Weekend in Pécs (Part 1)

I have a Hungarian friend called Aron, who I've been studying with and written a project with, and since he's staying at his parent's apartment in Pécs [pronounced "pea-ch", well, almost] at the moment, while he waits to start his internship, I thought it would be a good opportunity to visit him.  First of all I had to catch the train from Budapest Déli station (on the Buda side).

I always imagine that journeys are going to be stressful events and sometimes they are. This however was really quite straightforward. It was Friday afternoon, and the queue for the ticket office was long - there are a few ticket machines outside the office, but the queue for them was also long, so I took a deep breath and stood in line. Thankfully it was a relatively speedy process, and apart from a rotund middle-aged woman who kept trying to subtly shuffle her way forward, it all went smoothly. A good tip to remember is that there's a 50% discount on student tickets, so the ticket was only 2000HUF (about 7-8 euros) for a second-class ticket in intercity train ... and of course, remember your student card - I showed my Danish one, which seemed to be fine.

Before the Beginning

The best place to start is often at the beginning, however I'd like to start before then, since it will hopefully be of some help to anyone else who is thinking of moving to Budapest.

The story then starts 13 hours before the beginning, with me getting dropped off at Berlin Hauptbanhoff by a friend in an old white Volkswagen Polo. I was a little early and so it didn't surprise me when I looked up at the departure board and couldn't see the direct train from Berlin to Budapest listed. So I waited patiently, as any polite Englishman would ... 15 minutes passed or approximately four songs (Rolling Stones: Beast of Burden, Lilly Allen: The Fear, Imogen Heap: Hide and Seek, Bill Withers: Use Me). Ok, there's a long queue at the information desk and I've got two ridiculously heavy bags, so I can't be bothered to drag them around and stand in line ... as you'll no doubt encounter throughout this diary forward-slash alternative travel guide, many of my actions are based upon my loathing of queues and doing anything to avoid them. Anyway, the helpful people at Deutsche Rail or whatever they're called have paper timetable which list the platform number that trains depart from. This could never happen in England since you never know in advance how late the train will be or whether it will turn into a bus.