Eastern Europe Night Train Costs

there is no direct train between budapest and brasov. you must change in bucharest first, and then possibly a 2nd time depending on the route. if you stay in bucharest before going to brasov, then a night train will do, but if you skip bucharest to brasov directly, you better take the early morning train from budapest. you probably will get into brasov around 9 or 10pm. it's a safe trip - don't get scared by the local trains and gypsies, they are harmless. The trains are not very expensive. i recall in romania it's pretty cheap, in bulgaria it's a little more expensive but not bad, i.e. from sofia to istanbul. bucharest to sofia is not that far you can take a day time train if you want. suggest you stop by valiko tanovo for overnight then train to sofia. from sofia you should go to plovdiv overnight before going to istanbul.

Carrie, Whatever you do be sure to buy a first class ticket. Second and third class on those trains is an experience that is memorable - in a bad way.

Hey thanks, guys! The DB website shows a direct train from Budapest-Keleti to Brasov. Should I be looking somewhere else for train schedules? I've run into poor planning problems before, so I want to make sure I get this right! Speak of poor planning problems, thanks for telling me to take 1st class. Too often I try to save money by getting the cheapest ticket, then I end up having ridiculous "adventures" ie Sleeping on the floor in an unoccupied station from 12-4am in Germany, sleeping in the breakfast car under a table, sleeping in Chicago airport baggage claim next to a homeless person (!!), and more. And I am a girl in my 20s. Let's just say my parents weren't terribly excited about these stories. Yet I never seem to learn from my mistakes. I will definitely heed that advice this time around.

Carrie, Well then maybe then you would have liked our fifteen and a half hour trip from Istanbul to Stara Zagora, Bulgaria on a night trail in a third class couchette. That was a trip from aitch-e-double toothepicks. There were five of us in the cabin. The toilets were old greenish-orange squat fixtures in the floor that you could see the rail bed through with no paper or running water. It stopped at every little dinky town. It had no shock absorbers. Air conditioning was windows up or windows down. Everyone had to get out of the train on the Turkish side of the border to have their passports stamped at 2:AM and again inside Bulgaria about half an hour later, but I digress. You would have loved it.

I wish I could "like" comments on these threads. Yeah. First class it is!

There are at least two direct overnight trains from Budapest to Brasov daily. Prices are (very approximately): - $60/bed in a 6 beds compartment; - $62/bed in a 4 beds compartment; - $65/bed in a 3 beds compartment; - $70/bed in a 2 beds compartment; - $115 in a first class single bed compartment; The trip takes at least 12-13 hours, so going by day time train would be rather tiresome. On the Bucharest-Sofia overnight prices are (again, very approximately): - $40/bed in a 3 beds compartment; - $44/bed in a 2 beds compartment; - $75 in a first class single bed compartment;
The ride takes about 10 hours. Sleepers on the Sofia-Istanbul train start around $35. You could save some money going by bus (Budapest-Brasov is about $32, Bucharest-Sofia ~$25, Sofia-Istanbul ~$30) but travel times are almost as long as by train.

Wonderful, thank you!