PART 1

In a desperate quest to become a member of the European Union, the Romanian government were doing anything to please the West and again anything to upset the East. As a result of one of the treaties signed with the European Union officials, Romania was to soon impose visas to either Russian and Ukrainean citizens. And, as a natural reply, Romanian citizens were to be asked for a visa when intending to visit these countries. Therefore I thought this was the perfect time to make a trip to the North.

I had already been told so many times that I am crazy, that I no longer cared about that and came to even enjoy it. It was one thing to tell someone that I was going to Moscow, Kiev and L'viv. The answer was basically the same from anyone: "Haven't you got enough communism, mate?". But it was a totally different thing to tell people that I was going alone: "Are you out of your mind?".

Well, it was one of the first times when I had tried to go to some place with company. I had planned to go there with a Bulgarian friend. I had even bought the tickets, as he had told me: "Oh, Alex, Bulgarians need no visa, no nothing to go to either countries, we have very good relations with them, go and buy the tickets, please!". Then, three days before the trip was to begin, he called me and told me he might need an invitation for Russia. The very next day he called me again, saying that he definitely needed a visa for Ukraine. The whole story ended when he last called me, just to say it was impossible for him to go there, as he needed visas for both countries.

I don't know whether this situation was real or whether it was only a consequence of the various rumours hanging around, but this was it: I was to go alone.

So I woke up one hot Saturday morning and I headed to the station. The train from Sofia to Moscow was - as always - about 1 hour late in Bucharest. It however arrived and a few passengers were slowly moving towards the first wagon So was I. When showing the ticket to the Russian conductor, he raised his head and, without any special look on his face, he showed me to the "coupe" where I was to spend the next almost 48 hours.

In other circumstances the wagon would have looked very pretty, with carpets and those so lovely and so white curtains. But now, in that windless, hot and dry morning I hardly noticed anything that could please my senses. All that I remember is that I dropped my backpack on the compartment table and that I went out, to take a last (?) look over the so well known old and badly maintained platforms of Bucharest North station.

Everyone had almost got into the compartments and only the conductors were still down, when I noticed at the other end of the platform some people running. I was to find out later that they were students and there had been an exchange between the Mining Faculty in Petroșani and some university in Moscow. They had lots of luggage and could not run very fastly, so it took them a few minutes to get close to the wagon. At a certain moment, the train started despite the fact that half of them were still on the platform. The only thing that could stop it was the fact that the conductor pulled the emergency cord. This was how my trip began.

The train eventually started for real and I only remember a few things until it reached the border with Ukraine, several hours later: the hot weather and the wild August sun, people talking in Russian around me, and those rumours I had heard for the last days still hanging in the air and bumping in my head. However, as soon as we got to the border, together with the clouds in the sky and with the light rain, there was a new feeling coming close to my mind: the search for the unknown, the human curiosity and the optimism that comes together with it. The Romanian customs station was small but still stunning, when compared to most other Romanian stations: it was newly built or anyway recently restored, it had fancy windows and the pavement was sparkling. Then the customs officers were very nice and as close to being professional as they could. They cut the stupid questions and only asked me what they should have. Romania was definitely trying to get to the EU. However the officials in Bucharest should also learn that the package may sell the bad cookie once, but this is not a long term solution.

Then, before reaching Vadu Siretului, the Ukrainian customs station, in that autumn-like rain, there was something not so easy to forget: an electrical fence defending the border, with that rusty image of something that hasn't been used for a long time... But beyond that fence, there were the same typical mountain households, so well known to me from Northern Romania, with the small cottages and the so lovely gardens with many and vivid flowers.

And then, the same train wheels change occurred in the border, due to the wider gauge in the former USSR republics. However there was something different from the trip I had made to Moldova. In that pouring rain, I could see an army of railways workers that were constantly moving, never caring for the rain or for the cold - and making sure that everything was fine. This was something totally moving.

Most guides used to warn travelers about the bad customs officers Ukraine had. Well, besides the fact that they were very professional, they were also pretty polite and I did not notice that suspicious gaze on their face as I had seen when going from Romania to the West, to countries like the Czech Republic or Poland.

