Oh God, the title should be enough. It really should conjure up all the imagery you need; cause chills (not the good kind) to have a quick dash up and down your spine, and to make you quickly and firmly change the subject. But it occurs to me that some of you, presumably the ones who either don’t travel or don’t travel in such a rough manner, might never have been on an overnight train at all, let alone in Eastern Europe, which works out well for me because it gives me a story to tell.
In theory, overnight trains are a fabulous idea. If you’re going to spend twelve or so hours on a train travelling form one country to another, the best time to do it is while you sleep. Save yourself the cost of a hotel, waste none of your precious time, arrive at your destination as fresh as a daisy and raring to go and explore pastures new. Yes. Well. In practice it’s not quite that simple. Imagine, if you will, a coffin. Then multiply this by six, and stack them in two neat little piles of three, next to each other. Imagine the stacks are about half a metre apart, as are the individual coffins themselves within their stacks. Then box all this lot in within a tiny little room. Got a clear vision in your mind? Good. This is a rough approximation to your overnight train cabin. Now imagine the six occupants of these coffins (no, not the pointy-toothed kind), all standing in the 0.5m gap between the triple-decker bunks, all carrying huge backpacks and suitcases, looking around in acute bewilderment, wondering where in hell they’re going to stash all their luggage. Well actually, you can’t. There’s only standing room for 2.5 people with luggage at this point. The extra half there is the third person’s backpack sticking out into the corridor where the remaining three occupants-to-be are impatiently waiting, aware that they are holding up traffic, calling out “Is this our cabin?”, “What’s going on?” and “Why aren’t we moving??” No pressure to get something sorted out pretty smartish, then.
With much blood, sweat and tears (well, sweat, anyway, because at this point the train isn’t moving and there’s no airflow, although in my own experience there has been both blood and tears at various points too), six bags are heaved, shoved and rotated like 3D jigsaw pieces until they are poking out from under beds or stashed in the tiny little alcove just above the top bunks, and six exhausted, damp people collapse on the lowest bunks and pause for breath, as they survey the incredible feat they have just achieved. Now it’s time to relax.
A couple of hours and several beers/vodka shots/plastic cups of wine later, and everyone sees the funny side. If nothing else, the entry-to-the-cabin ritual is good bonding stuff. All about the teamwork, really. And soon, it’s time for sleep- get that shut-eye, ready for a bright new day tomorrow etc. It’s time for the making-of-the-beds ritual. By now, everyone in the cabin has realised that any action at all needs a lot of space and cooperation, so maybe a few people will tactfully go and brush their teeth while the others do solemn battle with the bed sheets. Let’s just take this opportunity, then, to have a quick look at the toilets.
I will be frank; I am now immune to them. But that is because- I worked it out- I have been on 42 overnight trains in just over five months. Some are better than others. The Russian ones are, in fact, rather nice, although I’m not entirely sure I should count them. All of them, however, have The Smell. The Smell is inevitable, and soon you learn to accept it, but first contact with it is something of a shock to the system. It is simply the smell of many, many people using the same confined space for necessary but ultimately pretty business, one after the other, on a rocking train. I’ll leave it up to your imagination on that score, but I should also mention the flushing mechanism. For those of you who don’t know, the contents of the toilet are deposited straight onto the tracks. The flush really just opens a trapdoor in the pit of the toilet, and chucks some water down there after it. Because of this, when the train is in a station, the doors of the toilets are locked. Not a bad attempt to do away with the constant stench of urine typically associated with train stations, but you’d be amazed how many people lament this, and insist on having the reason for it explained. Well, if they really want it spelt out for them…
Anyway, back to bed. Once the bunks are all fully made up in the pristine white sheets, there is a cautious clambering into bed, avoiding head injuries from the upper beds or roof, and everyone snuggles down. Obviously the top bunks are the major issue here. On the occasions where there is no ladder (and since it’s such a waste of space, I used to insist on leaving it out in the corridor anyway), you must intrepidly pull your way up the lower two bunks then manoeuvre your body into the small gap between mattress and ceiling. From there, there will be no moving. No moving whatsoever. Once everyone has assumed position, it is at this point that everyone notices for the first time exactly how much the train does shake. I mean, sure, it definitely made that little trip to the bathroom earlier a bit interesting, but was it really this bad…? Apparently so. Once the lights have gone out, you also realise that every time you whiz through a station, the fluorescent glow is pretty dazzling, throwing harsh light followed by hectic shadow all about the cabin. But whatever, you think, as you shield your eyes, there are curtains, after all, and the rocking motion of the train is actually rather soothing, it might even lull you into sleep… you drift off into a light slumber.
BANG BANG BANG!
Huh?! You jerk upright automatically, hitting your head on the bunk above, and slump back onto the pillow while simultaneously trying to roll yourself over to be able to open the door, while keeping yourself from falling out of bed, the violent knocking continuing all the time. This is no mean feat in the dark at 3am on a shaking train. You fumble with the lock and pull the door open, blinking blearily in the light of the corridor. There, silhouetted against the glare, stands a man with a gun. Or a woman. Oh, I’m giving the wrong impression now, but the border guards honestly do have guns. “Passports!” he/she barks.
