Midnight Train to Georgia

The title is misleading.  The train didn't even take me remotely close to Georgia.  This actually looks more like the BC Southern Interior.

Can you even imagine how long I have been waiting to use this title?   The train actually left at a few minutes before 7am and arrived pretty close to midnight the next day.  It cost somewhere in the neighbourhood of $36 and got me as far as Kars, an ex-Russian colonial outpost and once a part of the old Kingdom of Armenia.  I believe it’s now firmly in the territory known as Kurdistan.  In fact, I think I knew the moment we entered Kurdistan when a bunch of Turkish soldiers disembarked from the train and immediately assumed positions and started skulking up hills and around corners just outside of Erzican.  Not the most nerve-easing sight but as two enormous, 8-ft Kurdish freedom fighters on the train assured me, I had nothing to worry about because I was not Turkish.  Then they told me that communism was the way forward, called me a post-modernist because I don’t own a cell-phone, gave me a bisous on both cheeks, and told me to go to sleep because I look tired.  So, don't judge a person because they are 8-ft and 300 lbs of Turkish-hating muscle talking about small acts of civil disobedience.  They can actually be quite cultured.

What's your train threshold?  Mine is 46 hours.

I'll be the first to admit that the Dogu (eastern) Ekspress does not mess around; or rather, it messes around so much that it took me 46 hours to reach my destination.  As the old adage goes, the Germans who built the rail line were paid by the kilometre, which is why it does some formidable zigs and zags across Asia Minor.  But, after several trips to the dining car for the same meal of kefte, several instant coffees, and several intermittent periods in the bathroom trying to charge my iTouch (I had, afterall, just downloaded the entire Wikipedia database onto it and couldn’t wait to read about things like “Kurdistan,” “the Georgian Alphabet,” and  “Kim Kardashian.”

Things get real in Kurdistan.

Kars was a pretty dusty town without much of a grand station to mark the eastern terminus of Turkish Rail but what did greet me was two Turkish students who were putting up two Swiss-French students from Constantinople.  They asked me if I’d like to stay there as well and showed me the way to the Georgian border the next morning after a delicious doner, the first good one I have ever had in my entire life, and one that is worth commenting on.  The dining car of the Dogu Ekspress, however, is getting of the lowest rankings in my hierarchy because of the lack of tomatoes with my kefte and the instant coffee.  I guess the Turks have been taking the Vienna loss pretty seriously. 

A Meek Layover in Mikolaev

After waking up and showering in some sort of adjoining shed with cold water and a door that didn't lock which opened into the common room of the neighbour's house (I have no idea where the women who rented to me slept) I decided that the time to leave Crimea was upon me.  I had been there for close to a week and I needed to move on with my life.  The perfect way to get over Crimea was to go to Mikolaev.  It makes perfect sense to, because from what I had read it was a shipbuilding centre in the Soviet Union and was rumoured to have a very industrial landscape.  The only train left in the evening and the ticket was somewhere around $7 in third class.  Everyone had a great time making fun of me for patching my jeans with needle and thread and for being foreign in general.  The conductress was a formidable, no-nonsense old girl who ran a tight ship but could also show kindness and good cheer when deemed appropriate.  When the train docked at Mikolaev at 3am and I sleepily dragged my carcass off the train and into the train station to see what my options were, I was unpleasantly surprised.

I actually wasn't surprised at all.  Who has even heard of Mikolaev?  Why did I think it was a good idea to go here?  There was nowhere to sleep, it was 3am, and the only train out was at 3:300--the train I had just arrived on.  In the half hour gap that the train was stopped, I had to make some serious life decisions.  As I reboarded the train after purchasing a ticket from Mikolaev to Odessa, and handing it to the same conductress who bellowed with laughter, I matter-of-factly explained to her that as soon as I arrived, I realised this is not where I want to be.  Not in Mikolaev.  Not at 24.  Not at 3am.  Just not now.  Maybe some other time, but this was about me, my happiness.  I wanted to be in Odessa.  She shrugged and showed me to the same bed I had used before, laughing the whole way.  In the end, I got a fresh pair of sheets in the middle of the night, a dishtowel that I was able to keep, and I got to experience the joy and laughter of a stern Ukrainian conductress.  In all, a complete victory for me.

