PCV Nicole Sheets finds Train travel a simple -- but exotic -- way to meet new people
Train travel a simple -- but exotic -- way to meet new people
By NICOLE SHEETS - Moldova column
Perhaps heaven is something like Bulgaria -- good, inexpensive coffee around every corner.
My friend Ruth, another Peace Corps volunteer, and I recently traveled there by train to usher in the new year.
For me, there’s something exotic about trains. The Chisinau, Moldova to Bucharest, Romania overnight is easy: unfurl your bedroll in your berth and snooze until a customs official asks for your passport. To Bulgaria, we decided to forgo a sleeper car to save a little cash. The trip is over 10 hours, including border stops. In theory, each compartment holds eight people, but more than four feels like tight quarters. We started with six, but after a Romanian woman and her Swiss suitor left us at Ruse, a town just past the Danube and the Bulgarian border, we shared the rest of the ride with another American and a Romanian architect who offered us some of her grandmother’s homemade tsuica, plum brandy, to stave off the chill.
On our return trip, we camped out in a car with an older Romanian-speaking couple who seemed generally uninterested in making small talk, passing a crossword puzzle book between them, the fur-hatted woman getting up from time to time to smoke.
Ruth and I tried to look as intimidating and immersed in our reading as possible, but other people asked to sit in the eight-person car anyway. For an hour or so we were at capacity, a Bulgarian-speaking mom and two daughters joining a young guy who managed to sleep sitting up, his blue duffel bag parked under the window in the corridor. I was fighting a head cold, peeling off layers of clothing. The Bulgarian woman, still in her coat and hat, radiated heat like an oven. Her dark-haired daughters in matching beige ski pants sing-songed through the English alphabet, alternating letters and leaving out some, particularly in that tricky L-M-N-O-P section. The girls and I sealed our alliance when they accepted thirds of mandarin oranges I peeled. The younger girl offered me a pretzel stick, which I took.
We clacked north toward Romania, leaving Sofia’s snowless hills, trees still clinging to brown and reddish dead leaves. Indeed, Bulgaria seemed set on defrost, water shuttling out gutter spouts. Had I not looked at a calendar I might have mistaken new year’s in Bulgaria for the first inkling of spring.
Nicole Sheets is a Barboursville native and Peace Corps volunteer in Moldova. Her e-mail address is moldovanicole@yahoo.com. Her column appears on the Life page the first Sunday of each month.
