The Prietenia

The Prietenia (meaning “Friendship”) is an overnight train between Bucharest and Chișinău. The day after completing the Romanian high point, Sven and I boarded this historic blue train, already having some idea of what was in store from this YouTube video. There really isn’t much information I could find about its history from official sources, just a few blog posts and some YouTube content here and there.

If you read the Romania blog post already, you know that we were in Bucharest in the middle of a 40C+ heat wave. Somewhat unfortunately, this train from the mid-1900s has been largely preserved over time, meaning that no air conditioning was added. The windows did open, both in our cabin and the aisle, but without movement…it doesn’t help much. After nearly missing the train and having to really hustle to it, my only focus was sitting down and cooling off, not taking photos. So, somehow, I never took a photo of our pretty small cabin. Most cabins are designed as 2 bunk beds on each side, and it really is not worth the savings to cram yourself into a 4-bed room where all bunks are occupied. The 2-person is just 422 lei in total, which is about 40 euros per person. You’re getting transportation and a place to (barely) sleep for that price…so it’s quite a steal, if you’re more content hosting 5 little gatherings that night than actually sleeping. The only tradeoff is that there are only two people instead of four to figure out how the cabin door opens, when one of you really needs to use the restroom. If you do go for a fully occupied cabin, there’s a “restaurant” on the train with some standing bar room and some basic beer and food. It’s worth checking out, which we did, even if just to experience walking through the carriages. I had some flashbacks to one of my favorite childhood movies, Anastasia, which featured a train resembling this one a bit. That one didn’t have a great ending for the train, and I tried not to think about that. (:

So, the 5 gatherings. This train crosses a country border, and while Moldova is a European Union candidate, it’s not yet a member. Romania is. This means that in the middle of the night, if you can finally drift off to sleep through the loud clanking of the train (even louder with the windows open, which was necessary with the heat), it won’t last long. I didn’t write down the rough timings of each interruption, but they’re pretty spaced out…so there are a solid 3-4 hours of impossible sleep. You’ll first be jolted awake (if you were even asleep yet) by a Romanian border agent flinging your door open unannounced. Right back to sleep? Nope…shortly after, Romanian customs comes along in the same fashion. After this, Moldova sends two of their own visitors: border control and customs. Here is an excerpt that I do remember from the Moldovan customs interaction:

Agent: What’s in your bags?

Us: Um…clothing, hiking things?

Agent (expressionless): Any guns?

Us: No

This concluded our interaction. Then, some time after this, the train came to a stop. A gruff man barged in, pushed away anything near the middle of our cabin’s floor, ripped off a manhole cover we hadn’t noticed, and then proceeded to pull out large metal rods and fling them into the hallway. The cover was left open during all of this, and we could look down and see the ground below. It was in this moment that we understood what the YouTuber had meant by some cabins being louder than others. The meaning of all of this was a track change, because Soviet track widths are different from the rest of Europe’s. This process takes about 1.5 hours, with track workers going in and out of cabins a few times to complete the task. This happens every time one of these trains has to cross between Romania and Moldova.

By the time sleep was even possible, the sun was coming up. The train arrived on time at around 8:45am, and we would be picking up our rental car at 9am from Hertz. We went to the location shown on Google Maps (which also matched the address on the confirmation), right around the side of the train station. After around 10 minutes of confusing back-and-forth with a woman working there, who said 3 different contradictory things through her translator app, we established that this was not Hertz, and also that no one knew where it was. We stood outside the station, trying to figure out what to do. Thankfully, our eSIMs worked. Sven found some review or comment that included a photo…and Sixt was in the photo. We eventually realized that Hertz must be within the Sixt that was a 15-minute walk from there. On the way, all traffic lights were out, and crossing the multi-lane road was a free-for-all. When we entered, Hertz was in a back room, not even branded. Apparently, Hertz only operates in Moldova through partners that keep their own branding…which wasn’t mentioned in the reservation made directly through them. To get the car, a man had to drive us from the city location to the airport, 20 minutes in the opposite direction from the high point. So, 2 hours behind schedule, we were finally off on our drive to the majestic Bălănești Hill! (:

