Sofia train station is brand new, and has some beautiful old trains, which children can “drive” and “travel” on. An inebriated porter very enthusiastically took us under his wing. He helpfully informed us that there is no food available on the 19 hour train journey we were about to begin - we hadn’t been able to find that out on the Internet. We did a big shop for food and water, including a roast chicken and potato gratin. The first two carriages we saw of our train were very old and quite rusty, but then the two sleeper carriages were new. The train crew are Russian, since it's a Russian train, on it's way to Moscow. We've used little bits of German, read signs in French, occasionally said niet, and used a lot of sign language communicating with them.
With the background sound and feel of the train going clickety clack, we enjoyed seeing occasional little farms as we traveled towards Serbia. With the privileged view into people’s lives which you get from a train, we saw scenes like a woman sitting taking a break from weeding her vegetable patch and her husband in little fields beyond. We saw a horse and cart full of hay. In a town, we saw a lady looking for a lost earring.
The children played more games and read books. For the first time, I'd downloaded children's books from Hampshire libraries onto my ereader, as well as having packed at least 15 books. Unfortunately, the appeal of the books on the ereader was higher than the other books, so the children are taking it in turns to read 25% of a book, as well as playing cards and battleships, drawing and colouring, playing Mummies and babies (Miriam and Naomi) and reading books to Naomi.
The hostess let us know, with gestures, a few words and a map, that there would be no power between two stations after the Serbian border. We readied ourselves for a few increasingly hot hours, in the 32’ heat, in a sealed train carriage with sun coming through the window. We watched alternating fields of corn and wheat pass by. We passed through a narrow rocky valley with a river beside us. We were then all able to get off the train and enjoy some breeze, whilst we watched the old engine being uncoupled and anticipated the return of the air conditioning. The hostess managed to communicate to us that there would be a delay of an hour. She got someone from the station who spoke English to make sure that we understood how long we could be away from the train for. We asked him if there would be anywhere nearby where we could buy water. We didn't have any Serbian money, since we hadn't been expecting to get off the train in Serbia. He said that we shouldn't worry. He took us to a shop and bought us water and the children ice creams!
Back on the train, we waited for the carriage to cool down, and we waited… The children weren’t too affected by the heat. Reuben and Miriam were reading and Naomi had made a friend in the next carriage. She played with him, and watched a Russian cartoon about a bear. It became clear that the A/C was broken. I washed ice cream marks out of the girls’ tshirts, and instead of wringing them out, I put them on Tim’s brow and Miriam’s back as they read. We managed to work out that the next carriage had functioning A/C, so I used all the sign language I could think of to request that we change into the other carriage. There was a lot of ‘niet’. Our hostess took me down to talk to the hostess in the next carriage, and there was a lot more ‘niet’. My hostess tried arguing our case, including saying that we were diplomatic - something she learnt from the passport staff. The other hostess got quite heated in her defence, and at one point was rushing off angrily, and the steward held her back. After a lot of toing and froing, and exploring of different options, the answer suddenly turned to da, and we were shown down to the other carriage. Initially we had three bunks in one carriage and another carriage with three beds, but a kind (and actually very sensible) lady said that she would swap so that we were all together. Our experience was transformed from that point, as the journey became a pleasure, rather than something to endure. We got ready for bed and had a midnight feast, then went to bed. By that point, it was actually pleasing that the train was running late, since it gave us a good night’s sleep in a nice cool carriage, instead of a really early morning end to our journey. By this time, the train was faster and quieter, with less of the rustic rhythmic movement, and the fields were bigger.
When we woke up in the morning, we were in Belgrade station, and it became clear that the journey wouldn't end until at least mid afternoon. It is a good job that we’d done lots of shopping in Sofia, as well as having emergency supplies of lavas (tortilla) and peanut butter with us. We enjoyed some rivers, a swan and endless fields of sunflowers, as well as lots more wheat and corn, a few cities and some little stations with old fashioned station houses, sometimes covered in roses.
The children settled into a routine with Reuben and Miriam reading a quarter of a book each, whilst the other one played with Naomi. Tim and I had more time to read, look out of the window and write, as well as responding to the numerous requests most lay from Naomi for water, games, toilet trips or to be put on or off the top bunk.
We are just entering Budapest - around 10 hours later than planned! Thank goodness for the air conditioned carriage - Reuben and Naomi had been fine, but the rest of us would have been miserable! You never know how these things will work out, but if we can make it on a 29 hour journey, we should be fine with the rest. As we got off the train, Reuben and Miriam said "aeroplanes are boring - trains are excellent!
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