly like older cars, Ladas, which is a thing I haven't seen in a very long time. But there is also a Porsche coming across. It's interesting. There was something that seems to resemble a bus line, but with zero markings. All the buses took that lane. All the cars did not. But there was no indication or anything that would explain why the bus took that lane or if that is even a lane. Anyway, we went to the park, which was recommended as one of the sites. And what was super cool and super interesting, there were young adults, I guess, doing backflips and jumping around. I don't know, it looked like a gymnastics class like good gymnasts, good artists. And then we saw what TripAdvisor announced as the most important site in Chisinau, which was the fountain. And I don't think I'm exaggerating when I'm telling you I know people who have a fountain like that in their backyard. It was not very impressive. It definitely is not impressive enough to be the number one site of the capital city of a country. So I don't know who put it up there on TripAdvisor. But that was a fun moment. We took a picture, of course. We took some selfies with the fountain, the famous fountain. And then we decided to make our way to find some more nice food, our burger and then slowly make our way back to the train station so on our way back to the train station there was this place called the smokehouse which was a mix of a pub, a burger restaurant, a craft beer house, and it was quite nice. Not even just for a city like Chisinau, it was quite nice in general. The food was nice, it had a nice little ambiance, like a... hard to describe, a bit of a mix of everything, but either way, it was nice, we liked it. It's the smokehouse, if it still exists, when you go to Kishinau, if you ever go to Kishinau, you should check it out. Philipp and I were sitting there having a good time, talking, talking to someone, talking about our trip. And then suddenly it hit me. I realized why nobody of the people we talked to was taking the train from Chisinau to Kiev and especially why nobody was taking the same route. Because that route leads directly through Transnistria, which is not an official country, which has self-imposed very tough border controls. And apparently, sometimes, at least that's what we read on Google, people get taken their passports away and then they have advice we found on the internet, of course, was do tip them, do bribe them, but do not tip them more than $20, because if you do, they think you are rich, and then they might just keep you, whatever that means. It did not calm us down in the least but also we thought I guess that's part of the adventure and also people exaggerate a lot so we boarded that train alone and when we were just at the door of the train, our train lady, our train attendant is coming out. For that, you should know, at least since Bucharest, I think, every wagon of the train has its own train attendant. The lady coming out, she's wearing a name tag, which informs us that she's Natalia. And she's asking us something in Russian. And we try to explain to her where we want to go. And when she finally understands that we want to go to Kiev, she starts laughing. And she doesn't stop laughing. She just keeps laughing and then she's walking away finding some colleagues still laughing coming back with a colleague the colleague laughing too and they are literally shaking their heads of laughter and then they show us the compartment and we're the only two passengers in the whole wagon they're like 50 50 bunk beds or or whatever we're the only two people there and then natalia is showing us the toilet and while showing us the toilet in the corner of that wagon. She's crossing her arms and very strictly she says which is Russian for no and I assume what she was trying to say is do not use the toilet. The compartment is actually okay, the plank beds are okay as well and without even asking Natalia is making us a tea and coming to our table and serving the tea and smiling at us and being all nice until she realizes that we do not have any Ukrainian money to pay her when she was trying to sell us souvenirs. The souvenirs she had to sell was the most tacky little blow-up Kremlin and original Russian officer knives that had a Swiss cross, but whatever. And so Natalia, not overly happy with her only guests, goes to bed, and so do we, reading a bit and then maybe falling asleep at 1 a.m.

And then I suddenly wake up again and there is a soldier sitting on the foot of my bed wearing a full battle suit and just staring at me. And I'm handing him my documents. And then he has this weird, it looked like a laptop, but from like the 90s. You know, like these very, very thick laptops. And he's copying the information from my passport for quite a while. And then he gives us a stamp. And then we're done. and then five minutes later a colleague of his a lady is coming in and she makes us understand somehow that we had to leave the compartment because they are going to do a luggage check so she went in there and that was the quickest luggage control I've ever had she lifting up the beds, she lets her flashlight like flash up for half a second and then she's out of the carriage again. And that whole experience was so new and so different from everything we knew that Philipp and I talked a bit about it. And then we fell asleep, probably dreaming about Kiev. And I don't remember anything until the next morning, the second border crossing that was supposed to be there. I don't know what happened to that. And so the next day we arrive in Kiev and I think I will tell you about Kiev in the next episode or one of the future episodes. And for now I will just read you some Tom Sawyer.