April 21st, Singapore

I hate airplanes but that is the only way to reach a tropical island on the far side of the South Pacific, which is the starting point for a rather interesting train ride. That island is Singapore. It is but one of several thousand islands flicked out along the equator into the collision of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, just off the edge of Asia’s narrow thousand mile-long fingertip, the Malay Peninsula.

If you leave Singapore by train, and follow the tracks across the causeway to the Malaysian mainland and up to Siam, through the jungles of Indochina, up along the edge of the Tibetan Plateau to Yunnan and Szechwan, turn left along the Silk Road and across the soaring ice mountains of Turkistan and the deserts of Central Asia and the Middle East to Istanbul, then up across the Balkans through the deep forests of Northern Europe and Scandinavia, the tracks will not stop until you reach the tiny Norwegian fishing village of Narvik, far above the Arctic Circle. This is what a tropical island and an Arctic fishing village have in common: they lie at opposite ends of the longest continuous stretch of rail on earth. According to the Thomas Cook Overseas Timetable, there is no one train that travels between Singapore and Narvik, but it is possible to make the 15,000 mile journey by using a preponderous combination of some 30 different trains - an interesting undertaking indeed.

For the last several hours of the flight to Singapore, the plane I am on skitters from one tropical thunderhead to the next. We are like a weightless ping pong ball, the celestial topography intermittently highlighted out the tiny window by flashes of lightning followed by bone-jarring shaking that pops the overhead luggage bins open like jack-in-the-box’s. And so upon arrival it is straight to the venerable colonial Long Bar at the white columned Raffles Hotel for a celebratory toast to my safe return to terra firma and to the beginning of an excursion across this great continent.

April 22nd, Malaysia

Midnight finds me traveling at something less than warp speed in a garishly decorated first class compartment on the Senandung Malam overnight express to Kuala Lumpur. I am aghast as I pan from the red and green Scottish tartan blanket on my bed to the psychedelic orange window shades to the puke-beige Formica wall panels upon which, apparently, rotting fruits have been indiscriminately smeared. I close my eyes and wish that I will wake up in a galaxy far, far away.

Be careful what you wish for. I wake up early the next morning to the rocking of the train gingerly making its way across converging tracks, a sure sign that we are approaching the city. Outside through the dawn haze I can see the speckled lights of the two gargantuan Petronas Towers, the tallest buildings in the world rocketing above Kuala Lumpur, former British tin mining camp and now capital of Malaysia and of the entire Islamic world east of Mecca. As the train rounds a curve, the lead engine disappears between two minarets into what appears to be a gigantic white mosque. It is not until we pull to a stop that I realize we are inside Kuala Lumpur station. Coffee is the first priority. Luckily, I do not have to look beyond a tiny café in the station to get my first cup of café a la Malaysia: thick as mud, strained through a webbed net, sweetened with condensed milk and strong enough to separate dreams from reality.

The four hour layover in KL is plenty of time to get lost on the modern new subway, find the Petronas Towers (only to learn that tourists are not allowed in any of the elevators), get lost on the elevated train, find a jungle in the middle of the city, get lost in it, and then discover a huge television tower in the middle of it all (tourists welcome) from the top of which a smog-enshrouded metropolis splays out, surrounded, edge to edge, by mountains. I finally hike down into the old Chinese quarter to find street musicians ranging from an old Chinese Muslim fellow plunking out rock and roll riffs on an electric guitar plugged into a pig nose amp, to an entire family of born-again Christians encamped in front of a MacDonald’s singing “Please release me” to the accompaniment of a blind organ player.

That afternoon the Ekspress Rakyat pulses northward through the canopied jungle-side, oblivious to the pandemonious pounding of an afternoon deluge of rain upon the hot tin train roof. I look out the window. There is a kaleidoscopic smear of water and green that somehow suggests both movement and submergence. The skies part in the early evening at Butterworth, the northern terminus of Kereta Api Malaysia, such as the railway here is called. From this sleepy port on the Andaman Sea, I take a ferry twenty minutes out into the Indian Ocean to the quaint island village of Georgetown, an eclectic mixture of British tin-baron colonial mansions and Chinese Buddhist temples.

