Romania will celebrate 158 years since the Unification of the Romanian Principalities on Tuesday, January 24, which is a national holiday. To mark the special day, railways passenger carrier CFR Calatori will name one of its trains The Union Train.

The train will travel from Bucharest’s Gara de Nord to Iasi on Tuesday, hauled by a locomotive painted in Romania's colors (red, yellow, and blue). It will depart from Gara de Nord at 05:50, and will have stops in Ploiesti Sud at 06:28, Buzau at 07:32, Focsani at 08:39, Tecuci – 09:19, Barlad – 10:15, Vaslui – 10:54, Barnova – 11:34, and Iasi – 11:55.

A group of cyclists will be the Union Train’s special passengers, but everyone else who wants to go to Iasi with this train can do so by buying tickets from CFR offices. When in Iasi, the group of cyclists will join other cycling fans and, together, they will dance the Union Dance (Hora Unirii) on bikes.

Several public events will also be organized in most of Romania’s big cities on January 24. According to a statement from the Ministry of Interior, 40,000 people are expected to attend the 70 public events to be organized in Bucharest and other cities on January 23-24.

Unification Day, celebrated on January 24, is a legal day off in Romania for the first time this year. The employees working in the public sector enjoyed a longer weekend, as they also had January 23 as a day off.

Making of Romania: the 18th and 19th centuries – unification, first foreign king

Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com