“Travel, which is nearly always seen as an attempt to escape from the ego, is in my opinion the opposite. Nothing induces concentration or inspires memory like an alien landscape of a foreign culture. It is simply not possible (as romantics think) to lose yourself in an exotic place. Much more likely is an experience of intense nostalgia, a harking back to an earlier stage of your life, or seeing clearly a serious mistake. But this does not happen to the exclusion of the exotic present. What makes the whole experience vivid, and sometimes thrilling, is the juxtaposition of the present and the past – London seen from the heights of Harris Saddle.”
Paul Theroux, “The Happy Isles of Oceania”
Varna – Bucharest – Chisinau
Two weeks in Bulgaria were sufficient for me to recover after the Lesotho trip and I could hit the road again. This time, it was a trip down memory line. It was not an imaginary trip but actually going back to the Soviet times during which I grew up. I mean going to the country that does not exist – Transnistria.
The cheapest and most fun way to travel to Transnistria is overland which for me meant to take the bus from Varna to Bucharest and from there, the train to Chisinau. The bus part of the trip was easy. Both Bulgaria and Romania are now in Schengen. The bus simply rolled into Bucharest after 4,5 hours on the road. I took the metro to Gara de Nord station and waited for my train.
CFR Călători, Romania’s National Railway Company, runs a night train to Moldova daily. The distance between Bucharest and Chisinau is 430 km (267 miles). This may not sound like a lot but it takes the train 14 hours to travel from one capital city to the other. One reason for that is the border and therefore passport and customs formalities. Another reason is far more fascinating. The Moldavian line was built to the Russian standard gauge (1520 mm). The European gauge in Romania uses a distance of 1435 millimeters between the rails. So, instead of making passengers to switch trains at the border, the entire train changes its wheels. It can take 1-2 hours to lift all cars, detach their wheels, and attach a new set. Passengers do not leave the train during the process; they are lifted and shifted together with their car. On top of that, the train is just slow.
Before taking the train, I watched several YouTube videos shot by the foreigners who did this trip. They took photos of every minor detail of it, sounding very excited, starting from how they boarded the train, of what they found inside it until they left the train. But it was nothing new to me. I grew up in the USSR and took a countless number of railroad trips. The trains have not changed a bit in the past 40 years, most likely they are the same cars built long time ago. Nevertheless, I took a good number of photos myself.
The train left at 19:06 sharp. I napped until I was awakened by Romanian customs and immigrations. It took them one minute to stamp me out of the country. Then, the process of switching the wheels began.
It is our turn now. The entire train was shaking and jerking while the wheels were replaced.
We arrived in Chisinau at 9.30 am. I walked to my Chisinau Hotel, checked in well before their check-in time and went to the room to drop off my backpack. Dear me, the room instantly transferred me back to the 1980-s when I took business trips in the Soviet Union and stayed in state-owned hotels. The rooms were always the same – plain, with wallpapered walls and 2 to 4 single beds.
Of course, Chisinau has modern hotels. I stayed in one on the way back to Romania. But this was the whole idea of the trip organized by the Young Pioneer Tours – to plunge us back into the Soviet times.
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