I buy a ticket on the six a.m. train tomorrow heading to Cluj-Napoca. Due to the early departure, I decide not to pay for a hotel or hostel. There is a twenty-four hour café across from the train station, with a pool hall that remains open until two a.m. I figure I can kill most of my night at this accommodating establishment, and return to the train station around four a.m. when I’ll switch from beer to coffee.

I pass through the sparsely crowded café on the first floor and walk upstairs to the pool hall. The low green lights illuminate clouds of smoke hanging from the ceiling. I cut through the room, visibly separating walls of chemically charged air. I order another Timisorean beer and lean back on my barstool. The barmaid hands me the cold beverage and I rotate around to watch two local men battling over a game of pool. They have noticeably had too much to drink and spend most of their time arguing over inconsequential blunders. Having grown up with a pool table I had hoped to get a game tonight, but with the only two players on hand drunkenly jabbing at each other with their cues, I give up on that idea.

After three more beers, and one more painfully dull pool game, the barmaid begins turning the lights down and with that I pay my bill and make for the door. The first floor has picked up a few more patrons, mainly men, gathered around four slot machines lining the wall. I watch them drink and gamble away the little money they have, while I imagine a wife, girlfriend, mother or father fitfully asleep at home. I decide to return to the train station earlier than expected.

A train station takes on a different character between midnight and four a.m. Stranded travelers and penniless drifters replace the young families and dapper businessmen. People try to steal sleep on floors, benches, and stone windowsills. There is a constant game of cat-and-mouse being played by the police and drifters looking for a warm place to rest. On several occasions I notice men, seemingly waiting for early trains, woken by the police and asked to show their tickets. The men put forth a small resistance, but soon relinquish the possibility of remaining, disappearing into the cover of darkness.

I continually buy coffee from a nearby vending machine in an attempt to shake off the rounds of beer muddling my thoughts. Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks album plays on repeat from my iPod. I fight against the early hours of the morning, worrying what will happen to my bags if I fall asleep. I’m well aware of the shifty characters lurking behind the shadows of the platform. Almost exactly at four a.m. the morning traffic begins, and the station fills. The row of chairs I had stretched out on is now occupied by an old couple. The silence that had pervaded through the night is replaced by crying children, local vendors, and the roar of commuter trains. I take a seat outside with my third cup of coffee in hand. I enjoy watching the trains coming into station and studying the people getting on and off. Occasionally I make eye contact with a passenger watching from one of the train windows. I wonder where they are from and where they are going? I see trains from Russia, Moldova, Bulgaria, and Ukraine, and compare the differences in their amenities. Finally my train pulls in: Suceava – Timisorea, I smile thinking about the beer still flowing through my system.