This is my first chance to practice what is to become a frenetic daily ritual: get off train …change money…purchase ongoing ticket…store luggage for maximum ambulatory freedom…find cheap lodging…return to station…pick up luggage…return to cheap lodge…hand-wash dirty clothes in sink and hang on chair backs within striking distance of ceiling fan…remove tiny notebook computer hidden from curious eyes inside folded shirt…transfer video and digital clips to the computer…tap out the day’s blog…copy blog and pictures to floppy disk…back out into the city to find a place to eat and then an internet café to upload blog and photos to a web site so that family and friends can follow the journey “real time”…back to hotel for a few hours of sleep…out early the next morning in newly washed clothes, before the heat sets in, to walk around the city until train departure time.

In Georgetown, I find a large Victorian mansion that has been converted into a traveler’s hostel. Across the street stands another mansion that has been converted into a nightclub which is stately by day, but by night, it morphs into a throbbing haven for transvestites who form a hands-on gauntlet between my hotel and the undeniable lure of a coffee stand down the block.

April 23rd, Thailand

Only three days into the journey and already I have crossed from Christian-Hindu Singapore through Islamic Malaysia and now into the heart of Buddhist Siam. The air-conditioned International Express has individual sleeping berths separated by curtains, but the conductor passes along a signboard in English, Chinese and Thai that warns travelers to be vigilant of pickpockets and ‘pirates’ as the train passes through southern Thailand. Bangkok is one permanent traffic jam. The only way to get around that city is to find a river and catch a water taxi to one of the numerous floating markets, Wat temples or palaces, stopping frequently to sip frozen mango and papaya drinks inside air conditioned cafes.

Sitting on the hard bench seats of the crawling, open-air local mail to the Cambodian border, “Jurgen” materializes from nowhere just as the train pulls out of Bangkok’s Hualumpong Station. Dressed in black shirt, black jeans and black boots, with nary a tooth in his mouth and bare arms pocked with needle marks and other mysterious scars and lesions, Jurgen frenetically bombards me with stories about his life on the road. This includes experiences in a multitude of Thai and Russian jails, and how he had made a living ferrying young “brides” to Japan.

April 26th, Cambodia

I manage to shake Jurgen in the chaos of Poipet, a dangerous border town that resembles Dodge City, complete with a mud strewn Main Street lined with false-front buildings and filled with gun-toting frontiersmen and opportunity seekers. Double-cab four-wheel drive pickups are stuffed with belongings including bamboo cages which hold unfortunate, anxious-looking fowl. Passengers spit blood-red, opiatic betel nut juice and thump the sides of the door as the drivers send children in scattershot formations to round up that last passenger for their destination.

The two-car local mail to Battambang takes a mind numbing three hours to cover just 42 kilometers. According to my Lonely Planet guide, this train spends most of its time undergoing bridge, track and engine repairs. From this sleepy French colonial village it is a bone-jarring five hour outboard boat ride across a tangle of narrow waterways and open lake to Angkor Wat, the stone city of the gods built nearly a thousand years ago by the Chams who then inexplicably abandoned it. Angkor was quickly and completely swallowed up by the jungle, only to be rediscovered in the mid 20th century by a French Indiana Jones. On the boat ride to Angkor I sit wedged between a saffron-robed Buddhist monk and a Kalashnikov-totting militant. The two chatter back and forth across me. I am silent.

Hot and slow, its windows grated shut, the only way to ride the local mail to Phnom Penh and breath oxygen at the same time, is to sit on top in the open air, trading the risk of bullets from disenchanted Khmer Rouge, for an unobstructed view of the rice paddies. Phnom Penh has come a long way since the inexplicably brutal Pol Pot filled the Killing Fields with the skeletons of his own people. Along the banks of the river is an amusement park where children scream with pleasure, and couples walk happily hand in hand. At the central post office, I purchase the last two international stamps in their inventory. Ironically, electronic mail is far more efficient, as I am able to log on at a nearby internet café and surf the world wide web, cooled by ceiling fans and an ice cold Coke.

May 1st, Vietnam

A two hour share-taxi ride across the marshy delta of the Mekong River, between Phnom Penh and Saigon, is the only portion of the entire journey that does not have train track. Behind me sits a young African-American in a pressed wool suit and shiny black shoes, carrying only a satchel and the straight posture of the military that belies his masquerade as a tourist.

I reward myself for the imaginatively dangerous Cambodian crossing with three days and two nights of air conditioned luxury aboard the Reunification Express along Vietnam’s Pacific coast, complete with hot meals delivered at frequent intervals. On board entertainment comes in the form of two fellow travelers in my compartment: a wealthy, married Vietnamese woman and a rather suave local Don Juan. They spend the first day getting hilariously acquainted and the second day and night consummating that acquaintance confirming my suspicion that the rhythm of the rails is essentially a primal one. The view from Hai Van Pass through the chicken wire grating of the train window out across China Beach to the azure Pacific is to be my last citing of open water for the next ten thousand miles.

