Trains

Overnight by Train

Ukrainians love to travel by train at night. Packed
into a compartment with up to three others within an
arms length; these travelers insist that they prefer
this mode of travel to the alternatives. If you ask
how long is the train ride to cities around the
country the answer is; overnight. Does it make any
difference how far the city is? No, the train will
be there in the morning! So does this phenonomon come
from a super industrious race? Or are Ukrainians a
group of citizens that must fit travel into a packed
schedule and their concern for increased productivity
overrides the human desire for comfort, relaxation and
enjoyment while taking a trip? Maybe it is an economy
measure. A traveler can avoid the need for
accommodation by taking an overnight train and
sleeping while traveling. Beyond that it remains a
mystery for me.
I took my first trips by overnight train by
traveling from Kiev to Kriviy Rig, a distance covered
in 9 hours and 40 minutes. When you ask how far is it
from Kiev to Kriviy Rig? No one seems to know but
they do know that it takes an overnight train ride!
The train ride is not the beginning of the trip;
first you have to buy a ticket. If the overnight train
ride is considered to be a time saver, then it should
save a great deal of time because buying a ticket will
consume a lot of time. First you decide on which class
of train ride you would like from the available list
of: soft class which means sitting on a hard padded
seat until you decide to convert it to a hard bed. Or
Platz class which is an entire train car made up into
a large bedroom like a dormitory or you can choose an
upright seat that will keep you uncomfortable for most
of the journey. Until recently you needed to produce a
passport to buy a train ticket for a trip that began
in Ukraine and ended in …Ukraine. Unlike most
countries that require a passport if you are leaving
one country and traveling to another. Recently they
relaxed the law so that one does not need a passport
to buy a train ticket within the country, progress!
But wait a minute the bureaucracy won't give up their
awkwardness so easily, you need to show your passport
if you wish to cancel your train ticket and ask for a
refund. Even though you bought the ticket without a
passport!

We haven't got the ticket yet; we must line up and
wait for some time to buy a ticket for cash (no credit
cards). You have to choose which line up will be the
fastest. This is helped by the permanent signs on the
cashier's windows. They will tell you when the cashier
will take their coffee breaks, when there will be a
change of shift, with a twenty minute gap between one
person leaving the window and the next one appearing!
So they take every possibility into account in order
to inform you of every inconvenience. This is the
Ukrainian version of customer service! But wait you
are not done you yet! The clerk (you really can't
refer to them as customer service staff) informs you
that after standing inline for 30 to 45 minutes that
there are no tickets left for the train you want to
use. So as you are about to turn away and leave
thinking that the bureaucracy wins again ah ha, you
are told if you come back and line up again 24 hours
before the train leaves there will be more tickets
available!
So you do and it now seems so simple; the lineup moves
a little faster, you can even get a lower berth and
you relax a little, you pay the enormous sum of $13.00
for this 9-hour journey and you think you have finally
broken through the system. But you need a return
ticket! Of course this gives the bureaucracy another
opportunity! No, they cannot sell you a return ticket,
you must get that in city that you will leave from!
Of course how silly of us to even think otherwise,
that would be too easy! So we are fortunate to be able
to call someone kind enough to go to the station in
the destination city and line up there and try to
obtain a ticket for the return trip.

To actually get on the train is simple, the ticket
will tell you the train number, the number of the
wagon and the bed number. Even numbers are top bunks
and odd numbers indicate that you get to sleep below
the snoring drunk that may not get up to use the
toilet in the middle of the night, but he should have!
If you arrive a little before the train leaves you can
share in the suspense of wondering if you will have
the traveling companions already sitting in the dark
in the 4-person compartment. (The main lights don't
come on until the train starts to move. Maybe they
have generators rubbing on the wheels like we had on
our old bicycles in the 1950s.) Or will the overweight
babushka with her overloaded Polish bags commonly used
for luggage, arrive breathlessly 1 minute before the
train leaves and come in and proceed to try to stuff
herself and luggage into the compartment.
Then the next excitement is watch the friends and
helpers of the passengers scramble to get off the
train when it starts to leave the station! The train
ride is really an anti-climax to the other stuff!

