24 April 2010
The problem with taking a train at midnight in Munich is that the station cafes all close down by eleven and the waiting room closes at nine. Curiously, the last of the cafes to shut its doors was Starbucks and, even more curiously, it was located adjacent to the track that the night train to Budapest was to leave from. By the time I got there, the staff was cleaning up, preparing to make their get-away. I was all coffeed out so I asked for a fruit drink. The young woman whose command of English was good enough for Starbucks anywhere and probably better than those who work in Starbucks California, informed me apologetically that they had already cleaned the machine and all they could now serve was tea and coffee. I chose tea – green with lemon grass – which sounds very Starbuckian and reminded me of the lovely young woman I knew many years ago who worked at my neighbourhood café and won the San Francisco Barista competition to the dismay of the macho Italians who hugely resented that she could make a better cappuccino because 1) she was a woman and 2) she didn’t have Italian lineage and 3) her café wasn’t located in North Beach. I found out later that she had moved to Seattle where she helped start the Starbucks chain which she left after several years when she saw what her corporate masters had in mind for it. The young woman in Munich who made my green tea with lemon grass (something the young woman in San Francisco - who’s now old - wouldn’t have done without questioning my motives even if they had green tea with lemon grass back then which they didn’t) looked nothing like the San Francisco barista except they were both blonde but at this time of night after a tiring journey where I had missed my connection and had to lumber through gargantuan stations pulling a blotted dinosaur and hobbling because my left foot was giving me problems, I was tired enough for my brain to make very peculiar connections.
I had half hoped that the midnight train to Budapest would arrive early and open its doors to passengers who wanted to go to sleep. That isn’t the way it works, however. A train comes in, a train goes out; even at this hour the platforms are in constant use. Except this one, platform 12, at the very edge of the station which only has a few people like me who have arrived early from other destinations and are waiting because there is no other place to go. Most of them look like refugees from ex-countries like the former Yugoslavia – some of the bizarre types out of a Kusturica film. An old man in particular had the hardened look of someone who has seen too many terrible things – his gaze darted nervously about from eyes set deeply in darkened sockets and, though it might have been interesting, I wondered what it would be like to share a confined space with him (and the more I considered this possibility, the more I thought I’d rather not). When you travel alone, you do not choose your seat partners on a train. You might be able to change your seat, but you can’t easily change your bed.
When the night train finally pulls in, after what seems like interminable waiting – and by now the air has turned cold – I am very happy to see its arrival even though this is certainly not one of those flash modern jobs like the breezy, light, aerodynamically sculptured models that had been gliding in and out the station over the course of the day. This one is more a relic of the 50s – of the east before glasnost. It is heavy, ungainly and solidly proletarian. But I don’t want luxury, I just want a bed.
I’m welcomed aboard by an unsmiling Russian (who might well be Hungarian but looks to me like the pictures of those hefty mothers of the revolution who served the tea, cleaned the station and then went home to milk the cow.) But in her own way she is charming if not solicitous – attentive with both a frown and a twinkle. She shows me my cabin. It’s both larger and smaller than I expected – roomy for one, cramped for two. It also looks like it was designed by the people who made the Tribant or the Lada: everything serious steel and just barely workable. She knows just a few words of English and is unhappy I can’t converse in her second language – which is German. But a few words are all we need as most everything is self-explanatory.
I wait to see who my room-mate will be and hope it’s not the gaunt and nervous man I had seen on the platform. I have already staked my claim on the lower bunk – as the upper bunk is as high as the roof and the iron ladder to reach it, though heavy and upright, seems to me slightly unstable. The minutes tick away. No one comes. I asked the attendant who popped in to make sure I have settled if the top bunk will be occupied. She tells me that, yes, someone has reserved the space but whether it will be occupied depends on whether the person comes. The train makes many stops on its way to Budapest. If the person who reserved the space comes later, she will wake me.
I crawl into the narrow bed with, as per custom when you share the room with strangers, my clothes on. I read a bit and glance out the gigantic window that runs almost from the floor nearly to the ceiling. But it is dark – which is the problem with the night train. You can look out the window at the passing view but you will see very little even if the moon is full.
So I curl up with a book and every time the train stops, I listen for the knock which never comes. But I had a hard time sleeping, though I think I did drift off several times over the course of a very long night where twice I got up to pee (thankful I didn’t have to make my way down the dark, ungainly ladder). Unfortunately the toilet down the corridor of my coach was bolted shut for some unknown reason (reasons on this train, I think, are rarely known) so I made my way to the adjoining car where a group of unhappy men were camped out in the passage way. Stumbling over their luggage in order to find the toilet, I wondered what on earth they were doing there. Certainly the train wasn’t full – there were barely fifty people on the platform by the time we left. Perhaps they boarded later and were just travelling a few stops. From here Midnight to Budapest seemed like a refugee train that was repatriating prisoners of war.
In the early hours of the morning as the light melted through the darkness, I was able to see the passing scenery again. I hadn’t pulled the shade as the night had been so dark but now I was wide awake and watched the rolling vista, thankful for the pathway to mental peace and calm.
The scenery had changed overnight from boring flatlands of farms and pastures to one of hills and dales and lakes and forests. The land here was green and fertile but the small villages that we passed looked poor and unkempt with ramshackle buildings that might have been in disrepair but probably were always like that.
I cleaned up at the sink (the one touch of luxury in an otherwise barren cabin) and changed my clothes. The attendant – who overnight transformed into someone both smiling and solicitous – brought me breakfast on a tray which was kind, I thought, even if it was inedible.
We pulled into Keleti Station over an hour late because during the night the train had stopped in the middle of nowhere and remained, immobile, with everything including the terrible air-conditioning turned off. It was about two in the morning. A little after three we began moving again. I thought we had broken down and were waiting for another relic from the ex-socialist republic to come rescue us. But whatever happened it was either repaired or the engineer woke up and so we lumbered into Budapest, tired, a little worse for wear, but thankful to be near somewhere I could shower and have a bed of my own without waiting for intrusions.
