Originally Posted by im.daniel

Hi Everyone, I thought I'd give an update on our experience.

Arrived in Chisianau on Friday, and went to the train station close by to our hotel (Cosmos). Very easy to navigate around, it's a small station - just turn right after using the main entrance for pre-paid reservations. Plenty of seats left available for Sunday's departure to Bucharest, and we were quoted 800ish lei for 2nd class and 1250lei for 1st class.

Difference between 1st and 2nd class is that 1st class has 2 'beds' and 2nd class has 4 'beds'.

Came back on Saturday with enough cash (Card purchase not available), and bought the tickets - we ended up opting for first class. Our carriage (#6) was surprisingly full - 75% occupied I would say.

The train journey itself was very smooth. Border crossing at Ungheni took 2-3 hours. They took our passports for an awfully long time (1 hour) and I started to get nervous, seeing as everyone else had theirs returned straight away. Turns out that we were chosen for a secondary screening (Australian passport), and we were required to sign a consent form afterwards on the return of our passports. Romanian border control was much quicker once we crossed the bridge.

We arrived in Bucharest at 6am. The station is very well signed, and we were able to figure out how to take an official taxi to our hotel. Lots and lots of touts at the taxi stand, quoting us 10euro to the Athenaeum. One guy even told us that the official machines are a scam and that they were broken!

But we knew to use the machine and order an official taxi which turned out to be 6 RON. Taxis can be hit and miss at that hour, but be persistent with the machine. Official Taxis won't leave without the receipt.

Thank you everyone for your input and help! It was a very easy journey in light of things.