Our Overnight Train Adventure in Eastern Europe

We need to get from Bucharest, Romania to Chisinau, Moldova so we decided to take the slowest train in Europe. Hey everyone, welcome to Bucharest, Romania. We are about to board one of the oldest Soviet-era trains still running in Europe and one of the slowest trains in all of Europe. We're going overnight all the way to a new country for the vlog. Moldova, here we come. Let's go. All right, we're on board. We have arrived. Oh gosh. We're home for the next 13 hours-ish if we don't get stuck at the border. It's so hot in here. I don't want to be here to make it look bigger. We made it on our way to Moldova. See? Moldova. All right, let's tidy up in here a little bit before we give you guys a tour and tell you why the heck we're doing all of this. I would like to quickly point out that this is our second time on a sleeper train leaving Bucharest in the past, what, eight months? Six months? Six months. We went the other way last time. We went to Istanbul. Now we're going this way. To Chisinau. Chisinau. North-ish. Let's see how slow we are. Everybody's going faster already. That's okay. We're in no rush. I mean, we're always kind of in a rush, but not right now. Passport to Germany, America, France. America. USA. USA. All right, we'd like to give you a little bit of context on what we're actually doing on this train today. If you guys have been following along for a while, you know that we're trying to visit and vlog every country in Europe, and we're down to the final 11 countries. And Moldova is one of those 11. So we looked for flights. There's no direct flights from Amsterdam where we live to Chisinau or anywhere in Moldova. So instead of taking a connecting flight, we thought we'd fly to Bucharest, get on a train, take a 13-hour jaunt through Northern Romania and into Moldova for some adventure. We like the adventure, and we don't like to make things easy on ourselves. Trains are fun. Here we are. We do like train trips. Ah, we're just relaxing here. We booked a two-bed sleeper cabin for this trip to Moldova. You can book a four-bed if you have friends, or if you're a single and you just want to meet new people, because this train is nicknamed the Friendship Train. That's to signify the close relationship between the countries. I sound like Wikipedia. Yeah, you do. Or some AI summary. But yeah, so Moldova and Romania, I mean, the official language in Moldova is Romanian. So there's been a lot of history, a lot of friendship between countries. So they nicknamed it that, and they use the word in Romanian for friendship. You want to try and say that? No, go for it. I'm sure it's down here right now. Did you know that this train has been running in some form for over 150 years? Oh my gosh. That's a long time. I didn't, but I do know now. Yeah, it used to go like Russia or the USSR to Bulgaria. Back when you had to take trains to cross big pieces of land, right? Right. All right, so the timeline for this train trip. We departed Bucharest a little bit after 7 p.m. We go all the way to the border. There's a border stop. We're gonna check our passports at like three in the morning, roughly. They're gonna actually move us to wider wheels because the wheelbase of the track is wider in Moldova than it is here in Romania, which is crazy to me. So they actually have to pick our cars up and put us on a different set of wheels. And then we're gonna get into Chișinău around 8.45 in the morning if we're on time, which is not always the case as we've heard. So it should be fun. It's always fun to go like in between the cars on the train. We're like in the end of one of the cars right now. The lighting is amazing. It has the best lighting too for shooting a video. They knew vloggers would be here and set it up for us. In the station we were actually confused because we saw that it said Chișinău, Kiev in Ukraine. Very confused thinking you can just get on a train and go to Ukraine right now. We looked it up and they actually started a thing in October of 2025 where they attach cars onto this train that then break off and do go to Ukraine as part of a way to help keep Ukraine connected to European transport because of the Russian invasion of the country right now. So they're helping people and supplies get across borders with this. So it's very interesting that it's all connected now. I'm just seeing a million cherry blossoms go by right now out this window which is really pretty too. I got distracted. In the dark. But you can still see them. So we're gonna give you a full room tour here in just a moment. My first impressions, it's actually cleaner than I thought it was going to be. I think that this area is pretty clean and the fabric on these seats look pretty nice. You know the wood looks all shiny like they just maybe wiped it down. But we did a DIY Orient Express trip a few months ago. If you haven't watched that vlog, go watch that. And we were on some not very clean trains. So this one, this cabin area, I'm actually... Let me guess, I gotta do the bathroom tour. You're gonna do the bathroom tour, yeah. And you better go sooner rather than like towards the end of the trip because you know how it's like a port-a-potty. It just gets worse and worse. All right, I think it's time to do the bathroom tour. I'm gonna let you handle this one. This'll be great. I've already been to the bathroom. It's not too. Here we are. The size is fine. It just all reminds me of like a 1920s prison cell. It's maybe a 1940s prison cell. I don't want to be too critical here. It's a bathroom. There's a big mirror, so it feels bigger than it is. There's coat hooks. You can hang your coat here. The toilet is frightening. I can't believe I'm gonna touch this right now. It's not flushed. It's great. You press the pedal to flush it. And then it, I believe, just opens to the trap. I don't know that for sure. If I'm wrong, I'm very, very sorry. It smells a little bit, but you know, it's okay. Very confusing sink here. I was like twisting and turning and all the stuff, but you like push this bar up. I think somebody else needs to come in here, so I'm done. Okay, after that fantastic bathroom tour that you just saw, I'm sure, I'm going to give you a tour of our humble abode