I love taking long train journeys and overnight rides are even better. It's not something we do in the UK as we don't have so much terrain to cover, and anything over four hours then people prefer to jump on a plane. Besides which, trains in Britain are just so expensive.
From Lviv in the west of the Ukraine to the capital Kyiv halfway across the country is 10 hours. Ukrainians generally choose to do it at night as the advantages are obvious; you don't lose a day, it's comfortable and cheaper than a hotel, and it's easy to make friends.
The trains themselves are fantastic, like the trains which featured in all the films of the 1950's and 60's. Great wide-eyed monsters, tall and imposing and breathing heavily. Serious looking conductors man the end of each carriage and check your ticket before you then grip the rail and heave yourself up into the mighty beast. Then it's into the narrow gangway and up the aisle to locate your berth. Think Some Like It Hot or North by Northwest, or anything about the Cold War.
Since Poland's accession to Europe and the massive amount of money it has received, the national road and rail network is being replaced and updated. This includes new train stock. In the Ukraine - outside of Kyiv - it is as it was.
I opted for 1st class which comprises of a bunk in a 4 person compartment, clean sheets, feather pillow and blankets! Blankets are the best. There is an irrestible tungsten reading lamp and various fittings for your every need including a steel and string shelf for your clothes, a hold for your luggage, and a bakelite radio on the wall with white chunky buttons. It's perfectly designed and its all mechanical as opposed to electronic. The switches give a loud satisfying click and the locks a reassuring clunk. Plastic ivy surrounds curtains with Soviet style logo which open out to wooden framed windows and the perfect view. Sour-faced matrons in slippers will bring you tea in pewter and thick glass tankards. And the price of all this? Just under 8 pounds.
I got chatting to my comrade, a fitness instructor who couldn't put his mobile phone down. His English was weak and a couple of times I broke into a grin as his odd accent brought images of Borat in his bikini. He told me he was an amateur photographer and insisted on showing me his 'album' which he had in his phone. Artists talking about their art somehow diminishes it. I was itching to get into my top bunk and get my book out. He was recovering from the flu and his detailed explanation of each tiny picture was interspersed with vigorous noseblowing and violent coughing. I could feel the compartment filling with germs and opened the window slightly. He also kept 'clicking' his knuckles which I hate, I met a lot of Ukrainians that do that.
The WC on Eastern European trains is usually a bit of a surprise for westerners. When you step on the flush pedal, it simply opens a hole through the floor to the ground rushing by beneath. So, presumably, the railways are strewn with crap. In Poland, you will rarely find soap or loo roll in a public lavatory, even though you have to pay to use them.
The fitness instructor was from Lyiv and offered to show me a map of the city which he had in his phone, but my eyelids had grown heavy so he closed the door and I climbed up the special fold out ladder to my bunk. I pulled out F. Scott Fitzgerald, slid in between the crisp sheets, and glanced out the window at the sun on the horizon. Bliss.
