The journey continues with a night train from #Bucarest to #Budapest. This service runs 4 times a day, with ample choice between leaving at 3pm (continuing to Vienna) to midnight, with journey times between 15 and 18 hours (mind the timezone difference!). I took the 6pm arriving at 9am.

The 4-bed couchettes come into 2 flavors, with a "premium" one being wider. Good legroom while sitting.

With 26 intermediate stops, this train also sees a lot of day intercity traffic. #CrossBorderRail

The anti-climax or #urbanism in #Bucarest is surely the palace of the parliament. It's certainly worth seeing what peak megalomania can lead to - by far the heaviest building in the world (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_the_Parliament).

But the whole area around it tops it all in terms of pedestrian unfriendliness: a narrow sidewalk along the wall, next to empty 2x3-lane highways with no opportunity to cross by foot.

Some thoughts about #urbanism in #Bucarest: it's very contrasted! Let's start with some good: in the center you can sometimes find reasonably wide & well-marked bicycle lanes, sometime protected by a concrete separator. There are even several lanes to turn or continue straight. However, the cycling routes sometimes just stop because there was no more space next to a 2x3 lane road.

The #Bucarest metro itself was quite modern and spatious with seats along the sides. Ticket machines take cards, you can also just contactless your usual payment card on the gates.

With this arrival by train, my first impression of #Bucarest is quite contrasted. Railway tracks and metro station ceilings are derelict, but next to that the train station hall is overflowing of colorful advertisements hanging from the ceiling for the discount of the week, and the metro walls are covered with cartoon-style, well-maintained frescos.

The journey continues onwards to #Bucarest. It's the slowest and most run down part of the trip (to be fair I skipped railways in Serbia), with the daily service taking a whooping 10h26 for about 400km!

Given the works at the main station, the train departs in Sofia Sever (North), which is unfortunately not connected by metro. So I take the half-hourly Saturday morning tram to make it in time. The station itself is nothing other than a suburban station really. #CrossBorderRail