When Traveling, Always Listen to Your Gut. Also, *Closely* Check Your Tickets!
No, seriously.
For the audio version of this article, read by the author, go here.
A few years ago, when Michael and I were living in Sibiu, Romania, we decided to take the train to Budapest, our next digital nomad destination.
“Let’s get our tickets early,” I said. “I don’t want them to sell out.”
When it comes to travel, I like things to be fairly well planned, so there’s less confusion and chaos at the last minute. Plus, it was an overnight trip, and I wanted to make sure we got a sleeper.
So the next day, we walked the two kilometers to the train station to purchase our tickets.
The clerk didn’t speak English, but we used Google Translate to explain what we wanted, and she printed out our tickets: the first leg on a Romanian train to Mediaș, about an hour away. Once there, we’d catch a Hungarian train with a sleeper to Budapest.
With that chore out of the way, I could finally relax.
But a couple of days later, Michael said to me, completely out of the blue, “I think there’s a problem with our tickets to Budapest.”
“Oh?” I said. “What kind of problem?”
“Let’s just double-check them, okay?”
So we got the tickets out and examined them. We had different tickets for the two different trains, and everything was in a foreign language. They also used the European twenty-four-hour clock, which we still weren’t quite used to.
But everything seemed to check out okay.
I looked at Michael. “Why exactly did you think they were wrong?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I just have a funny feeling.”
I was tempted to tease Michael, but this was shortly after the rollout of the COVID vaccine, and there were a lot of travel restrictions — and regulations were constantly in flux.
Plus, after six years of travel, we’d both learned that you should try to pay attention to your gut.
But when we searched online, there didn’t seem to be any new travel restrictions either. So finally, Michael admitted, “I guess I was wrong.”
A few days later, still a week before our trip, Michael said, “I still think there’s something wrong with our tickets.”
He fiddled with his phone for a moment, then said, “I knew something was wrong. The online schedule doesn’t match up with our tickets. The schedule must have changed.”
Once again, I was tempted to tease him, saying, And you knew this how? Communing with the Great Beyond?
But once again, I respected his gut. So instead, I said, “Let’s go back to the train station and get this sorted.”
When we got to the station, this clerk didn’t speak English either, but we used Google Translate to explain the differing schedules.
She looked from our phone to our tickets, then pecked away at her keyboard. Then she looked up and said, “Trains fine — tickets good.”
“So the schedule hasn’t changed?” Michael said.
But she was already hustling us along to talk to the next customer.
Outside the train station, Michael stopped on the sidewalk.
“Now what?” I said.
“I still feel like something is wrong,” he said.
“But we just had the clerk look at them,” I said. “She confirmed that everything is okay.”
It’s true that I always try to respect the “travel gut,” but in addition to being a fairly organized traveler, I’m also very fundamentally a rule-follower. And no less an authority than the clerk in the train station had just said our tickets were fine.
“Maybe Google made a mistake,” I said. “Even without COVID, they’re wrong a lot. And with COVID…”
He nodded. “Yeah.” But he still didn’t sound convinced.
The day of our trip to Hungary, Michael showered and packed early, but our train didn’t leave until five PM that night, and we’d arranged with our Airbnb host to stay there that afternoon. So I was taking it easy. It was well after noon, and I was only now getting around to taking a shower.
Suddenly, Michael appeared in the bathroom. “We have a problem!” he said through the glass.
I wiped the fog and stared out at him. “What kind of problem?”
“I just checked the times on our tickets again, and I think our train arrives in Mediaș after our train leaves for Budapest!”
I didn’t say anything for a second. “Is this about that funny feeling you had?”
He nodded.
“But the clerk in the train station said our tickets were good!” I protested.
“I guess she was wrong!”
The pipes in the shower squealed as I turned off the hot water. “You think our train arrives after our second train leaves, or you’re sure?”
Even though I was still dripping wet and naked, he showed me the tickets. Now that I knew what to look for, it did seem like we arrived into Mediaș at 7:12 PM — forty-two minutes after our train left for Budapest.
“There’s a train at two-fifty,” Michael said. “That’s the only way we’ll make the second train.”
“But that means…”
He looked at his phone. “We have exactly forty-four minutes to get to the station!”
I started to panic. “But it’s two kilometers, and I’m not even packed!”
“Well, then you better hurry.”
“That can’t be right!” I said even as I was already roughly toweling off. “One agent sold us those tickets, and another one checked them to make sure they were right!”
Even now, I was having a hard time accepting that our traveling planning and our rule-following had so profoundly failed us.
“I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Go ask a neighbor!” I said. “While I pack? Someone who reads Romanian!”
Michael left, and I ran around the apartment throwing my things into my backpack.
Five minutes later, Michael returned and said, “I was right — we’re screwed!”
I hoisted my now-jammed backpack. “How long before that other train leaves?”
He checked his phone. “Thirty-five minutes. Do you think we can get a cab?”
“Of course we can!” I said. “There are two different taxi stands on our block alone.”
But naturally, for the first time since we’d moved in, both taxi stands were completely deserted.
I’m never following another rule ever again! I thought.
“What do we do?” Michael said.
“We’ll have to run for it!”
So we ran the two kilometers to the train station — despite the fact that we both carried forty-pound packs on our backs, and 15-pound day-packs on our fronts.
We staggered into the train station with twelve minutes to go.
“We still need to change the tickets!” I said.
But of course there was also a huge line at the one window for international departures. If we waited, we’d never make it on time.
“Screw that!” I said, lurching for the domestic ticket window, which had an open clerk.
We Google-translated our problem, and she checked our tickets.
Her brow furrowed. Then she took our tickets and disappeared toward the other window.
Two minutes later, the international agent waved us over, allowing us to cut in line. It was the same one as before, and she recognized us.
“Wrong tickets before,” she said, appropriately sheepish. “Very sorry.”
We grabbed the tickets and ran to the platform where our train was waiting. We found our seats and collapsed.
Moments later, the train pulled away.
What’s the moral of the story? I think there are several.
First, you really can’t always trust authority, and following the rules doesn’t always get you where you need to go. I know this — I’ve written about this topic before. But I still frequently forget.
Second, always double-check your tickets — hell, when you’re traveling, double and triple-check everything. Michael and I are still astounded when checking out of an apartment, we’ll look around three times, then do one last walk-through “just to make sure” — and still find something important we would’ve otherwise left behind.
Finally, listening to your gut really is the single most important part of travel. Michael and I still find it fascinating that on some unconscious level, he knew something was wrong with those tickets — he just didn’t know what.
Now, when either of us has a funny feeling about anything, we listen. And if one of our guts is in conflict with the rules, the gut always wins.
P.S. It’s also a good idea to always be able to pack everything in less than five minutes.
Brent Hartinger is a screenwriter and author. Check out my new newsletter about my books and movies at www.BrentHartinger.com. And order my latest book below.
If this happened in our native country we’d be serving up the complaints on a silver platter yes? So amazing when we’re fish out of water… our over-polite selves come out… even when it’s clearly a proper mess around!
okay... for the record... i wrote the opening scene to Kindling, which releases in its first chapter here on Substack on Tuesday, *before* I read this post. This exact thing happened to us. In Bucharest. Last summer.