May 4th, China

Yesterday the Pacific. Today the edge of Tibet. Scheduled service has recently been re-instated on the old French narrow gauge mining train from Hanoi up through the mountains to the city of Kunming, China’s own mile-high city perched on the edge of the Himalayan highlands. The train climbs steep mountainsides from which cascade brilliantly lit terraces of rice paddies thousands of feet to the gorge below. The dining car is the place to be; fiery wok-fried Szechwan specialties are washed down by bountiful supplies of ice-cold Chinese beer. This does little to allay the sense of vertigo from the precipitous view out the open windows.

The Chinese describe the train line from Kunming to Chengdu as one of the eight engineering marvels of China, along with the Great Wall, the Long Canal, and the Three Gorges Damn on the Yangtze. As the Kuncheng Tekuai climbs to an elevation of two miles above sea level, the narrow canyon floor fills with a roaring river from which cliff walls rise vertically. Years ago, the only place to lay track was across a series of trestles and through a succession of looping tunnels and back across more trestles, spiraling skywards back and forth across both sides of the canyon walls, circling back again in a numbing succession of switchbacks. At the other end, Chengdu is a monster of a city – the capital of a province of over 100 million people that dwarves the size of any European country. Here rises the symbol of the new China of the 21st Century: the central part of the city is a mountain range of glass-walled skyscrapers. People hurry to and fro on the street, plugged into cell phones and dodging cars stopped in traffic jams. In one downtown park that used to be the parade grounds of the Communist leadership, a gigantic statue of Chairman Mao still stands, his welcome hands still beckoning southward, but today the Great Helmsman is dwarfed below a phalanx of loud and brightly lit billboards touting golf courses and whiskey brands.

Only the Trans-Siberian is longer that the Shanghai-Urumqi Express, but I ride a mere five hundred mile sliver of it to Lanzhou, an industrial city on the Yellow River that forms the natural boundary between “Greater” China to the East, Mongolia to the North, Turkistan to the West, and Tibet to the South. From here it is a dizzying six hour bus ride up to Labrang, the largest Tibetan monastery outside of Tibet, that leaves me woozy with altitude sickness before we even arrive there. A kind and pleasant looking Chinese woman from the bus who sells cosmetics to these highland folk takes pity on me. She administers herbs that taste like they were made from snake bile. The next thing I know, my shivering stops. The next morning I wake to bright sunlight and to the ubiquitous sound of Chinese zither music.

May 15th, East Turkistan

Traversing the great Gobi desert, the LanWu Express passes the fort of Jiauyguan, the westernmost edge of the Great Wall and the physical and cultural, though not quite political, end of China. On the bunk across from me lounges a portly man whom I affectionately nickname “Mao”, because of the great resemblance. “Mao” is headed out to Urumqi to flog some kind of bric-a-brac from his commune’s factory back in central China. Yes, he is on a boondoggle and is enjoying himself immensely. He indiscriminately stuffs anything and everything into his mouth. This includes an entire quart of chocolate milk, reminding me of an audience I once had with the Premier of China, Zhu Rongji, who also favored the drink over the traditional green tea that the rest of us were served.

Dunhuang is a two hour taxi cannonball shot into the desert, a series of caves dug into a grotto on the walls of which a succession of Silk Road graffiti artisans have penned stories of the Bodhisattva over a period of many hundreds of years.

The Tourist Air Conditioned to Urumqi is a beautiful new train, completely closed off to the harsh desert elements and frosted with air conditioning. The soothing voice of James Taylor singing “Sweet Baby James” replaces the normal screechy Chinese zither wake-up-and-exercise music that greeted passengers in the days of Mao and Teng. Last but not least, each car is graced with a cheery Chinese hostess in crisply starched uniform who speaks politely and responds courteously. Am I dreaming? What has happened to the rude battle-axe who heaves the damp, moldy bedroll at you like a medicine ball? In the same train car sits a group of employees from XinHua, the state-owned publishing organ. These people all have the same handicap as me; Chinese is a second language. Each represents one of the minorities of Chinese Turkistan: Uigur, Kazakh, Kirghiz, Uzbek and Tajik. Meanwhile, their Chinese colleagues are safely segregated up in the first class car. There we sit, exiles in the middle of Asia, as the train rumbles closer to Urumqi, the furthest inland city on this planet.

