Train to Warsaw

It’s decided that our leader, Christina, is Irish and not Bavarian.  Her use of logic
qualifies.   Along with the fictitious, “it’s just a short walk to (fill in the
blank),” her information about our travel out of Lithuania to
Warsaw, Poland,  is also an interpretive blend of fact and
optimism.
 
We will change time zones, and arrive by train after a  fifteen hour
trip, door to door.   Christina has befriended the conductors of
each train on our route so that each connection knows we will
come as a group to the platform.  We counted four trains, but
Christina said it is only three – the first 2-hour local train doesn’t
count.  She counts only inter-City trains.  Ok.   We don’t have to
run with baggage pounding because all trains are on time and we
have about 20 plus minutes to change trains and carriages.
 
Train 2 has a farmer in worn, woollen pants and even older, sturdy
Wellies.  He carries a huge basket that’s piled high with fresh mushrooms
like the ones we saw while hiking the woods.  Each station has side rails with rail cars
stacked high with cut timber.  A few hours before Warsaw, we pass a
railyard loaded with black coal, shining in the afternoon sun.
 The landscape is a pastoral Fall.  Most of the hay is already baled
inside white, plastic balls, or is left in short cylinders at even intervals in the
fields.
 
Train 3 has many young families.  A father with two young sons
are embarrassingly ADHD or similar.  It’s all the Dad can manage
to keep the boys in the car as they bolt up and down the aisles,
try to open the doors between cars, and pull at the clothes or belongings of other passengers.  There are three screaming tantrums during the  hour and a half ride.  I cannot imagine the 24 hour/365 day life they must live together.  The thought eclipses any annoyance I may feel. 
 
Train 4 is seven hours long.  We read, play games, listen to iPod,
tinker with iPad.  Fon finds herself emptying her daypack to look
at its bits and pieces, simply to pass the time.  Spritzer, gum,
jewelry, water, etc.  Spritzer, gum, jewelry, water, etc.  Repeat.
 
We have seats assigned to three cabins that are obviously modified to seat eight.
 This train line learned well from its airline cousins for removing
most comfort from passenger areas.   All luggage must stow in
these cabins, too.  It is a challenge for even the aspiring engineers
among us to pack it all in.  Shoes come off for fear of attracting a fine from the
conductor.  No one is keen to pay 50 euros if caught with their
shoes propped on the upholstered banquettes.  
 
We spread wider to occupy an extra cabin so that four of us ride in
each.  At each station, people come on board.  We hope they pass our
already cramped cabins, and find seats elsewhere.  They do.  Several hours
before our destination, at least one toilet stops working.  As long as
the train moves, the odor doesn’t collect in our second class car.
 The smokers are instructed to use the broken bathrooms to smoke.
 That’s one way to break a habit.  
 
It’s worthless to try to ventilate the cabins by lowering the outside
windows;  Manure that fertilizes the Polish fields competes with
the WCs for what little free air is left.  Luckily, by nightfall the
sweet smell of burning fields masks the day’s odors. 
 
Despite the foul environment, we snack on crackers, sip water bought at the first station, nibble chocolates
from the States, knaw apples from the park’s trees, and bite into sandwiches made
at the homestay with cheese, salami, and cucumbers brought from
Vilnius.  It also passes the time.
 
Conductors and station matrons, as well as aproned cleaning
women for the carriage aisles, change as we go along.  It appears
that there is a correlation between shoe heighth and station status.
 The more historical the station appears, or the more affluent the
station’s village, the higher the heels on the station matron.  She
comes to the platform, stands straight with feet together, and
signals with a raised, round circle on a stick for 
the conductor to know that everyone is boarded. 
 
I spend only part of the day under the sleep spell of motion
sickness meds. I must rely on meds for these endless train rides or wavy ferry
passages or nauseatingly long bus trips.   I had hoped that my
childhood’s kinetic bearings and inner ear would work it all
out by now, but at 64, those chances are slim and none.    If it
wasn’t for the daisy chain of wondrous destinations that we must
reach in a short time, I would really slam this part of the Intrepid
adventure.
 
We’re graced with a lingering, pastel sweep of sunset over stands
of trees and darkening, open fields.  Fon and I take the 50 euro risk and stand on the seats
to get a photo through the lowered cabin window.  Fon’s Canon
bests my Nikon with a priceless shot that makes it look like the sun
itself is setting the harvest bonfires.

Tallinn. Port of good news

Our Intrepid group bumped along with backpacks and roll aboards, clicking and clacking from the Helsinki hotel to the tram.  We’re a dozen seasoned travellers who get a quick attaboy from our leader, Christine.  She was glad to see us intuitively stretch our presence at the tram stop so that we could board at all open doors.  No sheep passports permitted in these ranks.

Savor a bit of passport naustalgia. It’s too bad that the European Union laid off most of its passport checkers once member countries allowed unfettered crossings within the EU.  No more cool stamps for the passport after one’s first entry into the EU.   I would love to have a stamp in my passport showing medieval turrets over a dated stamp from Estonia.  But that’s not to be.  The port of Tallinn has corporate beer sponsors where passport stampers used to be.

Fast as cyber speed.  The big, red Viking ship that brought us from Helsinki to Tallinn had a mascot for the kids,  bars for the boys and grown up girls, food for all at extortionate prices, and casino machines.  It also had free Internet.  Our table of five from Intrepid hunkered over one iPhone, two iPads, a Mac book, and a retro notepad with special paper, cover and ball pen.  No one’s perfect, even in cyberspace.  I did well and only swallowed three dramaine on the  2.5 hour ride south from Finland to  Estonia.  One has to remember that Estonia is the country where Skype came from.  And because Estonia has had a mere 20 years of Recovered Independence from the Soviets, the Net itself is an emblem  of modern freedom.

We arrived in what seemed like a black ‘n white scene from On the Waterfront.  Rain poured, creating a veil over the Olde Town of Tallinn.  On the hike to the hotel, Intrepid’s Bill from Canada veered off course, head down, into the rain, following an unrelated group who splintered off . Right away, the Intrepid people sounded the alarm.  “Bill!  Wrong ducks!”

Tours are us.  Leader Christine marched us through Olde Town with a cadence Germans love.  We got the gist from the orientation of what would be useful during our next day to do on our own.  Most of us found our way to a cafe before regrouping for dinner.

I entered a church as a special service for children was beginning.  Have you ever noticed how quiet the little ones can be at these moments?   The god parents accompanied two of the families and performed the baptism, assisted by the Lutheran clergy.

From secular music at church, we moved to older secular music for dinner.  Intrepid gathered for a medieval themed dinner by candlelight.  No one seemed to want to do any karaoke to these Gregorian chants.  Maybe if the words scrolled somewhere?  Nyet

There’s orange everywhere from hotel decor to street vendors’ outfits to cafe lap robes.  I asked a Tallinn person, why?  They shrugged and said it was because they just liked that color.  I may have to ask the question again.  That answer didn’t really pass the sniff test.
The rain stopped, giving me and my lightweight Nikon an indigo view of the streets.  It was 2 AM.  The possibility of tomorrow’s sun as well as the hour conspired to send me to bed.