Crimea River

Such were my material circumstances en route to the Crimea.
Tea, yogurt, and hard-boiled eggs.  Jealous?

The first thing I actually wanted to do when I arrived in the Crimea was cry. I just wanted to sit down and cry my little heart out until I couldn’t feel pain anymore. There are several reasons for this: for one, I had just spent 18 hours on a train; second, I learned the hard way that you do NOT, under any circumstances, try to steal a towel from Ukrainian State Railways; third, I had no idea how to get to the centre of town because Sevastapol has a very confusing urban geography, and when I tried asking a marshrutka driver who had stopped to pick up a large group of people he started screaming at me and then flipped me the bird. 

As you can imagine, this was really, really upsetting for me. Apparently in The Orient (defined in my geographic imagination as anywhere outside the Pacific coast of Canada) it’s quite commonplace to yell and flip the bird, but I am Canadian and this is completely unacceptable. I was so horrified that someone would do that to me that I sat and, as usual, considered writing a strongly-worded letter to the Sevastapol transit authority, assuming that these marshrutki are regulated and not anyone with a van can just start one up. 



Quarries!

Actually, as it would appear, literally anyone with a van can start up a marshrutka business. This is something quite foreign to me. In the Ukraine they are a bit more regulated than the furgon trade in Albania, with signs and defined stopping points, but if you can get your greasy little hands on an old Mercedes van and can weld some iron bars together in the back to make seats, then you are in business.  



Disembarkation proved to be
disorienting and emotionally
difficult.

Naturally, I have thought about transplanting this brilliant system back into the heart of pro-environment and public transit Canada, Vancouver. Imagine, if you will,: 1) a number of old Mercedes vans crowding the UBC bus loop with several fat old men with a shirt rolled up to their armpits screaming the destination and then herding students into their respective vehicles; or 2) a 7-year-old kid hanging out of a van circling Westbrook Mall screaming the destination and having it stop every time a student flags it down. Groups of hipsters would flock to the Main Street-Commerical Drive marshrukta, rich kids would abandon their BMWs and Mercedes Benzes for the sleek and rugged look of a 1985 orange Mercedes delivery van, and all those women who collect bottles at UBC would be delighted by the roofracks when they are taking the day’s haul back to Shaughnessy.

Until all this catches on, however, I’ll have to stay in eastern Europe to really maximize my love, and utter contempt, for affordable public transit. So feeling sorry for myself was not in the cards—this was life. If being treated poorly by a Ukrainian was a part of growing up, then I was going to do it. As usual, I rationalised that I would hate driving a marshrutka and having to deal with someone like me.  So I sat at the bus stop and talked with an old woman who confessed that English is the international language, but that she refused to learn it.  I told her she had gotten this far already and that I agree—it's not worth it.  



These three had an easier time
navigating the peninsula, I'm told.

When I had purchased my ticket to Sevastapol, I wasn’t really thinking about where I would go. I assumed the Crimea was enough of a destination and so I just blindly went. As such, I had no plan or idea of where I would stay in Sevastapol and was devastated to disembark and find nowhere to stay. I was still new to the scene and I was not expecting hoards of babas to swarm me at the station with cardboard sheets pinned to their jackets offering rooms. When they did I was immediately wary of their mysterious and pixieish ways, and I decided to stay clear of these Crimean sirens and opt for a café with wifi instead, where I discovered some form of lodging/hostel in Balaclava. Naturally, this was exactly where I wanted to go: I love the Crimean War, I love the Charge of the Light Brigade, and I love the fierce rivalry between Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole. All of this took place 150 prior in the little inlet of Balaclava, famous the world over for the aforementioned things and the namesake for appropriate ski-wear in Canada and a street in Vancouver that several of my friends have lived on.

 

So I bid adieu to the fair Sevastapol and my cool and hate-filled memories associated with it, and decided that I would spend my pre-birthday in Balaclava, reliving as much as I could of the great battles between the Turks and the Russians, and figuring out how to get to Yalta.

