If the reservation is on paper, then you need that paper. An e-mail confirmation is not sufficient.

These reservations can also be bought at ticket offices elsewhere, e.g. Germany, Austria, Czechia, etc. Which countries do you visit before you get to Romania?

We are actually starting in Romania coming over from Ireland.

would you say it is too late to only go to the train station locally to get out seat reservation two days before our train?

Hard to say… You could also call Deutsche Bahn (English line: +49 30 311682904) and have them send the reservations via the post (postage fee is €5.90). But I'm not sure if that's still enough time before you leave.

Other than that, go to a ticket office in Romania as soon as you get there. There are 2 to 3 night trains by the way between Bucharest and Budapest.

This physical print of the seat reservation seems to be an unnecessary and completely inconvenient requirement. To think that an online confirmation of a mere seat reservation does not do is ridiculous. I have seen that there are some trains during the day that operate this route and in your experience would all of these trains be completely booked well in advance or is there a good possibility that we could get a seat reservation 2-3 days prior to the train.

Of course you know it all better as old-fashioned state railways still living in the last century and with conductors who do not even have any equipment to read codes-thats how it often still works in way beyond belief countries over there. Or just see the vandalised trains……..

Just toss a coin- IF war in UKrayna flares up again and many from there to decide to flee finally-it may be very crowded-these people can travel for free till the west.