Return of the Night Train: Thessaloniki to Bucharest

Travelling by train is a unique, strange, wonderful experience. It feels so utterly different to flying and not just because of the simple differences of time. Actually travelling through a country, responding to the landscape and crossing borders - there is something undeniably romantic about it. Is the romance tied into nostalgia and the feeling of quaintness? It feels old-fashioned to travel by train, and is this where the romance comes from? I imagine it depends upon individual definitions of romance. To me romance is often reflected in environments and landscapes - cloud-capped mountains, sparkling sea; lush green tree-lined avenues and golden-hued corn fields, turning into brown and russet. It has a feeling of a dream about it; perhaps this is also to do with being solitary and passively looking, not interacting with another human being but communing silently and introspectively with the view out of a window. Perhaps this feeling of looking out into the world, from my solitary compartment lent a romance. What is romance but a projection of perfection, flawlessness onto something? Here I was, safe in a small box, travelling through individual universes populated with a variety of landscapes and people, and yet none of it could touch me or impact on me, except in my own musings. Was it real, did I actually see anything of the real countries I was whisked through? They seem like a dreamscape now. Adding to the feeling of a dream, is the constant sleeping wakefulness, or vice versa. Dozing during the day and waking at night - half sleep, half waking, half dreaming all the time. In a fantasy land of beauty and silence.



The overland journey from Greece to Romania, through Bulgaria, was defined by my overtired and overactive imagination. It was the longest trip I've done so far and for the first time since I left 9 days ago I started to long for some company. I suppose it's the longest I've been without it. I had a couchette to myself (the train guards seem to allocate single women couchettes all to themselves if possible) which in some ways was good as I had complete authority over lights going out, windows being opened, doors being locked and views being dominated, however at times I did start to feel I was stuck in some strange world which whisked past every form of life without stopping... It's not a wonder people go slowly mad when they are in their own company for too long and this trip felt unreal at times; the only company I had was the train guard who looked more and more rumpled as the train ate up the miles.

Eastern europe seems another world to western europe - and I started to feel a strange uneasiness, possibly due to half valid concerns about when I would arrive in Bucharest, when the train to Budapest would leave and if I had enough money to pay for a couchette. I am not sure why this feeling dominated my usually carefree traveller nature, perhaps it was all those dark myths and horror stories about Romania (I kept thinking about Vlad the Impaler, which somehow seemed more real to me than the more recent Communist horror stories), slightly coloured by my sadness at leaving friends in Kefalonia. The other factor was the passport control officials which frankly scared the bejesus out of me, disorientating me from a very deep sleep into a fumbling panic. We must have left Greece and entered Bulgaria around 2am so it was dark and I was in that odd time of the night where things aren't as they seem by day, train noises and speed somehow passed through into the subconscious and sunk into
my dreams. I think at first I thought the train guard was part of the dream and so was shocked into wakefulness when the officials banged on my couchette door, and then a second time in Bulgaria, when I must have fallen asleep again and struggled to flip the latch on the door to the impatience of the officials.

Do I simply crave company just because I am unsettled? Does that reveal something about human nature; the need to express words and feelings? And only when my mood is dark? But is this really communication and sharing an experience with someone, or just using them as a medium to cast heavy impressions into, in order to dismiss the anxiety? It makes me think of Prado in Night Train to Lisbon and his reflections on how people talk at one another instead of to one another. Curious. It's as though humans need a connection of some kind to make sense of the world. I think of all the times I have travelled and seen, or been part of, two strangers trying to communicate with one another. Even if they speak different languages, they still attempt to connect, to express thoughts and identity.



When I awoke a third time, it was mid-morning in Bulgaria. So enchanting to wake in a totally different place from where you went to sleep. Bulgaria is beautiful. It's so green with thick vegetation and shining rivers. The buildings are a mixture of dilapidated farmhouses and sometimes continental, sometimes gothic style homes but mostly I see fields, endless golden brown fields, stretching flatly into the distance. The people I have passed have either been commuters at stations, or those waiting to meet loved ones (like the lady in the beautiful red dress, who stood as straight as a dancer, with a small dog at her feet, waiting for her man stepping off the train. I wonder what their story is?), or children running out of homes excited by the passing train. Their skin and hair is very dark, like the Romany gypsy I saw at Thessaloniki station, who looked as foreign to me as anyone I have ever met, like someone stepped right out the pages of a fairytale. All this watching has a hypnotic effect on me, I feel slightly between worlds, fragments of writing and memory flit past me on the breeze outside my couchette window, my eye to the world.



We reach the Bulgarian/Romanian border in the middle of the afternoon. I had just finished my staple meal of salami with twists of bread, which I brought in Kefalonia. I have it wrapped up in a lilac scarf along with a knife for cutting through the thick skin of the salami. When I was deciding what provisions to buy in Kefalonia, I had remembered the story of when David left the kibbutz and Ziva had given him endless supplies of salami because it is so long-lasting. It is a simple yet satisfying picnic, sweetened by some chocolate wafers in cunning foil-wrapped tins. My passport was checked twice again at the border, the first time by a striking blonde female officer with a husky English accent who expressed surprise at my passport photo. The second check was made by a less friendly fair haired male who spoke little. The border officials are quite intimidating, checking all of the couchette for stowaways (although no one at any point ever checks luggage which could contain all sorts of contraband) and scowling heavily. Or perhaps it's just my inbuilt guilty reaction to anyone who wears a uniform. The weather felt more humid once we crossed the Danube into Romania. The river is striking and a lot of the passengers, including me, flock to the window to stare at the brilliance of it.



Romania is like entering a medieval world, or so it seemed to me. My sense of unreality is heightened, as I feel more and more like I have entered a childhood story. It is achingly pretty, the landscape much like the Bulgarian farmland I passed through, yet the houses have a faded stateliness, run-down buildings in pink, red and orange hues. I sneak a surreptitious photo of three elderly companions sat at a train station, perhaps awaiting a train, perhaps catching up on the gossip. One had a shock of white hair, distinct and bright across the platforms, all three have dark brown skin and the women wear floral tops. There is something hardy and capable about them, and a nobility in the defined cheekbones. I am sure I am getting caught up in the Romany gypsy tradition which speaks of glamour in bright ragged clothes and aristocratic features; these people probably aren't anything like the characters they become in my head. I also spy a horse and cart moving down the track next to the train line, the man wearing a wide brimmed straw hat, his horse thin and hungry looking. I keep thinking of the gypsy woman I saw at Thessaloniki and I can't help but wonder what her feelings are coming back home from Greece, two such different countries. Or so they seem to me as an outsider.