From Urumqi I can not resist a quick thousand mile side-trip to Kashgar aboard the brand new Minzu Tuanjie which, loosely and optimistically translated, means “United Nationalities.” I prefer to call it the East Turkistan Very Limited. Entertainment on this crawling, hot and dusty ride across the desert is provided by the “Little Emperor,” a term that aptly describes one of the effects of China’s one child per family policy. This particular Emperor, a child of about six, proceeds to terrorize the entire train car. At one point, he climbs up to my bunk and shoots a mouthful of spit into my face as he cocks his fingers like a gun. Later I see him stand atop the very top bunk and pee down onto his father’s head.

Everything is for sale at the Kashgar Bazaar: fresh fruits and vegetables, carpets, silk, ornate knives, treasure chests, shashlik, goat’s head soup, goats, camels, camel hair, horses, horse shoes, ornate saddles. Some items are available but less obviously advertised, such as fur caps made from endangered species (snow leopard, marco polo sheep) and, surprise surprise, women. Actually, the latter did come as a surprise to one young woman, a traveler whom I had met on the train. She spoke no language other than her native Japanese and set out to travel, alone, across China and the Middle East to Istanbul. We happened to stay at the same hotel – the Qini Bagh, built on the grounds of the old British Consulate. It is a place quite popular with Pakistani merchants who ply profitable trades between their two countries over the Kunjerab, the highest paved border crossing in the world.  Apparently they come for other reasons as well, as attested to by the number of friendly looking ladies in the hotel lobby, for whom our aforementioned young Japanese traveler was apparently mistaken: according to her story, in the middle of the night, a dark looking man of indeterminate Middle Eastern descent, dressed in traditional Islamic attire, had knocked on her door and, when she answered it, forced his way in. She managed to fend him off and the following day very sensibly paired up with the very next Japanese traveler that walked through the hotel entrance.

Twenty years earlier, I was enjoying a beer in a café at the bottom of the Great Wall with advertising magnate Paul Foley of McCann-Erickson, when he made this Madison Avenue quip: “You know Michael, I think there are two things you should not miss in China. The Great Wall, and the train out.” The latter is certainly the case for the Genghis Khan Express to Kazakhstan, which runs only once a week. At the border I have no way of knowing that the pretty Russian girl who keeps making eye contact with me is actually an advance scout for her boyfriend. He is a policeman who, apparently, supplements his meager stipend by traveling back and forth between the two countries in first class, robbing unsuspecting tourists of their cash. His gig is simple: “arrests” for minor infractions such as “photography in the forbidden border region” to which I confess in writing, having filmed some local townsfolk selling dried fish to the passengers at one of the stops. My “fine” becomes a subject of intense negotiation, starting at $100 cash and ending at $40 worth of Chinese currency, which is no longer of use to me anyhow. That evening all is forgiven and he invites me to join him, the girl and some other friends in his compartment for a “simple card game.” As I sit playing cards, it occurs to me that this moment is both the geographic and cultural dividing point between East and West Asia.
 

May 22nd, Kazakhstan

The train from Almaty to Tashkent is named Otyrar for the ancient city nearby that was first pillaged then completely destroyed by the great Cossack Tamerlane. This seems about as culturally sensitive as naming an Amtrak train across South Dakota the “Wounded Knee Express.” Taking great pains to not even stand by a window when the train passes over a bridge or by any man-made structure of even remotely strategic potential, I film a lone Kazakh horseman galloping through the green countryside. I am promptly reported to the authorities by some fearful passengers who apparently still live in the Soviet era of snoop and tell. Within minutes the train’s policeman pays a visit to my compartment. This time, however, my fellow travelers rise up in my defense, led by a fiery Russian grandmother who berates the hapless bully. And I am off the hook.