here. I can touch both ends of our, well, not really, but almost pretty standard size for one of these train cabins. Can you touch the sides? Yes. We mentioned that we got the two-person cabin. Two-bed cabin. This cost us 88 euros or about a hundred dollars roughly for this room, this particular room right here. So when we were in here getting settled, the, I don't know if he was the conductor or someone who's managing things around here, came and brought us, careful, brought us sheets and I assume some pillowcases in here as well so that we can put it over these benches right here. If you lift this up, you can see the beautiful, clean, amazing pillows. Those pillows are scary AF. Hey man, you know, just roll with the punches. There are pillowcases, I'm assuming. Sorry. I actually kind of like it. This is kind of like when you go home to visit your parents or something and the sheets and stuff are mismatched because you're in like your old room and whatever and they don't have sheets that fit it anymore. Here's a pillowcase that's striped and a pillowcase that has flowers and you know. I think it's got charm. It does have charm. I actually like it. It kind of matches the little tablecloth that we have over here. There are two beautiful lights in here, reading lights, but only 50% of them work. So this is what that one would look like if it was on. There are two electrical outlets. We haven't tested them out yet. I have read that the electricity doesn't work the entire time, like when we're crossing over into Moldova and things like that, so we probably should charge some things while we can. There's a nice little eating nook right here that this bag right here is literally filled with carbs and treats of the sort of this sort. There is a bar car we've been told somewhere one direction or the other that we are going to check out and hopefully get something hot to eat. Talk about the hangar. I was gonna get to the hangar. The hangar is the best part. So you know we need to hang up our jackets and coats and stuff. Look at this beautiful hangar. Highlight of the room. I mean it really is. I do like purple. Now it might be a little bit quieter. We decided to shut the window, but it's the only way to not die of heat in here because there's no air conditioning. There's no temperature control. There's no airflow. No, there's no airflow at all. We have our backpacks, suitcases stored underneath here to be out of the way. More storage up here even, and then little baby storage up here. If you're traveling to children, you can just put them up there. Yep, and then that probably closes and then you don't have to listen to them. So great. I do like the mirrors on both sides. It makes it feel like it's a little bit bigger in here because it is kind of cramped, but again not that bad for 88 euro train trip to a different country. Excellent room tour. I think that's it, right? There's coat hooks. You can hang things. You can hold on. Is this like to exercise, and that's about it. Something you might only like recognize if you've been on trains like this before or other types of travel possibly is when things rattle and you're trying to sleep, it'll drive you absolutely crazy, and I just saw this little bit of like tissue tucked up there. That is clearly somebody like being driven crazy by that vent thing, whatever that is rattling, and they stuck a bunch of tissue or Kleenex in there to get it to stop. We did that somewhere not too long ago. We gotta go find this bar cart, this snack bar car or whatever it is. I'm not even actually that hungry, but I feel like for the full experience, we have to go see what they offer. I'm sure it's amazing. It might not be bad. Let's keep positive attitude. Do we think this way? I don't know. I don't know. You need to like remember how many cars went back. So look here. Literally just walked by a dude just smoking. The guy who works here just... Yeah, the cabin attendant. Yeah, in between the cars, you could just smell the smoke and he's crouched in the corner just like... Smoking on the train. I saw somebody with a drink come from this way, so I think we're going the right direction. This train is four-hawking like no train I've ever been on. Here's the one for... Dungeon Crawler Carl, and the book is on trains, and this is how I imagine it because that was like a video game that we just kind of like chug from car to car to survive in order to get a beer and some meat at the bar cart. That was frightening. That was scary. We're just going and going and going and now we're... I don't know. It's like the endless train. I feel like we're in some sort of weird like time warp. Yeah. I don't know that there's a bar cart. I'm not believing it. We've got to the end of the train where somebody else was smoking that works here and told us to turn around because there's no bar cart this way. I kind of knew that was going to happen. It's all the way to the other end. It's all the way to the other end. Okay. We need to get as far as we can now that we're stopped because it's a lot less scary to go from car to car and of course we went all the way in the wrong direction. I mean what was it? 15 cars? 10 cars? Okay so let's go as fast as we can. I actually like the vibe in these older cars more than the newer ones. So we just made it back to where we live on our car. Yeah that's our car right there. And I swear if it's in this car right here I'm gonna throw something. It's actually really funny but I mean that's just our luck right? My mom is gonna watch this and be like Katrina what are you doing on that train? Just be careful. Sorry mom. We just met some fellow Americans slash Canadians and they're gonna follow us so if you guys are watching be like them. Hi. And we finally found the bar cart. This is where all the people are at so let's go. It was two cars away from where we stood. After all that we came back empty-handed. It was so warm in that bar cart snack bar area. They're cooking food. Sausages and eggs and stuff. Yeah. It was too hot in there. Everyone's hanging out. It's kind of like a party. If I was 25 and just like backpacking around Europe. Sure. I'd be hanging out in there. I would too. Especially if I was a single in a four person room and I just didn't