Keying into Kiev

Before leaving Chernivtsi we took a bus to Kamenets-Podolsky, which we later determined to be a sad and decaying town.  Unfortunately, we hadn’t read the Wikitravel entry on it, nor ran a quick Google Image search of it because it’s actually quite beautiful and historic.  Next time, I guess.  From Chernivtsi, we hopped aboard the night train to Kiev, which to my pleasant surprise was going to be 15 hours.  As I have come to learn, no matter where you want to go in Ukraine, it will take you 14+ hours by train.  That is because the trains travel at 40km/hour, but the good news is that they are always on time.  In each of the trains there is a schedule letting you know when we will arrive in each of the stopover cities, and for exactly how long.  What a dream job railway administration must have been for type-A personalities in the old system. 

Something I probably have never bothered to express via the medium of Web 2.0 blog postings is that I am really into metro systems in post-socialist countries.  Like, really into them.  It’s my dream to travel on, or at least gaze at from within, each one currently in existence.   Kiev’s metro gets a 6.  Out of 100.  But trying to figure out how to transfer at key spots is pretty tough, and don’t even think about taking a picture.  Unless, of course, you enjoy the idea of having five security guards suddenly emerge from inside the wall, surround you, and physically delete it from your camera.  God forbid I replicate this poorly-conceived public transit experiment anywhere in the first world.

Actually, I’m a bit hard on the Kiev metro.  I mean, it works, and it has some great reach, and it’s actually in the ground and there are trains.  That earns it more than Budapest’s Metro 4.  However, the painfully slow escalators that sometimes didn’t work (which left me stranded in Suburban Kiev because meaty-armed babushkas working for the transit authority would not let anyone into the station) have left it sitting pretty low on the list. 

We poked around Kiev, which has its share of churches and museums.   Naturally, of course, we had to stop by one of the hundreds of open air markets and blend in with the locals, in hopes of scoring free pickles and anything else the babas were vending.  We also saw the large motherland statue, affectionately known as “Tin Tits” in tourist brochures.  Say what you will about the inefficiencies of central planning, but when the necessity arises to procure enough sheet metal to build one of these in each of the republican capitals, it gets the job done.  And judging by this Slavic maiden’s piercing gaze and command of the landscape, it was well worth it. 

Kiev was lacking in something but it took me a while to really figure it out.  At first I thought it was an alternative, underground hipster scene, but I discovered all Po-So countries have those in spades and I was foolishly looking in the Podil neighbourhood, which was sadly did not live up to its 19th century reputation.  Then I thought perhaps it was the bars that were lacking, because from the outsider’s perspective the Kiev bar scene consists of kiosks on the street that sell “live” beer.  You bring your own plastic 1L bottle, they fill it up, and then you go join the hoards or people—homeless, students, businesspersons—in the park and drink it.  However, I discovered that there were plenty of suitable pubs that were simply disguised as other things, like a 1940s hospital/laboratory where you can drink shots out of test tubes and wear old German war helmets from the Great Patriotic War.

Just like West Edmonton Mall,
you can get Ukrainian food in Kiev.

I finally realised what it was that Kiev was missing: Ukrainians.  Aside from the Ukrainian flags and the enormous Hotel Ukraina in the centre of the town, there wasn’t a Ukrainian to be seen, except in “ethnic” restaurants peppered around the town.  Everyone spoke Russian, and the food was decidedly more bland than in the west.  The thing about the Ukraine is that all roads do not lead to Kiev.  For the most part, I don’t think all people in the Ukraine know that they live in a country called “Ukraine.”  If you’re from L’viv, then you’re a national hero and you are a true Ukrainian.  If you’re from anywhere east of Kiev, you’re probably a Russian and are unaware that a border exits between the two countries. 

Kickin' it in Kikinda

Kickin' it.

 All the negative PR I have propagated against Serbian rail in the past had become so ingrained in my psyche that it gradually became accepted as given; Serbian rail was a constant, like an unchanging National Geographic photo in my mind’s eye and I factored this into all my transportation planning regarding the entry, exit and traversing of Serbia.  So imagine my lack of delight, as it were, to be dropped off in Belgrade on time rather than the usual 6 hours later.  Wholly unprepared for this massive paradigm shift, I could barely focus on the task at hand while the foundations of what I thought I knew about the world, about life—about myself—crumbled around me.  At this point, all I was certain of was that there was a train from Belgrade to Timisoara in Romania at 4am which would be the perfect base to launch an attack on the Ukraine.  This was true in 2007, so why shouldn’t it be now?


