Train Travel

I've now taken two overnight trains in Eastern Europe, fallen in love with subway systems in Moscow, Paris, London, and DC, learned how to fix and drive a monorail, and been generally filled with awe at the British Empire and American expansion's gusto with steam across plains and through the stomachs of mountains... I love trains. They are damned cool.

So this neck of the woods is made for me. Plans are in the works for a train dot-to-dot trip from Chisinau to somewhere in Greece or Bulgaria this winter. I'm excited, and if you have suggestions, please make them.

High Hopes:

Various birthplaces in Iasi

Roman ruins in Cluj

Franz Ferdinand's assassination point in Sarajevo

Llubliana

Comparisons between Eastern Orthodox and Catholic church/cathedrals

Coffee, of course, from everywhere.

Taking a train this coming week from Chisinau to Bucharesti for the Foreign Service Officer Exam. Train will be fun, test will be terrifying, Bucharesti will be brilliant now I can see it without 4 inches of a solid ice coating.

This is a regular little trip. One train runs back and forth from Chisinau to Bucharesti. Even days there, odd days back. They go, approximately, from 9pm to 7am. A border guard boards and stamps all the sleeping passengers. The wheels of the train also get changed at the border. Moldova hasn't yet switched its rails to EU standard, and therefore are of the narrower gauge used by the former Soviet overlords who used Bessarabia/Moldova for agriculture and didn't need the bigger, more robust gauge Germans and Austro-Hungarians had been setting up.

I just find the whole thing fascinating.

So, this weekend we had to buy our tickets. Tickets bought in Bucharesti, like those Becca, Erin and I bought in January, are what you'd expect for international travel: plane boarding pass like in size and heft and printing.

The ones procured yesterday, in the--hands down--most beautiful and least used building in all Chisinau, are once-stapled booklets of various size carbon paper, and receipts, all hand written. The woman making them took a full 15 minutes writing, folding, printing, pulling levers, stamping, typing on three different machines... No smile. No questions. No response to my greetings and questions. Stamp, sign. Next? Uh, and two return tickets for the 30th please? Whole process started again. Are the return the same price? Seven lei more. Thank you. nod. Have a nice day. But she was already looking dubiously at the shoeless woman standing to my right.

phew.

The booklets are now with my passport and Moldovan IDs.

I'm excited.