Russia Trip: Slow Train to Kiev

I wrote about my first sleeper-train-to-Ukraine experience, in Spring of 2009, back a few entries in this blog. On that trip, when I finally succeeded in finding my car - the sole car on that entire train that was in fact going to Ukraine at all - it was an elegant, first class affair, decked out in heavy curtains and lace doilies worthy of the oldest fashioned Eastern European coffee house. Since this was not only Trish's first sleeper-train-to-Ukraine experience but her first sleeper-train-to-anywhere experience, I was hoping our first-class cabin, booked weeks ago back in the States, would be just as comfortable as that lovely home away from home I enjoyed on my way to Lviv.

It was not to be.

A rounded mound of flesh poked horizontally from the entryway, a tentatively displayed hillock sprouted with wiry Russian manhair. As suddenly as it had appeared, it was gone. Gone inside, as it turned out, to cover itself with a proper railway company shirt and make a more dignified appearance. Although the cabin attendant attached to this particular mound of flesh was off-duty, his younger, fresher, and infinitely handsomer on-duty co-worker seemed determined that public shirtlessness was not to be tolerated while he was in charge. Or maybe just not in Budapest. In any case, there did seem to be a rule. As Handsome checked our tickets, the Stomach reappeared on the platform in a button-down shirt. Not a particularly clean shirt, mind you, but it was a step in the right direction.

We stepped onto our car. No plush red curtains met us in the corridor. No plastic flowers to brighten our journey. Indeed, there was not a doily in sight. As we opened the door to our cabin - our home for the next 26 hours remember - a look of horror appeared on Trish's face. "This is not what I bought." Trish had ordered the train tickets after careful study of the various web offerings. "We paid for first class. They had pictures." I gave her a moment.

"It's not so bad," I finally offered.

"It's a dump."

I poked around a bit. "Look, there's a basin." I opened up a cabinet behind which a small sink was hiding. "We can wash up here." Trish glared at the crumpled strips of duct tape holding up the rear cushion of our seats.

"This is not what we paid for," she said again, and I was a bit worried that she was going to get off right then and there and find another way to Kiev. "Just think," I said, "it's probably a historic car. These very cushions were probably used by Soviet diplomats cutting deals in Budapest during the Cold War."

That didn't seem to help and I concluded that she just needed a moment to herself. To process her own thoughts. It certainly was not a luxurious cabin. It was, however, a "first-class" ticket, Handsome explained, in the sense that it could have been set up to sleep three people and instead it was configured to sleep two. He followed that explanation with a slightly embarrassed it's-the-best-we've-got look and we left it at that. The train pulled out of the station with Trish still on it, and we were on our way to Kiev.

Once we had our beds made, later that evening, it looked a lot less dreary. Almost homey. And you really haven't lived if you haven't experienced border patrol officers making their rounds at 2:00 am to take your passport and search your belongings for illicit narcotics. Or your train being hoisted ten feet in the air to have its wheels replaced. Or the mesmerizing lull of wheel on track as the Ukrainian countryside pours on by, kilometer after kilometer, full of wheat and sunflowers and low misty clouds dotting the hills. Or the smile on Stomach's ultimately kindly face when you stumbled through a "


spaseba" first thing in the morning.


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