“Passports, guys”, you mumble, for the benefit of anyone who didn’t hear the evil dictator the first time. You reach for your passport and hand it over. Now comes the crucial point: What kind of passport do you have? If, like me, you carry a British passport, it will receive a cursory glance, and maybe you yourself will merit a slightly scornful look for clearly being such a state at 3am. If, however, you carry an American passport (gasp), the procedure is slightly different. No scornful glances for you; you get the full on glare. So does your passport. Then you get another and, just in case it felt left out, your passport does as well. The guard collects any other offending passports (you try crossing any border in Eastern Europe with a Brazilian passport, honestly) and promptly disappears with them.
“Where are they taking our passports?” ask your poor, persecuted American companions, uneasily.
“Don’t worry; they just have to go and check them and get them stamped off the train,” I say, reassuringly. They don’t look reassured.
“Off the train?” comes the slightly panicked response. “What if the train leaves without them?”
“Don’t worry, we wont,” you promise.
You lie awake amid the mutterings of those who are passport-less, and you begin to wish you’d shared a cabin with all British passport holders, because you’d clearly be happily off in the land of nod again by now if you had.
Eventually, with a final glare for good luck, the passports are returned, and you all sigh with relief, roll over again and drift off back to sleep.
BANG BANG BANG.
Huh??! Take two. “Passports!” comes the bark, because, you see, crossing a border doesn’t just involve one border. You go through the whole ordeal twice: once leaving the old country and again entering the new country. The twenty or so minutes in between as you cross the wasteland that neither country can be bothered to do anything with is a perfect opportunity to achieve a heavy enough sleep to give your nervous system a good jolt as they wake you up when it’s time for round two.
Anyway, I’m sure you can imagine that all of this does not amount to a great night’s sleep, and when you rock up at your exciting new destination at 8am it takes a special sort of person to get enthusiastic about sightseeing. I have to admit, though, that the person is usually me.
So. All of the above is par for the course. It is a reasonable expectation of overnight train journey. Just occasionally, however, there is an extra special treat, an added surprise just to make your trip a little more interesting.
One of my favourite train experiences came about travelling from Poprad, Slovakia, to Prague. At about 9.30pm we moseyed along to the train station in the pouring rain. It was more of a run than a mosey, really. And as we adjourned to the platform, a strange sight met my eye. A rather red-faced, rotund, middle-aged Slovak (I presumed) stood there, with a full wine glass in his hand. Why is this odd, you might ask? True, Eastern Europe is full of random drunks and vagrants, and nowhere more so than in train stations. But they tend to drink straight out of the bottle and, furthermore, tend to be unconscious on a bench, rather than waiting for a train. Still, whatever. Not mine to reason why etc. The train pulled up right on time (say what you like about these trains, they are definitely prompt) and I watched as wine-glass-man shoved one of my group out of the way to get on the train. I realised it was likely that he was more hammered than he looked. But again, hey, not my problem. Or so I thought. Checking the tickets, I found the cabins for my group. It will probably not come as a shock to you that wine-glass-man was in my cabin, already out for the count on a top bunk. But where is his wine glass? Oh, that’s right, it’s just been kicked over where he left it on the floor of the afore-mentioned confined space of the cabin. This effectively did away with all the floor space for bags, and I dashed off to get a mop from the train attendant. Once the mess has been cleared up and the cabin merely smells like one big glass of wine, myself and the people in my cabin all trooped off next door to impose on the group there. I was handed a plastic cup of wine (classy people, us), and a few refills was enough for me to see the funny side. One by one, the members of my cabin headed for bed, but I was enjoying my wine and stayed for a bit. The result of this was that by the time I reached our cabin, the lights were out, so I closed the door behind me and stood there in the dark for a few seconds. Then I pulled the curtains over the door closed- and the whole lot came down. I pause for a moment, stunned, and then I started to giggle. I tried to pick the curtains up to put them back, but they were reluctant to do so. They liked the floor. Trying not to laugh too loud, I shook Sean, one of the group on a lower bunk.
“Sean!” I hissed. “The curtain’s come down!”
Sean blearily opened his eyes, took in the situation, glared at me, then lurched to his feet and took the curtains off me. I decided to save space by collapsing on his bed in wine-induced hysterics. Somehow Sean managed the pretty impressive feat of balancing the curtains back on their holder- in the dark- and I rolled off his bed and pulled myself up onto mine.
At this point, just as I was subsiding, I became aware of a noise. I was confused. It sounded remarkably like a chainsaw, and my hazy brain is sure there can’t be one of those around. I realised that it was in fact the wine-glass man, snoring in a way that I wouldn’t have believe possible in a human being. I started to giggle again. Who in God’s name makes a noise like that? I wanted to poke him. I scanned the cabin for a stick. No luck. I thought that maybe I could flick water on him, but as I reached for my bottle I realised that I might get my companion in the bunk below his wet as well, which wouldn’t be good. And so on; I found the situation hilarious through both border checks. In the morning, I wasn’t loving the getting up. But I was quite surprised to note that wine-glass-man, who shall remain nameless through eternity, stayed unconscious on the train as it terminated in Prague, and for all I know he’s still there now.