May 24th, Uzbekistan

Tashkent is the capital of Uzbekistan but when it was a part of the USSR, the Soviets invested heavily in this city as the strategic centerpiece of their Central Asian colonial empire. One of these investments was a huge and deep subway system that doubled as a bomb shelter, modeled after the ones in Moscow and Leningrad. It is down here that several Uzbek plain-clothed policemen with dark skin and dark moustaches approach me. Their look of disdain quickly changes to childlike exuberance when they see that my passport is from the United States. Still, they usher me into a small dreadful office without windows, hidden like a crypt behind a nondescript door. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, I have just disappeared without a trace. The officer in charge politely asks me the usual questions – “Where are you coming from? Why are you here? How long have you been here? Have you taken any photos of the subway? How much money do you have?” His two deputies are more interested in my accoutrements: “How much did that camera cost? What kind of film does it use? May I see how the zoom works? What else is in your bag?” The officer then asks me to count all of my money in front of him, so that he can compare it against with the amount that is recorded on the declaration form stapled into my passport. This becomes a rather lengthy process, as I keep different amounts and denominations of dollars in more than eight different pockets and locations for the specific purpose of bribing officials and ticket agents. “You are missing $100,” the observant officer informs me as he twists one stained end of his mustache. I explain that two uniformed guards in front of the state bank offered to change my money for me, and that they had done so at the bazaar across the street at the train station. The official raises an eyebrow in recognition then stands up, gives me a strong but friendly clap on my back and, with a big grin, leaves me with these words of advice “Never show your passport to anyone not in uniform!”

All across the deserts of Central Asia, from western China to the Caspian, the passenger trains seem to run in the middle of the night. This makes perfect sense, since traveling during the day is simply too hot; the sun would sear the tin roofed boxcars like a tin can over an open fire. Even at night, I am assaulted by the smell of pungent Russian papirosa cigarettes mingling with dried fish, pork sausage fat, and human sweat as it evaporates off unwashed bodies then percolates through filthy clothes. I can hardly imagine what this would be like during the heat of the day.

The night train to Samarkand leaves at dusk and arrives at one o’clock in the morning, depositing groggy passengers at an empty station and into the mercy of a line of taxi sharks. I share a tiny Zhiguli – the Russian Fiat – with three other passengers and we meander the streets of Samarkand at a leisurely pace, dropping off passengers, stopping off occasionally to pick up strange brown packages, and carry out other mysterious errands. I am the last one to be dropped off, at an old Russian hotel where the young woman behind the front desk looks up at me sleepily and arches one eyebrow in half-hearted unspoken suggestion, seemingly oblivious to her unbuttoned blouse.

Samarkand is perhaps the most evocative name of the many ancient cities along the Silk Road; it was the seat of the Tamerlane’s empire and its colorful turquoise domes have been artfully restored for the burgeoning tourist trade. Bukhara, just several hours down the tracks on the pre-dawn Boxoro sleeper train, was a great Persian holy city with a diversity of religions, including a Jewish synagogue that remains in operation even to this day. In the middle of the old part of the city there is a huge minaret rising not from the walls of a mosque, as is common in this part of the world, but from the middle of a small square paved with hard bricks. This was used not to call the faithful to prayer, but as a gallows from which to hurl infidels and thieves to their deaths. I discover access to this tower is officially closed to tourists but can be gained “for a special fee” which, in my case, amounts to a five dollar bill. Nobody else appears to be around and I climb the narrow stairs that run up the inside wall of the tower in a precarious gyre. From the top is a nice view of the old city – caravansaries, the old indoor bazaar, tea houses, and narrow walled streets.

May 29th, Turkmenistan

The Asgabat eases off into the desert night, a cool calming ride that begins normally enough with a family of one brother and two sisters in my compartment. These Turkmeni, all in their 30s, invite me to join them in a meal of cucumber, tomatoes, shashlik and flatbread. The elder sister wears a long robe and a tall caftan hat and has a gregarious laugh. The younger sister averts her dark eyes with a self-conscious aloofness, which of course has the opposite effect. The brother is a nonstop commentator, and easily exceeds the limits of my high school Russian. After a few shots of vodka, Dr. Jekyll mutates into Mr. Hyde and I find myself the hostile witness in a self-convened Kangaroo Court that involves an endless litany of anti-American complaints. The vodka thankfully lulls him to sleep. The younger girl bats her eyes but this traveler knows the difference between adventure and reckless misadventure, particularly when it involves the laws of the Koran.

