We met
Constanze in the wrong train station. We
were buying tickets to Kiev at the Nyugati station, hoping the trains left from
there, as that was the one closest to Amanda’s house. There was a short, German girl at the counter
ahead of us. “I need see tickets to Berlin,
ja,” she was saying. I’ve always loved
female German accents. Well, not always,
just since I’ve been to Germany. It’s
not like my love of female French accents, but the Germans are better people than
the French, so that more than makes up for it. As I went up to bat to acquire us the tickets,
the German lady went back and looked a bit lost. That’s swooped in for his magic. When I turned back around, tickets in hand –
as well as the discovery that we’d have to get to a different train station in
mind – I heard him saying, “We’ll help you find where you need to go.” All of Constanze’s documents and money were
stolen in a mall earlier and she wasn’t able to fly back to Germany with her
husband without her passport. She
decided to try to take a train back to Berlin then and let her husband fly on,
since you don’t need a passport to ride the train.
We took her along with us to the main train station, Keleti. Nyugati means “west” in Magyar, which was a mystery to Amanda, since it’s more in the central and not even remotely to the west of Budapest. Though if one were to only look at a map of Pest, then it could have been considered in the west. Keleti means “east” in Magyar, so it was understandably placed. We took the subway over to Keleti and then decided we would find a café and spend some time there until the trains were to come.
The café we found was real authentic. When we walked in, we found a dim lit and smoke filled interior, with solid wood benches along the wall. Small groups of old Hungarian men were huddled over the tables, smoking and whispering. Along the far wall was a row of slot machines with a few young kids drinking beer and pulling handles, the machines were occasionally making ding ding sounds of near wins while we drank our beers. Pavlos and Constanze went off to the grocery store to load up on apples and bananas for our long haul and I was left alone to sulk with the baggage. I looked up information on the train and found out that there was no restaurant car. “No restaurant car,” I texted to Pavlos. “Go crazy.” He never got the text, though he did come back with a huge bag full of bananas, apples, oranges, nuts and a bottle of Jagermeister. As if he didn’t have enough of the unicum from the nights previous.
“Do you get my text?” I asked him when he and Constanze came back. “There’s no restaurant car. But we can get a bucket of KFC chicken for the ride.” Which is what we did. When the train departed, with Constanze behind on the platform, we were plus one big bag of fruits and nuts and one big bucket of KFC hot wings. Riding in style, if anyone asks me – riding in a grease bucket, mutated chicken, smiling Colonel Sanders style. In fact, I hadn’t eaten so much KFC in 10 years since I have upon meeting Pavlos in Prague.
On the surface, the train was very comfortable. It was two people to a cabin, with two beds, a chair, a sink and a wardrobe. There was plenty of room to pack in our things and ourselves. The wagon had clean bathrooms on either end and two friendly attendants who kept them clean. But as soon as the train started, we realized that the train also doubled as a sauna, with the radiators on max throughout the wagon. I asked the attendant to turn off the radiator in our room, which lasted until the morning and brought us some temporary comfort in our sweat soaked skins. It did, at least, keep the chicken hot for some time longer than otherwise would have been expected.
Since there were electric plugs, we were able to keep ourselves entertained by watching movies. Though my current computer collection of movies was rather weak, not having been expanded past Borat and Hangover II for some time. The train hit the border at around 11 o’clock. First the Hungarian guards came on, with their typical serious Hungarian faces. The train moved for a short while and then the Ukrainian border guards came on.
Reading about Ukrainian border guards on the internet, I thought they’d all be dull faced soldiers waiting for bribes. Such was hardly the case. In walked two, beautiful Ukrainian women in tight blue uniforms, big fur hats and stiletto heels, asking for our documents. I was thinking that this was the beginning of a John Holmes movie. “Do you have a visa?” “We don’t need a visa.” “I know.” And then it begins. But it wasn’t so exciting, actually. She just took our passports and was replaced by a shorter male officer, who asked us about our customs papers and luggage. “What’s that?” he said in Russian, pointing at my accordion. “An accordion.” “Do you play?” “Yes, I do.” “Nice.” And then he left.
When all of the officers were done collecting passports and asking about baggage, the train started to shutter. There was banging from all directions as the workers prepared the train car to be lifted off the wheels and carried over to a parallel track to a different set of wheels, since the track gauges in Hungary and Ukraine were different. The Soviet Union had used a large gauge for their train transit than the rest of Europe, which means this occurs at any border into a formerly Soviet country. Pavlos was ready to witness this procedure, but quickly fell asleep, snoring through the entire ordeal of the clanking and swinging and, at one point, what sounded like a sledgehammer being pounded against the wall under our window. He woke up and asked me, “Have they done it yet?”
“Yeah, an hour ago.”
The night went on. I slept soundly in the gently rocking train, waking up long before Pavlos. I reached down from the bunk and grabbed the bucket of cold chicken, to finish it off for breakfast. Then I went and asked the stewardess for a cup of coffee, grabbing some tea for Pavlos as well. When I later asked for more, the stewardess informed me that you had to pay for such services – much to my surprise. That meant I couldn’t have any more coffee but that one cup.
