Romania II: Train between Budapest and Cluj:

ll that being said, here's a bit about my trip.

I landed in Budapest Friday afternoon and met T at the hostel. The next day was the train to Cluj, which was an experience. We were in a compartment with an older Hungarian woman, no air-conditioning, and a window that wouldn't stay open. (I should probably mention here that T is black and does not in anyway resemble the population of either Romania or Hungary, and we were pretty obviously identified as Americans. Or at least as non-locals.) An American came into our compartment and the following conversation ensued:
Him: Does this train go to Debrecen?
Me: I don't know.
Him: Can you ask her (jerking his thumb at the Hungarian woman)?
Me (to the woman): Sprechen Sie Deutsch?
Her: Nem.
Me(to her): Koszonem. (to him) Sorry, I can't.
Him (to T): Don't you speak Hungarian?
T: No, I don't.
Him: Oh. I thought you did. (to me) But you speak Hungarian?
Me: No. (Thinking 'why do you think that?' But I try in Romanian, to the woman) Acesta este trenul la Debrecen?
Her: (answers in a flood of Hungarian, of which I understand zero).
Me: Nu intseleg. Nem ertem.
Her: (speaks much slower and mixes in some Romanian, which I understand much better than Hungarian. I get the idea that he needs to go to the front of the train.)
Me: Koszonem. The front car, I think.
Him: Are you sure?
Me: No.
He left and headed forward. She nodded vigorously. I hope I was right.

The border crossing was a little scary. The Hungarians just asked us in English where we were going. The black-uniformed gun-carrying Romanian border patrol came into the compartment, looked at the woman's passport and returned it to her, and took our passports with them. As I was thinking "Oh, shit" and remembering that the Romanian security service does still exist, I noticed he has a pile of them, Romanian and EU and Hungarian. And maybe American. I'm still concerned about the passport, but it's returned to us, stamped at the top of the page (?) in a few minutes. No one asked me where I worked.

The final train story is short. T and I are sitting in the compartment. The Hungarian woman is gone now. The language barrier was too pronounced for us to talk, so we didn't miss her, though she seemed friendly. A man walks by our car with a little boy about 3 years old. They stop and look in. A minute or two later, they come by from the opposite direction and stop again. Then a third time. T and I understood what it was to be an animal in a zoo.