want to like bother other people. I would just go out there and I would have gotten a beer but their beers are like this big and I don't need that in my life right now. You'd be spending a lot of time in that bathroom tonight. Honestly that's why I didn't get one. I know you. I was like we totally could have gotten one but I don't want to spend any more time in that bathroom. There is food available. Snacks. Emergency croissants for those of you who partake. Our Patreon members know what that means. And top shelf liquor I believe. I don't do the alcohol but it looked like top shelf. Top shelf? Well there were shells and one was on top. Like Jack Daniels. But there was liquor so you can get boozed up and wake up in Moldova. This is our paranoia of starving. And there's just so many delicious things when you're in the train station and the little bakeries the grab-and-go places. And well we had to go to the grocery store and I love these crackers. And this will last us through tomorrow. This is a week's worth of food for most people. Hey man last time we were told there was going to be a bar car. Oh yeah we don't eat those. Last time we were told there was going to be a bar car on one of these trains there wasn't. And all the people who planned on there being a bar car were just out of luck except for us because we had all the beats. It's dinner time let's go. I think it might be time to start winding things down here. Hey we found a sleeping pad. We just discovered that we have like a yeah a sleeping pad like a topper almost. Gives you a little extra cushion than just this because this thing isn't really all that comfortable. But so then we'll put some sheets over it and then be good to go. Luxury. Oh yeah only the best. There's did you say there's blankets up there? Yeah. I think I'm going to skip the blanket because I doubt those are washed regularly. Those blankets were kind of rough too. Yeah you get a sheet to go over the mattress pad and then a sheet to go on top of your body. It's warm in here I don't think I'm going to need anything more but there you go. We're going to bed. We did break out the blankets. The blankets aren't as scary as I thought they might be. They're fine but it's too warm in here. And with the window open it's no good. We'll see you at like 3 a.m. Moldova is not in the EU, not in the Schengen area, so we gotta check our passports. Twice. Twice. One on the way out of Romania and one on the way into Moldova. Good night. Uh 2 30 a.m. Stopped somewhere. Don't know where. The heat is on in this room. There's like heat vents under there just just it's like a sauna in our room. So we've got the door open to the on the window cracked. We're stopped here and just trying to get some fresh air in because it's like a difficult sleep. I don't think Katrina slept at all. Captain's log. I'm not the captain. The passenger log. Start at 3 30 in the morning or something like that. They're checking our passports here. The knocking with the metal against the door to wake us up is a thing. I had a new passport a few weeks ago. That's my first stamp in my new passport. Leaving Romania. Oh yeah, she took our photos. Just what we needed. All right, I think we have to do this again on the Moldova side. Tourists. Yes, tourists. Uh, welcome to Moldova. They have come on and taken our passports. She had a stack of passports like I don't know 40 at least and hopefully we get them back. I'm sure we will. It's 4 30 in the morning. How much would you say you've slept Katrina? Four minutes. That's not good. Yeah, bad situation. We are at the border still. I think they're moving us onto the wider wheels or something. A lot of shaking going on. Not while I'm recording of course, but when I'm not recording there's a lot of shaking. Update on the time. It is 4 44. There. See? Right now we're at the section where they lift us up and get us onto the wider wheels because the track sizes are different between the two countries. So we're going from the narrow standard track size in Romania to a wider track size apparently in Moldova. So fun fact, there's actually a song written by a Moldovan artist about this train line, about the French line, and it was entered as the Moldova Eurovision entrance song. That's the name of the song? I'll put it on the screen. But it was written about the train and then used for Eurovision in 2022 for Moldova. I don't think they will. They don't know if they made it to the final. I remember that. They made it to the final. Is that the year Ukraine won? Passport's back. It's 6 a.m. and we're still on the border so I don't think we're getting to Chisinau at 45. But we'll see. I'm gonna try and sleep. Well after eight o'clock I think we're somewhat close to Chisinau I think. Right Katrina? Somewhat close, yeah. Somewhat close. We don't really know. The track change and the passport checks and all that took so much time last night. We assumed we were late but maybe they booked all that time into the trip. I swear they went faster than they should right now. We're moving like crazy right now. We're flying all over the place, falling into each other. We're nearly there. I slept some. Katrina slept very little. Very little. Almost. We've made it to Moldova. Welcome to Chisinau. That was the whole thing. You know we've been on a fair amount of train trips in the last year and a half. I've never been on a train that was going like this so much as this one was. It wobbled a lot. It almost like when they switched the wheel gauges out or the track. I don't know how that all works. It almost got like way worse after that on these tracks. And we were behind and I feel like somebody said you better speed up so that you get there on time. And so stupid vloggers don't say it's the slowest train in Europe. It didn't feel slow last night you guys. Not at all. Hey man, that was an adventure. I liked it. I had a good time. I'm exhausted. I think I slept maybe two hours. You didn't sleep. I slept actually okay. So anyway we've got a couple of adventures planned for Moldova. You'll see those in the coming weeks. Don't forget to like this video, subscribe so you don't miss all the upcoming videos, and yeah. Do good deeds. And do good deeds, that's right. Alright, see you next week. Bye.