We arrived in the late evening. Alex, our next couchsurfing host, a bearded man in a green jacket and cheerful smile, was waiting for us at the station. He took us back to his house, an apartment just near the centrally located Independence Square, and introduced us to his wife, who was four months into a pregnancy. The young couple was about to add on to their family.
We took her along with us to the main train station, Keleti. Nyugati means “west” in Magyar, which was a mystery to Amanda, since it’s more in the central and not even remotely to the west of Budapest. Though if one were to only look at a map of Pest, then it could have been considered in the west. Keleti means “east” in Magyar, so it was understandably placed. We took the subway over to Keleti and then decided we would find a café and spend some time there until the trains were to come.
The café we found was real authentic. When we walked in, we found a dim lit and smoke filled interior, with solid wood benches along the wall. Small groups of old Hungarian men were huddled over the tables, smoking and whispering. Along the far wall was a row of slot machines with a few young kids drinking beer and pulling handles, the machines were occasionally making ding ding sounds of near wins while we drank our beers. Pavlos and Constanze went off to the grocery store to load up on apples and bananas for our long haul and I was left alone to sulk with the baggage. I looked up information on the train and found out that there was no restaurant car. “No restaurant car,” I texted to Pavlos. “Go crazy.” He never got the text, though he did come back with a huge bag full of bananas, apples, oranges, nuts and a bottle of Jagermeister. As if he didn’t have enough of the unicum from the nights previous.
“Do you get my text?” I asked him when he and Constanze came back. “There’s no restaurant car. But we can get a bucket of KFC chicken for the ride.” Which is what we did. When the train departed, with Constanze behind on the platform, we were plus one big bag of fruits and nuts and one big bucket of KFC hot wings. Riding in style, if anyone asks me – riding in a grease bucket, mutated chicken, smiling Colonel Sanders style. In fact, I hadn’t eaten so much KFC in 10 years since I have upon meeting Pavlos in Prague.
On the surface, the train was very comfortable. It was two people to a cabin, with two beds, a chair, a sink and a wardrobe. There was plenty of room to pack in our things and ourselves. The wagon had clean bathrooms on either end and two friendly attendants who kept them clean. But as soon as the train started, we realized that the train also doubled as a sauna, with the radiators on max throughout the wagon. I asked the attendant to turn off the radiator in our room, which lasted until the morning and brought us some temporary comfort in our sweat soaked skins. It did, at least, keep the chicken hot for some time longer than otherwise would have been expected.
Since there were electric plugs, we were able to keep ourselves entertained by watching movies. Though my current computer collection of movies was rather weak, not having been expanded past Borat and Hangover II for some time. The train hit the border at around 11 o’clock. First the Hungarian guards came on, with their typical serious Hungarian faces. The train moved for a short while and then the Ukrainian border guards came on.
Reading about Ukrainian border guards on the internet, I thought they’d all be dull faced soldiers waiting for bribes. Such was hardly the case. In walked two, beautiful Ukrainian women in tight blue uniforms, big fur hats and stiletto heels, asking for our documents. I was thinking that this was the beginning of a John Holmes movie. “Do you have a visa?” “We don’t need a visa.” “I know.” And then it begins. But it wasn’t so exciting, actually. She just took our passports and was replaced by a shorter male officer, who asked us about our customs papers and luggage. “What’s that?” he said in Russian, pointing at my accordion. “An accordion.” “Do you play?” “Yes, I do.” “Nice.” And then he left.
When all of the officers were done collecting passports and asking about baggage, the train started to shutter. There was banging from all directions as the workers prepared the train car to be lifted off the wheels and carried over to a parallel track to a different set of wheels, since the track gauges in Hungary and Ukraine were different. The Soviet Union had used a large gauge for their train transit than the rest of Europe, which means this occurs at any border into a formerly Soviet country. Pavlos was ready to witness this procedure, but quickly fell asleep, snoring through the entire ordeal of the clanking and swinging and, at one point, what sounded like a sledgehammer being pounded against the wall under our window. He woke up and asked me, “Have they done it yet?”
“Yeah, an hour ago.”
The night went on. I slept soundly in the gently rocking train, waking up long before Pavlos. I reached down from the bunk and grabbed the bucket of cold chicken, to finish it off for breakfast. Then I went and asked the stewardess for a cup of coffee, grabbing some tea for Pavlos as well. When I later asked for more, the stewardess informed me that you had to pay for such services – much to my surprise. That meant I couldn’t have any more coffee but that one cup.
We arrived in the late evening. Alex, our next couchsurfing host, a bearded man in a green jacket and cheerful smile, was waiting for us at the station. He took us back to his house, an apartment just near the centrally located Independence Square, and introduced us to his wife, who was four months into a pregnancy. The young couple was about to add on to their family.
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