After the train was put back together, there was something new and something that was going to join me all along the trip: some old women came under the train windows and started to ask people whether they wanted to buy beer, sparkling water or fries or pancakes or God knows what else. It was amazing and so moving to see those 60-70 years old ladies (that one would have probably offered the seat in a tramway) struggling to survive by almost begging people to buy a bottle of beer or of fresh milk. The phrase a young Ukrainian girl, now studying in Bucharest, said still rings in my ears:

"In Romania people work hard (do they?) for few money, while in Ukraine they work hard for nothing"

Despite the laughs and smiles it arose, this was far from being funny. The train went on and soon afterwards we reached Chernivcy, the "capital" of Bukovina, an Ukrainian region where Jews, Romanians and Poles also lived. Night was falling over the station and over the never lightened platforms with the very poor local trains - quite similar to the Romanian ones. Standing in the hall of that well maintained and fancy wagon and looking outside to the real people, I felt rich and stupid. And definitely misplaced. I should have travelled with one of those wagons where some of the compartments had no windows and where there were only one or two lights in the whole wagon. And I should have gone to the countryside, to see how people lived. And I should have bought something from those "babushki", to cut at least one second from the long hours they were standing there, in the rain, and running from train to train to make a living. With such thoughts I went to sleep and the next thing I remember was the still cloudy morning sky that I noticed when getting down from the upper bed I had spent the night in. The wagon seemed deserted: everyone was still asleep while the train was slowly moving among the lovely wooden meadows...

Then I went to the toilet for the fastest teeth brush & shave in my life, as someone was desperately knocking at the door for me to get out. Just as a reward for this, I had a glass of hot tea from the wagon's samovar and found it - together with the cute glass the conductor gave me - very interesting and nice. Maybe Ukraine was poor, but it well preserved that hospitality, gentility and romantic look and feel that had survived only in remote areas in other countries.

The train kept on flowing among the hills, the forests, bushes and small stations until noon, when I fell asleep for a while. Waking up, I noticed we were very close to Kiev. An American girl I had met in Bucharest, had told me that the station in Kiev was under reconstruction but this was obviously not what I had expected. A blue metalic structure covered in glass, with all modern facilities, neat, new platforms with electronic boards, passenger passages, these had not been on my mind. Actually - as far as I could see from the train - Ukraine and especially Kiev - was rebuilding itself, yes, at a slower pace than the one we were used to from the Socialist era, but they were trying to set things up to date.

The poor babushki appeared immediately as the train slowed down. The supply had changed: dried smoked fish from the Dniper (yes, the river flows to Kiev from Chernobyl, but no, the fish did not have 3 eyes), mineral water, beer, cigarettes, waffles... Alongside the new sparkling aluminium structure walls I noticed a few very poor people looking in the garbage bins for some hopefully useful remains. This wasn't new for me, but, wherever one sees that, it is never a nice view.

The train started again and it crossed the huge river which splat the city, leaving on one shore the green area with the old churches and all, and on the other shore, the new so well known concrete buildings. Hours later, the Ukrainian customs officer came and I think I was among the few "outsiders" to have the passport stamped, as he almost ignored the Ukrainian and Russian citizens. It felt strange that I had to wait for 3 hours until the Russian customs station in Brjansk, as I had the stamp proving I was out of Ukraine, but I had no stamp proving I was in Russia. Eventually the Russians came, checked my passport and had a good laugh while stamping it with the other Russian - speaking passengers. They were probably wondering why I was going to Moscow. As always, Romanians are expected to travel to some destination with a very peculiar reason, they can never travel just for travel's sake. But there was however a good side of the situation: no rude words, no hard looks, no "torn backpack", no fuss about anything, as they had said in the travel guide.

However I was tired enough and did not care to analyze matters at that hour. So I went to bed and the next thing I can remember was the conductor kicking me and saying God knows what in Russian. Looking at the watch, it was obvious: we were close to Moscow, or rather Moscow was close to us, it was 04.00 AM Eastern European time, that means 05.00 AM Moscow time. It was pouring and there was a dim fog across the land. One of the first sights I noticed was the famous Ukraina Hotel. It looked dreadful, terrifying, with that typical architecture and with the top hidden in a low mass of clouds. The train soon reached Moskva Kievskaja station, covered with a huge glass arch. The passengers got off the train in a mourning-like silence. A few taxi drivers were offering people a ride by hardly moving their lips.