Imagine my surprise when I learn, upon boarding the night train to Turkmenbashi-on-Caspian, that I am sharing a compartment with two bounty hunters and their prisoner who is hand-cuffed to an upper bunk. The largest of the trio, a gregarious Turkmen gentle giant, somehow takes a liking to me and determines to stuff my skinny bones back to health with sausages, bread, thick dripping rinds of pork fat (a delicacy in the desert) and of course vodka. My mistake is in telling him that I prefer camel milk – dal; this prompts an all-night quest to procure some “real” Turkmen dal, which everybody knows it the best in the desert. It is not until nearly 2:00 am that we find some. Of course all I want now is sleep, but first I have to quaff an entire bottle of the sour white liquid. The next thing I remember is waking up to the hollow sound of a near-empty train car rolling along the tracks. Bounty hunters, prisoner, and most other passengers have disappeared, leaving just a few half-empty bottles of dal sitting on the windowsill, and a view of the blue Caspian Sea just beyond.

June 1st, Azerbaijan

An entire train is swallowed up by the huge lower section of a sea ferry for the crossing to Baku and as I board the boat a young sailor takes me aside to offer me a private stateroom, with shower, for the overnight ride. This sounds too good to be true and indeed it is, but I only learn so after passing him a twenty dollar bill. The “state room” turns out to be the sailor’s own cabin, its faux-wood walls pasted with pin-ups of nubile, cosmetically enhanced women in various stages of undress. The sailor offers to be my dinner guide, Baku guide, and procurer for “all other services.” I slip out when he isn’t looking and eschew the dining hall in favor of an informal two-dollar dinner at a rickety card table on the deck below with the kitchen staff who whip up a quick shashlik and chai for me. Baku reminds me of Naples, a seaside city of dark men hidden behind thick mono-brows and drooping mustaches, but the biggest change is the women who, on this side of the Caspian, cat-walk along the café-lined promenades of the city in plunging abdomen-baring lycra pants and tight tops. As night falls it is time to cool off in one of the jazz dives for which Baku is famous, the Caravan Club - a Middle Eastern version of the Liverpudlian locale where the Beatles first became famous – where I chance upon the hauntingly mesmerizing saxophone of Rain Sultanov, whose blend of middle eastern nomadic melodies and western jazz improvisation has won him awards as far away as Montreaux.

June 3rd, Georgian Republic

Another day, another night train, this time the Koj-Kol to T’bilisi. As we approach the border between Azerbaijan and Georgia, I am surprised when most of the passengers get off the train. Only a few unsuspecting others and I remain as the train then pulls into the dilapidated border post. Like practically everyone else, I lack a visa to Georgia and for the same reason: the Georgian consul general back in Baku is apparently often “away” for days at a time. I come to discover the smart ones have gotten off earlier to take taxis across the border, where visas can be procured for the usual “contribution.” The price I pay for my naiveté is several hours in a holding cell waiting for the next local train back to Baku. But then, much to my luck, the customs officer decides to take pity on me; we agree upon a $100 “taxi fee.” I am favorably impressed with his “taxi”. It is a smart looking BMW with a new heavy bass sound system, perfect for negotiating the back roads at breakneck speed to the thumping wails of Led Zeppelin. Personally I am in no hurry to get to T’bilisi, but I rather suspect the customs officer has another train to catch.

June 6th, Turkey

Winding alternately across brilliant green pastures and through deep river gorges, the Dogu Ekspresi takes two days and one night to cross Asia Minor, Turkey, the remains of the Ottoman Empire and NATO’s only Middle Eastern member. I sit alone in a delightfully civilized, wood-paneled first class compartment and thoroughly enjoy myself. On the second evening the Dogu Ekspresi pulls into the gargantuan, German-built terminus at Haydarpasa, which sits perched like a toad right on the water on the Asian side of the Bosporus strait facing the lights of Istanbul. Passengers file out of the empty station and disappear into the night. I follow a few of the travelers onto a small boat trimmed from fore to aft with celebratory lights, and bounce across the waves to Istanbul on the European side.

June 11th, Hungary

On the Trans Balkan to Budapest I treat myself again to first class, admitting that I am no longer interested in sharing drunken accusations about American foreign policy, or wash down pork fat with bottles of fermented camel’s milk. I share an otherwise empty train car with one large, white-haired man who resembles Captain Kangaroo. He is the conductor. A Hungarian, he warns me that “criminal elements” often board the train at stops in Bulgaria and Romania, and to be vigilant of my items. Unfortunately neither he nor the ticket kiosk in Istanbul has bothered to inform me that there is no dining car on this three-day train and so the ration for my first day consists of a nitrate sausage washed down by flat, stale kvass beer procured in a hesitant exchange for a five dollar bill through the open window at Sofia station as the train pulled out. My single meal the second day is a less than happy one at a MacDonald’s in Bucharest station during a three-hour layover.

