14 Jun 2015
Yerevan I - Night Train
My journey to Armenia started with a trip to the central train station in Tbilisi. For foreigners, that’s apparently the only place where they can buy train tickets. So I took a sweaty subway to the central station and walked up to the counter. The lady there looked as if she had smiled maybe once in her life and found the experience wanting.
Luckily, she also understood some English so I approached the topic with all the minimalist eloquence developed during this trip:
Me: Ticket. Yerevan. Tomorrow? Bileti?
Her: Yes.
Me: What time?
Her: No.
Me: Time? *pointing at the clock*
Her: *writes 10pm on a sheet of paper*
Me: How much money?
Her: No.
Me: *holding up my wallet*
Her: *writes down 80 GEL and 100 GEL*
Me: Class one and class two?
Her: *nods*
Me: Yerevan. Tomorrow. Class one bileti.
Her: Passport?
Me: No.
I had left my passport in the hostel. Showing her a scan of my passport on my phone also elicited several headshakes.
Me: Reserve bileti?
Her: No.
Me: Money now. Reserve Bileti. Passport two hours?
Her: No.
Patiently massaging my temples I said a cheerful goodbye (and mumbled a few other things not fit for publication) and walked back to the subway to get my passport.
I blame myself. But I also kind of blame the Soviets.
By the way, after this trip I probably won’t be able to form coherent sentences anymore…
In the evening of the following day, I arrived at the central station with plenty of time to spare. I was told to await the train on platform 3 and went to sit outside and enjoy the evening.
Why is every place I go always deserted?
About ten minutes before the planned departure there was no train in sight. Getting nervous, I started paying attention to the announcements on the platform. Most of it was unintelligible, but I thought I heard something like “Yerevan” and “four” in the same sentence. The only other person on platform 3 was a girl with a backpack. Of course she was a German on her way to Yerevan. Since neither of us was sure about the announcements we walked back to the service desk and were, once again, told to go to platform 3. We did, only to hear the same announcement as before. So we went back to the desk to really, really make sure. No, no, platform 3 was right. In the end, we ignored them and went to platform 4, where we just barely managed to jump on before the train pulled out of the station. We parted ways, since she had been frugal and gotten the 2nd-class ticket while I had splurged on the fancy 1st-class luxury sleeper cabin.
1st class: Two instead of four bunks per cabin
As we drove out of Tbilisi, a thunderstorm started and lightning flashed over the dark villages and Georgia’s beautiful rolling countryside.
As I was standing outside my cabin and taking in the view, I was offered a bottle of wine by the guy from the cabin next door. He turned out to be a German photographer from my hometown, who was travelling around the Caucasus for both work and pleasure. Since we got along quite well, we decided to head to the dining car and have a few beers. A few beers turned into many beers, until suddenly we were ushered out of the dining car. It turned out that we had stopped at the border. Consequently, all toilets had been locked. So had the train doors. For some of us, this caused some distress. A few beers, some wine, some water even. It was only after having our passports checked at the Georgian side of the border that we were allowed to leave the train at the Armenian border station and use the facilities there. In return, the Armenians took close to 90 minutes to check our passports. Eventually we started moving again. I fell on my bunk and into restless, dreamless sleep as we rolled into Armenia.
Until next time,
Arne