Two Train Rides.

I am in Western Ukraine. Finally. Two train rides, an overnight in Lviv with friends and one sore tailbone later …

The first ride was pretty comparable to a plane trip. Six hours on the express train from Kyiv to Lviv is not so bad. There were three seats on each side of the isle, an overhead shelf for my luggage and a drop down tray table. The biggest difference is that seat designers around here do not like to sit upright – not completely. So the very cushy seats, when in their full upright position are really in more of a reclined state. It made it a little difficult to sit up straight and rest my head against the back of the seat without almost sliding out of the chair. The best position I found was at a bit of an angle; I could watch the world fly past me out the window (backwards, of course) and I could watch the movies to entertain myself. I watched Shrek in Ukrainian (great dubbing job), Home Alone 3 in Russian (not so great dubbing job) and some Russian cartoons from 1949! I arrived in Lviv at 23:40 and enjoyed an overnight layover with friends.

The second train ride, well ... it is an interesting story. Haha. I boarded the plats car at 15:10, as I walked down the aisle trying to find my seat I could already tell it was going to be a very long 8 and a half hours.

Imagine: a small square room with only three of its walls, on one side there are two benches on top of each other with room to sit up under the bottom one. These are normal wooden benches (ten inches or so in width) covered in a slightly padded leather material that has been well worn. The back wall has a window that does not open and a small table jutting out into the open space and across from the first set of benches there is another set. The benches are separated by only about two feet. Go to where the fourth wall should be and it is an isle about two feet wide and then there is a third set of benches and another window that does not open. That is the set up of a plats “vagon.”

The train was full leaving Lviv so I found my seat in the corner of one of the rooms and tried to stash my luggage somewhere. It was too big to slide under the bench and since the guy who would have had the top bench was sitting on the end of my bench I just threw it up on top. I squeezed into the corner and had no room to stretch my legs out because the older woman sitting on the bottom bench across from me stashed all her luggage in the foot space between the benches. It was super hot on the train when I got on, I could feel the sweat rolling down my back and my legs. It cooled down as we got into the mountains and the sun went down, but I do not think I dried off until I got to my hotel room and took a shower. Gross. The two women across from me stretched out and slept, but the guy sitting on my bench just kept sitting there. My only position changes the whole ride included leaning forward on the little table to give my tailbone a break or to lean back against the wall to give my back a break.

It was a pretty quiet ride … as long as the old lady across from me was sleeping. I suppose it was still quite the first six hours; instead of talking to me she just stared at me. No matter how long I stared out the window or where I looked or what I did, I could feel her just staring at me. Then with about three hours left she decided to start talking to me. At this point, the train had made at least a dozen stops, so it was emptying out some and cooling off, so I felt like I could tolerate her attempts to speak to me. I did my usual song and dance of “da’s” and “niet’s,” but she did not stop talking to me after a few minutes like a lot of people do. She just kept going … I have no idea what I agreed to but when she started rubbing her fingers together with the sign for money I began to wonder how this was going to turn out. I probably had agreed to take her son to America with me or something equally awkward! We made a little progress when I finally realised she was speaking Ukrainian and I told her I only understood Russian. That is when she found out my Mum lived in Las Vegas. “Las Vegas, in America Las Vegas?” she asked. Is there a Las Vegas in some other country?! Hmmm. Well, when she discovered I had been/lived (still unclear what she thought my arraignment in Las Vegas was) she began to announce to the entire train – who knows what about the American girl from Las Vegas going to Rakhiv!

When we finally pulled into the station at Rakhiv she got off the train with me and spoke to my friend who came to pick me up. He just kept looking at her and then back at me. As we walked away, he said to me, “So you will be a student in Kyiv for five years, huh?! Haha.” Then he confirmed my suspicions, “Do not worry, she was drunk.”

I cannot decide now, if I am looking forward to going home next Saturday or not?!