Central Europe by Rail

The bus to Mannheim at just after seven, and the first errand of the trip: collecting the passports with the Russian and Chinese visas in them. The Russian vignette is there. The Chinese one is not.

We decide to travel on and deal with it somewhere further east. It is the single decision the rest of this tour turns on, and at the time it felt like nothing.

Mannheim → Stuttgart → Munich → Vienna, all on Intercity trains and a three-hour wait at München Hbf. Booked on saver fares at EUR 35 per person; about eight hours door to door. Schnitzel and a Sachertorte in Vienna, in weather that did not deserve either.

Just over an hour from Vienna. The first night on a foreign mattress, in an Airbnb on the 28th floor with the city's lights laid out underneath. Our hosts — two parents and two children — move out of their own flat to let it, up to six times a month. That is how they afford it.

Bratislava Castle on a good afternoon, and a beer on the wall looking over the Danube. Then the boat downriver to Devín, one of the oldest castles in Slovakia, which was the better of the two.

The first prejudice about Eastern Europe survived the morning market for about ten minutes: hand-made trinkets, cold-pressed juice, and prices that would not embarrass Vienna.

An early train, and a compartment that kept emptying. People sat down next to us and left again almost at once — we worked out why, eventually, and were grateful for the space.

Budapest properly: castle hill, the central market and a lángos, and two hours on the embankment at night photographing the parliament, which is the picture everyone takes and is right to.

Szimpla Kert — the actual one. There is a wrong Szimpla and we found it first.

Two pieces of advice earned the hard way. Pay for one of the good thermal baths, the Gellért for instance, rather than saving money at one that looks like a decommissioned hospital. And never follow a doorman down into a basement bar in an Eastern European city, whatever the wine is listed at upstairs.

Our first overnight in a train, ever. Five of us in a six-berth compartment. Suzanna, in her forties and better read on German history than either of us, talked most of the way and taught us about Kronstadt — Brașov, and for a while Stalin City — where she is from.

Buying the onward tickets to Chișinău at Bucharest took longer than the journey deserved. The further east we go, the less English there is; in the end a policeman walked us to an international counter and it took two minutes.