I hate train stations. No matter what I do, every time there’s a mad dash to the right place. I arrived 45 minutes early, and asked at Information where my train might be.\u00a0 Track 7. Great. At 9:25 am a train pulled in. When a conductor stepped off the train, I showed her my ticket, and asked if this was my train. She said no, and waved me away.<\/p>\n
As I waited\u00a0 on the bench, wondering how long until the right train, the train number\u00a0 scrolled across the display on the car in front of me. IR1621, Vagon 3.\u00a0 “Hmm”, I thought, “that’s familiar.” Yup, my train. The conductor meant, “Not this car”, instead of “Not this train”. This train has two cars with a bicycle painted on the side. The entrance onto the train are about\u00a0 five feet off the ground, I struggled a bit, and then someone helped get my bike onboard.<\/p>\n
Rapidly evident why there was no room the day before, seven other cyclists piled onto the train shortly thereafter. I ended up riding with a couple from England with no bikes, who were renting bikes for a week’s vacation in the Carpathians. After they helped off-load my bike in Brasov, I headed the hostel, selected for the on-line ratings, before I’d read the directions to the hostel, in part: “straight ahead until you reach Prato restaurant. Enter the gang between Prato Restaurant and Sex Shop Store, first door on the right.” Could be interesting.<\/p>\n
While I’d selected the hostel in part for the bicycle storage, the storage is more like the lobby. Nonetheless, JugendStube Hostel receives one of the much-vaunted Rick Steeves “Awesome” hostel ratings. The hostel is well-lit, open, well-decorated, with a kitchen, small shared rooms, a semi-private bath, and a friendly and welcoming staff. Settled in, I made my usual walking tour of the town.<\/p>\n
I met Hayden that night, an Aussie just finished studying in Sweden, who asked me most of the questions from the FAQ. I also met Andrew, another Aussie (soon to be Brit). We had Chinese for dinner and spent the night at a nearby bar talking. After a night of discussing the ins and outs of cycle touring, they asked if they could cycle with me the next day, renting bikes. Great!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I hate train stations. No matter what I do, every time there’s a mad dash to the right place. I arrived 45 minutes early, and asked at Information where my train might be.\u00a0 Track 7. Great. At 9:25 am a train pulled in. When a conductor stepped off the train, I showed her my ticket, … Continue reading “Training”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-touring"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3979,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions\/3979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}