Now you need to organize the bed. You are supplied
with 2 sheets, a pillowcase, a towel and face cloth
and on one of the trips with a package of Kleenex, an
alcohol hand wipe and a shoe cleaner. It really
doesn't matter if you get mixed up and interchange the
hand cleaner and shoe cleaner. After spending 10
minutes trying to guess which is for your face and
which is for your shoes, as the instructions are only
written in Ukrainian on the package, you notice that
they both look and smell the same. But the sheets are
great! They are printed with pictures of trains in
blue and remind you of the children's beds sheets
advertised in Eaton's catalogue 50 years ago. You know
that the sheets are clean because they are folded flat
and are in a clear plastic bag. You tell yourself over
and over no one puts folded dirty sheets in clear
plastic bags, so they must be clean. But as you
consider this you notice that you also have a woolen
blanket that is not in a clear plastic bag. But if you
cover the blanket with the supposedly clean sheets
this should keep the perhaps previously used blanket
from making contact with your delicate North American
skin. So you put the pillowcase on and roll out the
3-inch thick mattress and presto you are ready to
sleep. Now you need to consider which end should you
put your head and feet. You look around at your
traveling companions who are more experienced than you
at getting undressed with 3 strangers 12 inches away
and are already in bed. You notice that they have
their heads nearest the door. So in friendly gesture
you decide to put your pillow near the window and your
feet towards the door. After you have settled in and
actually enjoy the feeling of the train rocking down
the track, you begin to notice that it is warm in
here. The windows don't open, the door is pulled shut,
and there are 4 people in the space of a bathroom.
Then you notice that the heaters are under the window,
so that is why everyone has their pillows on the other
end of the bed! So now you get up and change the
sheets around so that you can sleep the other way. You
look at your watch, good thing is has a light because
only a dim yellow night light is on in the compartment
as the lights went out 1/1/2 hours after the train
started. Lets see now, we will arrive at 5:36AM and it
is now 12:45, I can get 6 hours and 15 minutes of
sleep if I wake up at 5:00AM.
I don't really have to worry about waking up because
the nice lady wearing the uniform that looks like it
is left over from the Russian army, including the huge
Soviet style hat, will wake me up in time to get off
the train. She told me that when she took my ticket
soon after getting on the train. At least I think she
meant that when she pointed to the arrival time on the
ticket and pointed to me and I pointed to my watch to
show her that I understood Russian or Ukrainian or
whatever she spoke.
Now I notice that the nice old man for whom I held my
flash light while he made his bed in the dark was well
into a deep sleep complete with a deep baritone snore
cycle. I thought I could at least get some cooler by
sliding the door open and letting some cool air come
in from the corridor. That worked until the lady
opposite would reach out and slide it shut. Ukrainians
are afraid of drafts! They think you can get all kinds
of things with long names from being exposed to a
draft.
In order to make this an overnight journey they
cheat! The train stopped twice on sidings well away
from any stations. Other trains could be heard passing
while we were stopped. Then our train would gently
pull out and resume the trip at probably less than 50
miles an hour. The nighttime was a time for the
addicted smokers to stand at the end of the passage
between train cars and puff smoke that we could smell
in our compartment. We were not only nearest the
smokers but we were next to the toilet.
The toilet was a beaten metal fixture that started
life a considerable time ago as a stainless steel
toilet. The sink was a sturdy affair with cast iron
pipes coming together to form one faucet that should
have operated when you pressed your hands in an upward
motion under the pipe. It wasn't until the return trip
that I managed to decipher this fine piece of
engineering. The sturdy lady in the Soviet uniform was
also in command of the key. She was in charge of
keeping the toilet locked. It was locked until we left
the station, then she would make the long journey from
her office at the opposite end of the train car with
key in hand and officially insert the key and with a
flourish open the toilet. She would then return to her
office with a triumph march down the corridor that
would make some Soviet central planning officer happy
that he was the one to decide that the key should be
kept inconveniently at the opposite end of the train
car.

I was up before the wake up call from the matron. I
had dressed in the dim light under the sheets without
waking the others up; they still had another 4 hours
to reach their destination! I rolled up my bedroll
like a Boy Scout at camp and took my pack down the
hall and waited until the trained stopped. The matron
lowered the steps and I got off into the black night
in front of a closed station. On the return journey
the train station in Kiev was open but we waited until
5:45AM until the subway system opened up.

So that was my weekend overnight train journey. It
cost less than 3 or 4 rides in Disneyworld and I had
far more fun!

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