Always Leave From the Right Station in Life - de dah

Monday 24 July

Day 3 of our new life.

I wanted to travel by train and today we will have spent eleven and a half hours speeding part of the way to St Petersburg, in a compartment that resembles the cells in Prison Break – its about 7ft x 5ft with three bunk beds and a sink! Obviously there is supposed to be three people in here, but we had a job to fit two with all our luggage.

It has been extremely hot in the carriages - over 100 degrees + – those little cheap fans from M&S were a godsend. It’s getting dark now and only very slightly cooler. After a short journey east from Berlin to Frankfurt (which I always thought was in West Germany), we passed into Poland. We have been through a couple of large towns so far – Poznan being the largest where we spied a Tescos! – and lots of small villages. Some look just like the caricature of Eastern Europe – three or four storey blocks of flats with flat roofs, small flat windows, quite run down, looking alnost derelict. Then there’s those villages who are rebuilding – large modern houses with apex roofs and large gardens. Outside of the larger towns and villages there are lots of what I thought were allotments – all nicely kept with masses of flowers and fine looking vegetables. All with sheds! Then I realized most of these “sheds” have satellite dishes on the side and these too are permanent homes.

Was it Napoleon who said that “Poland was the bread basket of Europe/or was it Russia? Well I can see why. All along the route are fields upon fields of golden corn waiting to be harvested. Each field would fit about four to six football pitches – huge great swathes. There’s quite a lot of forest land too. The pace of life seems very tranquil and serene. We’ve seen hares bounding in the cut fields and storks and cranes flying around. Its almost like playing nature Ispy.

We nearly didn’t make the train. We went to the station in Berlin at which we arrived, only to find that the station we wanted was a twenty minute train ride away to the outskirts of Berlin (I suppose that’s no different to London – where there is several different terminal stations, each going in different directions). But we made it in plenty of time – enough time to buy out the few shops at this station (not like Berlin Hbf where there are shops to rival Bluewater). But we stocked up on rolls and cakes and fruit and, most important, water. That’s our feast for the next two days as they don’t supply any sustenance on the train. There is a rusty geyser-type contraption in one compartment which dispenses water I think, but it doesn’t look too healthy.

It’s hard to believe that we will be on this train all day tomorrow too – in our little cell. There’s plenty of time for meditation and day dreaming, as well as puzzles, music and reading. So I don’t think we will be bored. At first you feel you must be looking out the windows every second so that you don’t miss anything, but then you get used to the scenery and you start catching up on other things.

I think this may be another sleepless night – not only because of the heat and the bunk beds. We have just pulled into Warsaw station and now it’s on to the Belarus border, where our passports and visas will be checked again, probably in the wee small hours. Our passports haven’t got any new stamps yet – I suppose that’s because it has all been EEC, but Belarus is the start of the next section of our adventure.