In Budapest my first priority is a full meal and its procurement falls upon the talented hands of Ivana, an English speaking single mother, and a rather attractive one at that. We met in 21st Century fashion, in an online chat room, back when I was in Istanbul. After exchanging photos and a few flirts we determined, mutually, that it might be amusing to spend a day or two in each others’ company. Ivana drives me in her small fiat through the Black Forest to a quiet restaurant overlooking the Danube where we spend more time sizing each other up than enjoying the exceptionally bland Transylvanian fare. That evening I end up alone at my hotel. The next evening Ivana again shows up - a good sign - and takes me to an old castle on a hill overlooking the lights of the city. All around us are couples in fervent embraces.. I begin to feel like the only clothed person on a nudist beach, yet Ivana does not suggest that we move on, so I simply adhere to the well proven adage “While in Rome, do as the Romans do…”

June 16th, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Germany

From the South Pacific to the Orient to Central Asia to Asia Minor and the Balkans, and now, almost as fast as the click of a remote control, I find myself whisked silently and efficiently on the smooth unbroken rails of EuroCity trains. First to Prague then to Berlin then to Hamburg then to Copenhagen, I gradually blend back into sameness with everyone else. We cross seamlessly from the Czech Republic to Slovakia to Germany. Border posts flash by with but a cursory nod from customs officers. Nobody wants to see my passport, much less put a stamp in it. Nobody wants to detain me then charge $100 for a taxi ride to the next town. The passengers ignore me as I film video from the window. I soon lose interest and return to my seat.

June 18th, Denmark

Copenhagen is in the midst of midsummer celebration; on every block are musicians, magicians or mystics, performing – always in English – for the throngs. My favorite is a Russian juggler who, strips down to a skimpy pair of crimson red bikini briefs, teeters some ten feet above the crowd atop a wavering tower of plastic milk boxes while juggling two burning torches and one apple, taking a bite out of the apple each time it comes whizzing by. It is 10:00 pm and the sun is still up. I share a beer on the edge of a crowded dock in trendy Nyhavn with two flirtatious Turkish girls who are exchange students. I am appalled to learn that one of my daughters is older than them. The father in me wants to grab the cigarettes out of their lipstick-smeared mouths and give them a talking to. Lucky for all, I have a train to catch.

June 19th, Sweden

The Beutel Thorvaldsen to Stockholm features six couchettes per compartment, which I share with an American couple and their young daughter, and a Danish couple and their young son. American daughter is impish and demands the attention of everyone older than her, which in this case specifically excluded the Danish son. “Oh Dear,” American mother says to American father, quietly, “I think THEY left their bag on our bunk.” “Excuse me,” American father says to Danish father in menacing tone, standing up to face him, “Is that your bag on our bunk?” “Well you don’t need to get upset, I was going to move it,” Danish father replies, defensively and in English, yet in his own country. “Umm, would anybody like a Turkish chocolate?” I venture. The children jump and thus World War Three is averted.

June 20th, Norway

It is nearly midnight and the Nordpilen is still chasing a setting sun that bounces across jagged forest tops all the way to the Arctic Circle. Sunset turns to sunrise and so, in a state of temporal confusion, I venture to the train’s cafe that sits perched up in a glass-encased observatory on the top of a train car. There, I exchange pleasantries with Dave, a retired Canadian Geography professor on sabbatical at the University of Stockholm. He is on his way to Riksgransen, a ski resort near the end of the line where, he informs me, tonight they would be open through the night in celebration of the longest day of the year. The Nordpilen drops down into a narrow fjord and skirts along the edges of the Arctic Ocean, easing to its final stop at the tiny seaport of Narvik. That evening I meet Dave up on the slopes where we join several hundred Swedes and Norwegians for a “solstice ski”. It is eerie; there are no trees and the low sun has painted both the snowy slopes and rock outcrops in ethereal shades of gold. As midnight approaches, skiers stop along the piste, take off their skis, and sit on the rocks facing north to the small golden globe of sun shimmering against the faint pinkish outline of mountains across the valley. My gaze is drawn to a sparkle of light far below where I can see the sun’s rays reflecting from the windows of a toy-like train as it winds its way south along the rail that stretches like a ribbon wrapping this huge continent from one end to the other, all the way back down through forests, across deserts, over mountains and down through jungles to the warmth of the equator, just a short train ride across the world from here.