To backfill a bit of requisite information, from Repulika Hrvatska I had crossed with ease into Serbia.  I bought a ticket to the border and simply “forgot” to de-train when we reached the Croat border.  My eyes fixed on the Croat conductor who left the train in the town of Tovarnik and the border patrol came on to stamp my passport, I sat nervous and painfully self-aware as we left the town behind and the train rolled along the plains into the heart of my would-be captors and potential aggressors.  Instead, nothing could have gone more smoothly.  The Serb border patrolman entered my cabin and, so delighted at the prospect of stamping a Canadian passport, did not even look at it but placed a small, rectangular, Cyrillic-befonted stamp bearing the proud monogram for Sid, Vojvodina Autonomous Province, Serbia, and marvelled in my thorough knowledge of Serbian (‘thank you’ was back to ‘hvala’ at this point).  Serbia was my oyster—provided they let me out.

In Šid, I traded some euros for dinar (after being laughed at when I asked where the nearest ATM was) and settled into the Grill Kod Ljub for a chicken sandwich and some local entertainment.  Actually, I was the local entertainment as everyone tried to communicate me with me with little to no success.  One young student spoke English and he was on his way from Belgrade to Zagreb for St. Patrick’s Day.  He had forgotten his passport and was waiting for a friend from Belgrade to arrive on the train and bring it to him.  20 years earlier, a passport would not have been necessary, and now because of the regime change, Šid was experiencing an inadvertent tourism boom (after all, two people in one day were at the Grill Kod Ljub).  

In the Belgrade station I was as horrified as anyone to find that there was no train to Timisoara (accelerating my existential downward spiral), nor to anywhere remotely close to the Romanian border.  The tracks were laid and featured on the network map as if to tease me, but not so much as a parliamentary service existed to the eastern marches.  A woman approached me and was absolutely amazed that a Westerner had wandered into Belgrade at such an unseasonable time of year and insisted on advising me of the best place to eat for breakfast and how to find the bus station.  She said, “I will be your guide” as she took me to the bus depot.  As soon as we had exited the train station she said, “And now I kill you!  No! Ha! I make joke!”  It was exactly the welcome I wanted in Serbia.

Serbia, the outro.

I slept in an almost empty hostel across from the train station, ate salty goulash for dinner and opted for the breakfast recommendation in the morning, loaded my bag with cherry pastries and boarded a bus for Kikinda, which I assumed was a great launching point to get into Romania.  Surprise!—it wasn’t.  I assumed there would be the following things in this border town: a sign indicating the border; a bus to the border; a border crossing.  Unfortunately, people who live in villages in the Banat don’t really care about moving around much, even if they live directly on a border shared by Hungary, Romania and Serbia.  As such, I was in a bit of pickle in getting across.  After a bit of hitchhiking I learned that I needed to go to Ruskoe Selo, a village to the south, where I could cross.  I hopped on a bus and attracted a fair amount of attention from some teenagers.  One walked with me and tried to figure out what I was doing there.  Suddenly, a pimped out SUV came tearing down the road and an over-tanned young gentleman, presumably on his way to an audition for the Serbian version of Jersey Shore, picked us both up.  The two were friends and they were beyond belief that someone from Canada would ever be walking in this village at such a time of year that they insisted on driving me right to the border crossing and pumping some hot electro beats the whole way while they tore into the parking lot of the customs house and tore off, base pounding and the border guards perplexed.  I wouldn’t have arrived any other way. 

If you like flat, arable land and the opportunity to see Hungary, Romania and Serbia (and invading Turks) from one point of vantage, consider the Banat.

