July 10th Eastern European Trains...
...Distiguish first and secondclass, not by the number of seats, but by whether or not the cabins are air conditioned or not. We were in second class and the tempreture easily reached 120 degrees farenheit throughout the trip. I might have lost weight just from persperation of our traveling sauna for 16 hours. I tried to sleep through most of it and make the best out of the rest.
In the middle of the night the train pulled up to Budapest station and three of the six people got off, making it only a four hour trip for them and left them in a very sketchy area, for once I was glad to still be on the train. The remaining three of us (Jonathan, myself and a man in his late 20's) were then able to stretch out feet out on the facing chair and again fall asleep.
I kept imagining fine ladies and gentlemen traveling in thier nice clothes in such a situation and not becoming mad (I later took a sleepercar, and understand now how the elite traveled then and that this was soley for Hoi Poloi even then, but that is more than two months ahead).
Gypsey Girls
Got on our train between stops and started singing though the hallways. We hadn't changed our money into lei yet, and they were quite insistant and I felt so bad that the other man in our cabin, who spoke only slightly more English than we did Romanian, gave them something.
I had been preparing myself for beggers, but I hadn't put the singing children and begging together. I was smiling at them thinking 'how nice that the children here can play in the hall while we go, it must make time go by so much quicker for them' When I found out that they were "working" it just burst my heart.
In the middle of the night the train pulled up to Budapest station and three of the six people got off, making it only a four hour trip for them and left them in a very sketchy area, for once I was glad to still be on the train. The remaining three of us (Jonathan, myself and a man in his late 20's) were then able to stretch out feet out on the facing chair and again fall asleep.
I kept imagining fine ladies and gentlemen traveling in thier nice clothes in such a situation and not becoming mad (I later took a sleepercar, and understand now how the elite traveled then and that this was soley for Hoi Poloi even then, but that is more than two months ahead).
Gypsey Girls
Got on our train between stops and started singing though the hallways. We hadn't changed our money into lei yet, and they were quite insistant and I felt so bad that the other man in our cabin, who spoke only slightly more English than we did Romanian, gave them something.
I had been preparing myself for beggers, but I hadn't put the singing children and begging together. I was smiling at them thinking 'how nice that the children here can play in the hall while we go, it must make time go by so much quicker for them' When I found out that they were "working" it just burst my heart.