I wake up this morning in a comfortable bunk in our compartment. There are more controls. An American in his 70s next to us is fed up with having to take out his passport all the time. Dad starts talking with him about the world today and the United States.

Meanwhile, I listen but since I don’t intervene, I get bored. So, dad proposes that I find the quickest way for us to get to Paris for August 30th, mom’s birthday. I look but I can’t find, and I keep looking, even calling Roshanak in Paris. Finally, dad tells me to go see in the next carriage since there are francophones there that might know the quickest way to get to Paris. I go to the next carriage but everyone there is still asleep. I’ll come back later. I go back to see dad. On the shelf, there is plenty of food including tuna that I love. Dad tells me that it’s our Iranian friends from Istanbul that gave us this and it comes from Iran. I am so happy to eat tuna from Iran! When I finish my meal, I can’t get up to see if the French are awake because there is another control.

Every time I get up, dad shouts with irony: “Go ahead. Go see them.” which actually means: “You can go, but either way, you’ll have to come back right away for the control”…and he’s right. After the control, since I’m still hungry or maybe because I’m a little bored, I eat the tuna. And afterwards I go see the French, they are finally awake. I start talking with them. Actually, they aren’t all French; two of them are Belgian. I ask them if they have a plan to get to Paris as quickly as possible by train. Since they all have the Interail pass, they give me a map of the railways so that I can see how we’re going to get back to Paris and it helps me a lot.

I do a bit of research and I rush to see dad to tell him what I’ve found out. He’s happy with my discovery, so we call Roshanak to ask her to look up routes on the Internet and find out the schedules for us. She calls, but we see that it will be impossible for us to get back on August 30th, so we decide to keep our initial route and pass through Venice. I go back to see my new friends and I talk to them about everything and nothing.

At one point, they announce that we’ll be passing on top of the Danube and I take my camera and stick my head out the window to take a few pictures of this mythical river. Since we are not far from Bucharest, I have to join dad to pack our luggage, but since I stayed out of the compartment for too long, dad has already packed everything. We get ready to get off and when we arrive in Bucharest, we dash to catch our other train. But when we arrive on the platform, we see it leave. We go to the international ticket sales office and bump into our travel companion, the American, who is waiting like us to buy a ticket for the next train, which leaves at 11:45pm.

I go back to the luggage and come back again, but dad tells me the same thing so I go back to watch the luggage and wait for dad to be finished buying the tickets. Roshanak called us a little earlier to tell us that she found a quick route that did Bucharest-Budapest-Vienna-Strasbourg-Paris which would have us arrive on the 31st at around 10:30 a.m. We manage to buy a first ticket, but not the second since the woman told us that the ticket sale is closed for the moment and that we’ll have to come back later.

Since our Iranian friends in Istanbul recommended that we see the Ceausescu Palace, we decide to leave our luggage in the station’s checkroom and take a taxi to go to the palace. But before taking a taxi, I go down to the Bucharest metro station to see how it is, since metros and tunnels are one of my passions since I’m very little. So I take a subway map and go back up to take a taxi. When we arrive at the famous palace, we end up in front of a monstrous building that is well carved and lit with a very nice light and we take photos. I even tell mom that it’s at least twice the size of Versailles. Apparently, the entire country and its people suffered for this palace. I notice that the street signs are exactly like the ones in Paris. When we’re finished seeing this wonder, we decide to go back to the train station. We’re hungry, so we buy fruit, yogurt and a chicken Kebab near the station; it’s delicious! We go back to the station and dad sits at a McDonald’s to drink an espresso. Now that’s a scoop, dad at a McDonald’s, it’s just impossible. We go see the woman selling tickets and she tells us she has the tickets for Vienna-Strasbourg and we thank her. After, we go get our luggage and go to take the train. But when we arrive at the platform, the train is leaving. This looks familiar. We run and we jump inside at the last minute, but we’re in the wrong carriage. There are people everywhere in the corridor, near the doors; many are drunk, very drunk. It’s not very reassuring. To get to our carriage, the controller has to open the two doors separating the carriages. Dad shouts at him through the doors but he refuses. So dad starts to hit the glass very hard so that he’ll come and in the end, he opens the doors for us. We go in and go to our assigned place. We end up sitting across our American friend. We settle in our seats. No bunks tonight! We try to sleep in vain. Finally, the person sitting next to me leaves and I can sleep. I fall into a deep sleep all night.

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