Operator: MAV/CFR EuroNight
Headcode: IC473 ‘Ister’
Route: BUD-BUC
Class: Single Sleeper
Seat: C422, S41
Date: Tuesday 6th January 2026
After 36 hours spent exploring the Hungarian capital, it was time to continue my Meander to Moldova and so I was back at Budapest’s Keleti railway station ready to catch the second sleeper train of the trip. This one, operated jointly by MAV and CFR (the Hungarian and Romanian state railways respectively), would take me from Budapest to my first new country of the trip, Romania and its capital Bucharest. With a change of time zone as we crossed the border, I’d be spending around 14 and a half hours onboard the Ister sleeper. If you want to read the other posts from my Meander to Moldova so far, you can check them out here, here, here, here and here.
I had arrived at Budapest’s Keleti station around two hours before the train was scheduled to depart and so headed to MAV’s ‘Premium Lounge’ near the buffer stops on platform 9. This lounge is open to anyone with a 1st class international ticket to or from Budapest, 1st class Interrail or Eurail pass holders with reservations for that day or, like me, passengers with tickets for a sleeping car berth. Its quite a small lounge but had a good range of drinks and food available for free, with a better offering than any UK 1st class lounge, whilst alcohol was also available for purchase. I chose a seasonal gingerbread latte along with a bacon, egg and cheese toastie, both of which were good but best described as cheap and cheerful. Nonetheless, getting free lounge access when travelling by sleeper train in Europe is a novelty so I certainly am not going to complain.
I headed out to the concourse around half an hour before departure to go and grab some refreshments for the journey from one of the kiosks within the station and around 10 minutes later the platform was announced. Platform 1 is outside of the main train shed and about a five-minute walk from the main concourse, with my carriage at the front of the train being a bit of a slog when carrying my bag. The train was a mix of Hungarian and Romanian coaches, with it operating as a normal Hungarian ‘Intercity’ train as far as Lőkösháza (the last town in Hungary) before then continuing across the border and into Romania.
My bed for the night was number 41 in a cabin midway down the first coach behind the loco. The cabins were fairly basic and can have up to three people sharing, at which point they would become quite cramped. There was a single power socket provided under the sink, temperature controls, reading lights that only worked when the main light was switched off and a strange TV that you could plug an aux cable into. The room did have its own sink, in a cupboard that took up half of the available floor space, although thankfully the room did have luggage storage space above the door, freeing up some floor space. The toilets and showers are shared facilities at the end of the carriage; however, the latter was locked when I checked it out so you may have to get a key from the attendant.
We departed Budapest-Keleti on time at 1910 and headed east out of the city rather than looping around the southern edge as we had done when I had arrived from Stuttgart. Shortly after passing to the north of Budapest Airport, between Maglód and Maglódi nyaraló, we came to a stand with some quite sharp braking and the horn being sounded after we came to a stop. However despite the minor drama, we were on the move again quite quickly although it was hard to tell with the darkness outside the window, even with the cabin lights turned off. Outside Nagykáta was an isolated farmhouse lit up ‘like a Christmas tree’ with Christmas lights and as we approached Tápiószele there was an empty but illuminated rail yard, but other than these there was not much to see until our first stop of Szolnok just under an hour and a half after departing Budapest.
Szolnok was a large station with a dozen platforms and a huge yard, and amusingly a CAT mini digger being used to clear the snow from the platforms. Our stop here was around five minutes late, presumably because of the unscheduled stop earlier in the journey and we were back on the move after a seven-minute stop at 2044. On leaving the station the many lines all joined up and fed down to a single track which we branched off from in Szajol, the next town after Szolnok. This line took us in a more south-easterly rather than easterly direction and about 25 minutes after departing Szolnok we arrived at our second stop of Mezõtúr. Unfortunately, as is often the case, our small delay began to snowball as our stop at Mezõtúr was 11 minutes late and the 3rd stop at Gyoma was 14 minutes late.
After Gyoma we had stops every 10 to 15 minutes, stopping at the stations of Csárdaszállás, Mezöberény, Murony, Békéscsaba and Kétegyháza which were all uneventful apart from Murony where some particularly heavy braking nearly sent me flying. After Kétegyháza we had around a 35-minute run to the border station of Lőkösháza which we arrived at 11 minutes before departure time (presumably to allow time to uncouple the Hungarian carriages and possibly swap locos). Whatever shunting was required took around 10 minutes, with us departing 11 minutes late at 2238 and, just three minutes later, we crossed into my 38th country, Romania.
After observing the large railway yard at the Romanian border town of Curtici and the stop just before midnight at the town of Arad where lots of people were waiting to board, I settled down to sleep just after we departed. Overnight there were stops at Deva, Simeria, Orăştie, Alvinc, Sebeş Alba and Sibiu and I woke up around 0630 at Făgăraș after a rather disturbed night’s sleep. Unfortunately, the bed was very uncomfortable with an almost non-existent mattress and an exposed wooden surround that causes irritation as you rub up against it and so after six hours of broken sleep I gave up. With the Romanian countryside still covered by snow, we seemed to have an unscheduled stop at Brădet Hm in the middle of a forest before planned stops at Codela and Brașov, the latter having a 20-minute dwell to allow for a loco swap.
Following the stop Brașov I tried to fold the bed up into seats for the remainder of the journey, however you need a train guard’s key to lock these into place and so I propped myself up the best I could to enjoy the scenery as it began to get light. After Brașov the train heads through the Carpathian Mountains which provided some stunning views and I was going to open my cabin door to enjoy these from both sides of the train but unfortunately the corridor stunk of cigarette smoke and so I quickly retreated. With no breakfast being provided onboard I tucked into my purchases from the night before, with a picnic breakfast of a packet croissant and some Pom Bears…
Our crossing of the Carpathians brought some stops at the small stations of Azuga, Bușteni and Sinaia and as we descended into the foothills there was lots of fog or low cloud along with what looked like quite deep snow on the ground. With about an hour left of the journey we stopped at Câmpina and then twenty minutes later at the final stop of Ploiești Vest. After Ploiești we were soon entering the Bucharest suburbs and at Chitila joined up with other lines heading into the city. The closer we got to our destination the more the railway grew up around us, with large depots and sidings either side of the tracks. Just outside Bucharesti Nord is the commuter station of Basarab, formerly an annex of the main station and we sat alongside this whilst waiting for another train to depart. After a few minutes we were on the move again and pulled into Bucharesti Nord at 1042, five minutes late, after a journey of around 800km.
With quite a few European sleeper journeys under my belt, I think I can say with some sort of authority that this is probably the worst sleeper journey I have done on my travels. With basic rooms, uncomfortable beds and no catering including breakfast, this is about as bare minimum as you can get onboard sleeper trains from my experience. Whilst the free lounge at Budapest was a nice freebie and some of the scenery was amazing, it unfortunately doesn’t make up for the poor night’s sleeper. Realistically if I need to get between the Hungarian and Romanian capitals again, I’ll be heading to the airport and taking the short flight.
Lounge 4*
Seat/Facilities 2*
Food 0*
Service 3*
Punctuality 5*
Overall Rating 14/25 (read about my rating system here!)
Flights & Times 