Traveling through communist countryside by train isn’t a trip one should try alone. Actually, traveling anywhere alone can be compromising to one’s health. Two together can tackle most problems, but alone, you are out there in survival mode. This is how I found the situation I was in as I entered the third day aboard the Train to Hell.
Having gotten over the Joni Mitchell romanticism of the sleeping car, I needed a different view. Carefully, I made it towards gen-pop (general population) in coach. The fat ladies were mowing through their baskets of goodies. Yum. 6″ long, dried fish were held like popsicles as they were consumed, HEAD FIRST. Crunch, crunch, crunch. Others were gnawing on stale rolls like the ones I had bought before leaving. Body odor was overwhelming. Large ladies protruded from their aisle seats like rising loaves of bread. Kids laughed. Elders slept.
With only one available seat open near three seedy looking men in zoot-suits, I claimed it. Their eyes all turned to me, as I joined them.
“Eh-Lo, Miss-ee!” said Mr. Brave One. When they smiled, it was obvious. Three Russians. Their dental work gave it away, with gold grills, all three. Between the body odor and smell of alcohol and cigarettes, I wished there had been a seat anywhere else.
“Where you going to?” inquired Mr. B.O.
“Tiraspol, Moldavia.”
Confusing looks shot back at me from the trio.
“Where you from?”
“America.”
A raucous conversation followed, intensified as one produced a hidden flask of hooch, quickly passed from mouth to mouth. Shoving the booze my way, I declined. I understood nothing, except that these guys presented a clear and present danger with which I wanted nothing to do. I kept scanning the train for an open seat, but there were none.
Their interest in me quieted down as they became more drunk and bored. Soon, quietly talking between themselves, I relaxed a little, becoming fixated on the countryside. We were traveling through a barren landscape, browned by the shortening days of late October, and the night time temperatures well below freezing. The stark, empty visuals were interrupted only by a parallel train track 300 yards away.
In the distance, a chilling sight was coming into view. Something devastatingly large and black. I couldn’t quite identify it, until I could. On the other track lay train cars derailed, twisted, and burned almost beyond recognition. Obviously a passenger train, because each car had characteristic large-gauge chains and padlocks on the outer doors, locking the passengers in and intruders out. The train I was riding in had the same, eliminating the ability to walk between cars. I flashed back to my own sleeping car, with a window that opened only two inches. Claustrophia made my skin crawl. The wreckage held people once upon a time. Fat women with their baskets and men in their worn out zoot suits. Elders. Children. Russians. Multiple cars, maybe upwards of 10 lay in a maze of charred metal and broken glass. It had been one hell of a fire.
Wide-eyed, I gasped.
“What? Something wrong with you?” Mr. B.O. asked with a smirk.
I pointed to the train. Multiple cars were still visible, with no life anywhere to be seen. Not a current disaster, it appeared the accident had cooled from the terrific fire that must have ensued after the crash.
“People dead?” quietly, I asked.
“People? Dead???? No. No. Cattle cars,” laughing, he spoke quickly to the others and they all laughed loudly.
Liar.
First, cattle production isn’t a major industry in Russia. No production feedlots full of fat and sassy steers. No steaks. No long meat counters at the grocery store. Not much excess meat of any kind. When old cows die, they are cut up and sold for dinner. The sad truth of my summer experiences in Tiraspol.
I’m a farm girl. The bone marrow tells the tale of bovine health. Healthy cows gave milk. Sick or dead ones provided meat. Period. People stood for hours to buy maggot laden, unrefrigerated beef hanging off rusted meat hooks when such a luxury becomes available. I’ve stood in those lines to buy just such a product, sometimes hours. Protein deprivation and starvation make people do desperate things.
Sickened, a seat opened up far away from this triangle of disgusting men. I moved.
Just like the poppy fields in the Wizard of Oz, I was suddenly overcome by the need to sleep. “Sleep, my pretty. Sleep.” Sleep I did. For how long? I know not. With no one to wake me, I slumbered deeply until the train came to a stop.
Opening my eyes, the nightmare continued, now born from stupidity mine, and mine alone.
Looking around, no passengers remained on the train. Everyone had left. The basket ladies. The three disgusting men. Kids. Elders. Everyone was gone. Vanished. Quickly, I raced to my sleeping compartment and retrieved my belongings. I was the very last person to exit the train as it stood, wheels still steaming from the very long trip.
“KIEV, UKRAINE” the Station Sign read.
No.
No.
No.
I’d arrived in another country. The wrong country. A country kilometers away from any form of safety and comfort I had traveled three days to find. I stood at this station knowing I had done a very, very dangerous and stupid thing. I’d slept through the stop in Tiraspol, Moldavia. I was now totally screwed.
To be continued……………..