The border guards joked with me over who knows what and sent me on my way into Romania, where for some reason the border guard made me sit and wait in a little portable.  He was younger than I was and new to the border guard scene, I suspected.  He was overrun with work and it took a while to process my passport.  He also asked me lots of questions, not in an interrogating tone, but more of a why-on-earth-are-you-at-the-Jimbolia-crossing-on-foot-in-mid-March sort of way.  You know what I mean.  He asked what my plans were and where I would sleep.  I told him probably Timisoara if I couldn’t find a night train north.  Nonsense! he insisted.  He gave me his number and told me that I could easily stay with him in Timisoara when he got off work later that evening.  I thanked him and said I would contact him later after I checked the train schedule.  I continued my walk to Jimbolia and gazed out in amazement at just how flat and arable the Banat is.  So arable!  My eye also caught a large cluster of trees and a tower in the distant that I have come to learn was part of some sort of forest-gravel pit complex known as the “Babin Raj”—my dream to own a quarry had just come prophetically closer.  Walking into Jimbolia from the border, I was feeling entirely unstoppable, until I was stopped by a car driven by two men who offered me a ride.  They picked up some other guy as well and then they said in extremely broken English that they were charging me 30 euros.  I said no.  They said 30 euros.  I said no, I am a student.  And I don’t want to pay 30 euros.  They said they would take me to Timisoara for 30 euros.  I demanded to me let out of the car.  In fact, this was my dream situation.  I have always wanted to become entirely inconsolable and start screaming and swearing in rapid-fire English and thrashing about.  Unfortunately, they let me out after my third demand, but could you imagine how much fun that could have been?  Anyways, the good news was that they left me in the centre square, close to the train station.  I spoke with the station master who assured me a train would be leaving.  The “taxi” men returned to holler at me but the station master put them in their place.  And so he should.  Someone needs to keep order around here, and the Romanian national rail network does not need competition from these free-market upstarts.  

Old Romanian women have strong thigh muscles.

Upon exiting the station, a fat man hollered “Timisoara!” at me (story of my life) but I wasn’t to be swayed by their persuasive ways.  I was in search of something to eat when a young gentleman stopped me and started speaking German to me.  Surprised that he wasn’t aggressively offering to drive me to Timisoara, I ventured to find out what was amiss.  If someone in this village didn’t want to drive me to Timisoara, something was amiss indeed.  As it turned out, he spoke English (and French, and Serbian, and Romanian) but thought I was a German like himself.  He was from Bavaria but his family had originally come from this area—his father was a Banat German and his mother a Romanian who grew up in Serbia.  They met at medical school and moved to Germany where they reared this polylinguist who was spending his spring break visiting the village where his family was from.  And not to disappoint or stray from what I perceived at this point to be a well-honoured local tradition, he also asked if I was going to Timisoara.

The Timi Gara du Nord

He invited me to have dinner at the home of his father’s friend’s sister, who lived in a grand old estate in the centre of the town.  We entered through the former carriage doors, up the stairs and into the apartment she had carved out from this mansion.  Evidently, her family had been very prominent prior to the communist takeover and had produced the first prefect of Timisoara in Austro-Hungarian days.   She served up a delicious feast of traditional Banat food—aubergine spread, cabbage salad, stew—and homemade wine, and then Martin and I caught the rickety commuter train to Timisoara.  I called my border guard friend who was unable to host me due to working late, so I instead stayed with Martin.  He gave a personalised tour of the city, we saw the museum of the Banat and then made way for the brutalist train station to buy my ticket north.  Upon our tearful departure he asked, “What happens when you arrive in a city at night and have nowhere to sleep?”  I simply replied, “Oh, I drop a couple of F-bombs, drink a few beers and then find a place where I can curl into a ball and cover any exposed skin.”  He was and I think continues to be worried about me.  Then I clambered onto the train, wedged myself between two formidable babas carrying everything they owned in those plastic burlap bags, and plotted my next move.  

*Unfortunately, I seem to have lost all pictures that I may or may not have taken at this time.  It is possible that a battery shortage, or the sheer thrill of fleeing from Bosnia and evading the clutches of Servian border patrol led me to forget to snap any shots of the landscape, but unfortunately I am missing all my photos from this leg of the trip.  But for reference, perhaps a quick Google Image search of “Esterhazy, Saskatchewan in March” will paint a picture my words never could.