The air was wet and cold; a light morning breeze would have made even the toughest man's soul shiver when getting out of the station and noticing another huge building some half a kilometer away: the Foreign Affairs Ministry. Despite the early hour, the traffic was pretty high and there were many people walking in the avenues. I walked on to Arbat street, a very famous hippy-like and shopping place, with lots of bazaars, cafes and a young crowd of people at daytime. But it was probably too early for all this show and I only saw a few people walking. I think I got kind of early in the Red Square (was 06.00 AM early?), because the guards there asked for my passport. Seeing it, they probably started telling me the whole Russian history from 10,000 BC to our times - of course in Lenin's language. They did not know that I was among the first generations of Romanians that escaped the "must-learn-Russian" rule in school. Not that Russian was a bad thing. When I briefly told them I did not speak the language, they sadly told me a few things in English and then walked away. I was happy they did so, because I had just ridden a train for 48 hours to visit Moscow. 5 minutes later I was in front of St. Basil's Church. As always, when I go to some place, to visit a church, museum, cathedral, palace or whatever, it is either closed or under reconstruction. It seems that people always want to give me the best of their towns and cities and that is why they start rebuilding everything once I decide to visit them. Of course that the highest steeple of the so well known church was covered up with scaffoldings and that they were working to refresh the exterior paintings. The twisted roof of the famous church seemed to be going up through the grey clouds, which grey clouds seemed to have been born there, together with that magnificent house of pray.

Even the rain that soon started was not an ordinary one. It was so heavy that looking for a shelter seemed pointless; I got wet soak anyway. At least I got wet soak in the Red Square. I then spent a couple of hours admiring the surroundings, peeking over Moscow River from a nearby bridge and waiting for Kremlin to open for tourists. It eventually did and I happily went inside, after paying for the most expensive ticket in my life. But that was not the point there. Like through a miracle, the clouds gave way to the sun, a mostly wild sun. The Red Fortress was stunning, first of all because it strangely put together two of the greatest powers ever: the religious and the administrative leadership. Everything looked so fantastic... In Moscow there was nothing simple or ordinary. Everything was outstanding, huge, impressive: the old Intourist huge concrete hotels, the big Kremlin, the - why not - very nice and well developed metro, not to mention the immense population (about 9,000,000 people)...

All these things made me both wander and wonder for a few hours, walking in some streets or through St. Basil's labyrinth. I don't remember when the time came to look for a place to sleep. I opened the guide (bad, bad, bad thing, never to do again) and saw the place they recommended as "the only youth hostel-like" place in Moscow, the cheapest bla bla. I walked. And walked. Then I took a big breath and walked again to a remote neighbourhood (but that was the only good thing about it, that I could see the way regular people used to live) where I found it. The owners actually had overtaken a floor of a regular - so well known from Bucharest - concrete block of flats, and they had transformed it into a Youth Hostel. Anyway, at least into something resembling to one. The price was huge (until then I had thought that the hostels in Bucharest were the most expensive in the world, but no, no sir!), and the girl in charge was not that helpful. They were very proud about themselves: "we can arrange any sort of train tickets", a big poster on the wall announced. I told her that I needed a reservation for the train to Kiev the next day.

"Go to the station and ask for it", her brief answer sharply came, "we do not deal with short term situations"

Okey dokey, indeed, you can solve any problem in the world this way! So, I left by backpack there and went to the station. According to the guide book, I expected a long line of people, no English speaking clerks, a complete mess, so I presumed this was only an informative tour of the station, thinking I wouldn't be able to get the reservation anyway and that I'd have to come back the next day again and probably make my stay in Moscow much longer until being able to get a train ticket. As I went out of the underground station, I however noticed a "passengers transportation centre". As in the big green commercial they also mentioned "train tickets", I entered, immediately wanting to get out as soon as possible. It looked like a bank, air conditioned, with leather - covered sofas, glass tables with newspapers for people to read, shining desks etc. I turned trying to get out, but an impeccably dressed young lady approached me and probably asked what the hell the gipsy wanted, in the sweetest voice I had ever heard from a railways employee. I told her in English what I needed (meaning a train reservation, not that I wanted to go out that very moment), thinking that this would make her let me go, as I hoped she spoke no other language than Russian.

However she replied in English, led me to a sofa and invited me to wait there for a few minutes, while she went with my ticket to an office and had my reservation done. Then she came and took me to the cashier's window where I paid for the reservation. When I was to leave, she came to me, asking whether everything was OK. No, it was not OK, definitely not. This was not right, this could not be Russia, this could not be the place that so many people in this world blame! They should have beat the hell of me, they should have been rude, they should have talked to me in Russian, torn my ticket and asked me to pay for it again. They should have behaved rudely, as everyone had told me Russians behave when dealing with foreigners...

