Stoking the imagination - Frank McNally on taking the train to Transylvania

On the train from Budapest to Transylvania, our few fellow passengers included a barefoot, one-eyed, blacksmith. At least I think he was a blacksmith, because under a jaunty hat, he also wore a long, leather apron.

But whatever he was, he carried himself with great dignity on his regular walks up and down the corridors and on occasional forays across the tracks when we stopped at small stations.

Despite the shoelessness, he seemed to be happy on his feet. As we waited to cross the Romanian border, I saw him standing between carriages, chatting with another man. He was by now holding a flagon of something that looked like apple juice and drinking it from – what else? – a horn.

The railway part of my trip to a Flann O’Brien conference in Cluj had been dictated by a combination of circumstances, none of them involving Bram Stoker.

`The trial of the century’ – Frank McNally on a notorious child murder of 100 years ago

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Liberal outlook — Brian Maye on Sheelagh Murnaghan, an indomitable presence in NI politics

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Change of tune – Alison Healy on not being a songbird

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‘Worst morning of my life’ – Alison Healy on tricky tourists

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Only after boarding a 7.40am train from Budapest did I remember that this was the same journey undertaken by a certain Jonathan Harker, as described in the opening lines of Dracula.

With the possible exception of the blacksmith, however, there was nothing on this trip to suggest we were leaving the west behind or, in Harker’s words, entering “one of the wildest and least known portions of Europe”. And any sense of growing dread I may have had was due to the realisation that, for what would be an eight-hour journey begun without breakfast, there was neither a dining car nor even a food trolley on board.

On the plus side, some of the many stops were long enough to allow passengers explore the stations and beyond. On the minus, there wasn’t much out there, either.

In the plaza outside one station in eastern Hungary, I queued at a small kiosk window guarded by a large woman who seemed reluctant to reveal the treasures behind her.

She eventually parted with two espressos instead of the Americanos I had hoped for and then – or so it seemed – refused when I asked for two more. That was a lucky break, it turned out, because her sugar-drenched espressos tasted like cough medicine.

But when I tried again at the next long stop, not only were there no coffee shops anywhere, I also found myself in trouble with an armed policeman who saw me reboarding the carriage. After establishing I was a harmless tourist, he warned against “standing down” when there was “a control” in operation. “This is very important,” he added.

It was the last stop before the border, I now realised, and they were checking passports. My urgent departure from the train had been interpreted as something more sinister than a search for coffee and croissants.

Transylvania means “beyond the woods”, and sure enough, the Romanian side of the border was densely sylvan for a time before opening into pleasant, pastoral countryside. Suddenly, there were flocks of sheep, with shepherds, and meadows full of wildflowers and haymaking: the hay piled in old-style haycocks as often as baled.

The barefoot Cyclops left us somewhere, just when the idea of me asking for a swig of his drinking horn was starting to look attractive.

Meanwhile, if there were no sinister hilltop castles visible from the train, we did at least begin to see extravagantly turreted roofs on houses: a nod to Stoker.

Then just after 4pm, we finally pulled into Cluj, the capital of Transylvania. And instead of the slightly wild, mysterious place I had imagined, it was a gleaming, modern, well-run city that could have been in Germany or Switzerland, except that people were friendlier.

“The Galway of Romania”, a Dublin hairdresser had called it when I mentioned I was going there. In fact, the population is closer to that of Cork. But it has a transport system to shame any Irish city, with trams, a trolleybus service and an imminent metro.

As for the local pedestrians, shockingly, they always wait for the green man before crossing the street, in marked contrast with some of the Irish visitors in town for the week. Mind you, we soon concluded, the refusal to jaywalk may be dictated less by law-abiding natures and more by fear of the city’s homicidal drivers, the habits of whom are Cluj’s only hint of wildness.

Typical of the smart young people who give this university town its atmosphere was a smiling waitress tending tables outside one of the cafes in the main square. She had impeccable English, and knew quite a bit about Ireland, including our role, via Stoker, in inventing the Transylvanian tourism industry. No, she hadn’t heard of Flann O’Brien. But then again, her university degree was in “finance and banking”.

On which note, still smiling, she presented the bill. Almost as a professional courtesy, my attention was drawn to the small print thereof, which had precalculated the voluntary service gratuity, at rates between 10 and 15 per cent.