The “Hike”

The drive was as expected- around 1.5 hours of mostly highway driving to a village at the base of our destination. The best and most pleasantly surprising part of this drive was the top notch rest stops. The second-best part was the expansive fields of sunflowers. Aside from basic logistics, I hadn’t done much research about this country. I’ve since learned that sunflowers cover 25% of the country’s cultivated land, and the peak time to see them is July (when we were there)! This past October, they exported more than 120,000 tons of sunflower seeds, which is twice as much as this time last year and four times as much as September. It wasn’t surprising…they were everywhere!

When we got to what seemed to be a drivable path toward the hill, our rental car was not having it. We ended up reversing/sliding back down and pulled off in front of a fence, then dashed up from there. Not really dashing, though…as recent rain had converted the path into thick, extremely cakey mud. It was drizzling a bit, still fairly hot and humid like in Bucharest, and just generally not something I’d choose to do if not for this challenge. (:

It didn’t take long to get there…45 minutes or so, even with the quicksand-like mud.

Well…there it is! It’s hard to even know exactly where to stand for the highest natural point, so we walked around that whole area for good measure. There’s an observation deck that would normally be pretty boring, but in peak sunflower season, it was actually very nice. Here are some of the views:

There’s even a little sheltered spot for a picnic. Below are some more shots, also showing the flag. There are three flags in this challenge, all of countries already completed, that have extremely similar designs. The countries are Moldova, Romania, and Andorra. Andorra has a different design on the yellow section, while Romania has no design. So…I have a confession. I actually forgot the Moldova flag in the car and was not prepared to slog through the mud again for it. I still had the Romanian one on me, wrapped in the AACR flag, so I held that one up and Photoshopped the Moldovan design on after.

As we started to head back down, the sun and blue skies finally peeked out! (:

So many sunflowers, and…no one else here.

The descent was equally slick, but also sticky, so not quite enough to try ‘skiing’ and risk a mud bath. Enjoy these screen grabs of my attempts to film the weighted-down shoes in action:

With that, the nineteenth high point was complete. We drove back to check into an Airbnb (very affordable in Chisinau), but we’d end up with one more adventure on the way.

Chișinău

We arrived back in the capital, with traffic lights thankfully working now, but no less chaotic drivers. Right around the corner from the Airbnb, almost to safety, we were stopped in traffic. Without warning, the car ahead started reversing. There was a car behind me, so reversing wasn’t an option, and I sat on the horn for a good three seconds before…impact!

We pulled off into a small parking area on the left. Thankfully, the car ahead did as well. What unfolded from here was an offer from them to pay us in cash, our explanation that it’s a rental car and we need to take their details, their phone call to Hertz on speaker phone in Romanian, confirmation from them on the amount they’d pay us to give to Hertz (500 lei, or around 25 euros), and our quick stop at the Airbnb before returning to Hertz. At Hertz, we expected the employee to know about the damage we’d just called in (the phone number we’d dialed for them was definitely correct), but she looked at us blankly. A few minutes later, three employees were standing outside around our car, while we sat inside to wait. They came back, and all was apparently fine.

Finally, we headed to dinner and then back for some rest (and air conditioning) before our onward travel the next day. I managed to take just one short clip of Chisinau, saved to the Instagram highlights, but there really wasn’t much time or energy for proper sightseeing.

THANK YOU ❤

Thanks for reading my nineteenth Crown of Cureope blog post! At the time I stood on the top of Moldova, we had raised $1,620 for the American Association for Cancer Research to fund lifesaving discoveries. As of publishing this post, we are at $2,525 raised of our $2,500 2025 target. We hit this year’s goal on Giving Tuesday…thank you!!!!!!!! It’s still not too late to donate – the challenge is far from over, and fundraising efforts will continue through 2026.