Then I left and made the "underground tour". It was worth. The Moscow metro was efficient and fast for the so many people it served every minute. Besides, the stations looked pretty, with nice sculptures, paintings and mosaics, if one ignored the communist inserts. I spent the last few hours in the centre, rolling in the now crowded streets and trying to get into the feeling of that enormous and fascinating city. Then I headed to the hostel I was lodged at, and did what all Moscovites seemed to do when coming back from work: I bought myself a bottle of beer and drank it while walking in the street.

I don't remember how many times I was awaken and I subsequently fell asleep that night. All that I know is that every now and then there was some guy coming in the dormitory, dropping his backpack on the floor and throwing himself on the bed. Then, silence for a while, so that everything could start all over again 30 minutes later. Eventually I had to wake up myself and, after a brief snack, I started packing. Then again the lovely - a bit more crowded this time - metro and, still under the same undecided Russian sky, with clouds coming and going, I went to the new Christ the Saviour's Cathedral. If - on the outside - it was huge and impressive, on the inside it was absolutely fantastic. An immense cupola with a so unfamiliar fresco depicting Father and the Holy Son, surrounded by several angels was overlooking the whole church. Other such unfamiliar saints' paintings kept me inside for a long while. The cathedral wasn't amazing only through the way it had been built or through its dimensions, like Aya Sofia in Istanbul. The most fascinating things relied in its religious contradictions. The altar was maybe the most Orthodox element around. But the ceiling paintings, as well as some of the saints and knights' figures on the side walls were typical Catholic, as the painter had been obviously inspired by the Italian Renaissance style. The vastness and the however simple decorations reminded of the Sixtine Chapel. Despite the fact that it was a brand new building, one could have hardly notice that, due to the harmonious way the new and traditional elements blended together.

But time was passing and there were other places to visit as well. After a short metro ride, I got to one of the nicest monasteries around, Novodevichy, then to some other churches. The sad story of Tsaritsyno Park somehow fit Moscow best, and wandering among its tall and mysterious trees, or through the ruins of the pavilions that had never been completed was a good and strange rest after a day and a half spent in that real metropolis. The last destination on the way to the station was Kolomenskoe Park and its nice summer Tsar residence. The view over Moscow River and the new quarters on the other shore was magnificent. Moscow had won (wasn't that a fact from the very beginning?). Looking back in sadness and forward in hope - as always - I headed to Kievskaja Station. Walking alongside the train I was to get, I still remember looking at the brand new wagons and searching for mine:

"Where the hell is that wagon #16, it must be a rack, these wagons are for rich people, not for gipsies like me..."

However yes, I was given a place in one of those so cool wagons. It was brand new, with everything in hand, it even had (wow) music. For the second time in my trip I felt rich. And stupid.

After the conductor strangely looked at my bunch of tickets (there was the international ticket, then the bed supplement bought in Bucharest, then the reservation sheet from Moscow) and had to call another mate to discuss matters, I went to my compartment. I was to share it with an Ukrainian going home, to Kiev. He was a flight engineer and basically spoke no English. After a while the conductor came and mumbled something pointing at the sheets. Yep, we were supposed to pay for the sheets, about USD 1.5. But hey, the water for the tea was free!

I kept on talking to that man about many things. I could understand half of what he was saying at least. He used to talk in Russian with some few English words every now and then and, in reply, I used English with some Russian words. Eventually I realized that Romanian was more useful than English. And we both became very happy discovering a new and international language: drawings and gestures. He kept on telling me that I should visit Crimea, Odessa, Harkov... I wished I had a lifetime to spend in Ukraine, actually I always have that feeling when I go to some place. Yet happiness lies in the second we spend wondering, rather than in the year we spend taking pictures.

Then another great discovery for mankind took place: I noticed that beer on board was less expensive than beer in Moscow. After a good meal and business altogether (I traded crackers and sticks for roast chicken, what about that?), we fell asleep thinking that we would be awaken by the customs officials 2 hours later, in Brjansk, the Russian customs station. However I woke up 6 hours later and desperately looked at the watch. It was 5 AM and we were already in Kontop, Ukraine. Hey, what about the passports, the stamp, the "hard crossing" they mentioned in the guide? No, the Russians obviously did not care about the checkout, only about the checkin. Hey, you foreigners, you should not bring any Western bad gun in Russia, but you can take anything you wish out of Russia!

The Ukrainians however came for the passport check and... (click here for the sequel)

GOING BACK 1 (you are here)

GOING BACK 2