Istanbul to Rivne, Ukraine - The Hard Way

The easy way, of course, would have been to fly. But when you're short on money and long on time, a 40 hour journey doesn't sound that bad. Adventure in foreign lands! Indeed.
And really, it started off fine. My Turkish friend Selim Cor rode the city bus and tram through the middle of Istanbul to the bus company office with me, and we said our goodbyes. I was going to take a 12-hour bus to Bucharest, and the train to Ukraine from there. I was very early; there were two buses headed to Bucharest, and mine was slated for 3:30 p.m., a half an hour later than the other one. While waiting, I met a Romanian student on an Erasmus exchange at Istanbul University, named Bogdan Constantinescu, who was headed home to Bucharest. He informed me of three things: 1) the bus would arrive in Bucharest in the dead of night nowhere near the train station, which is where I needed to go; 2) the taxis would definitely try to rip me off; and 3) his sister might give me a ride... if I showed up at the bus station at the same time he did. He was on the earlier bus.
So, a race to Bucharest! But it wasn't much of a race, really – my bus already caught up to his by the time we reached the Bulgarian border. That's a two-hour stop, by the way – you have to stop at the duty-free shop, of course (a great place to buy Turkish raki), and then there's the getting out of Turkey, and then there's the getting into Bulgaria, with long waits checking passports and visas and whatnot, and somewhere there's customs, and of course most of the Turks on the bus were hauling tons of goods for sale in Bulgaria... although our driver must have paid off the right people, because at one point when we were waiting outside the bus, a passenger implored us to run back onto the bus, and the driver ran on, too, and we sped across the border... without customs checking out a single thing in the luggage compartment.
At this point we were well ahead of the other bus... but we gave them time to catch up to us at the next stop, a row of Bulgarian roadside stands. It seemed to be for loading up on bric-a-brac one might have forgotten to pick up in Turkey. Amply loaded, the next stop was for gas. I was pretty confident at this point that our speedy driver would see us to Bucharest before the other bus.
Oh, I also picked up a stray along the way – a New Zealander named Tom Welch who had bicycled from London to Istanbul, and was now on his way back. He had the same dilemma as me – needing a ride to the train station at 3 o'clock in the morning. And while he had given his bicycle away to a lucky young Turkish kid, he did manage to pick up several traditional Turkish musical instruments in Istanbul. Plus my ample luggage, and Bogdan's ample luggage, and Bogdan's sister brought their mother along to welcome his home, and this is not a very big car we're talking about here...
Did I mention that Bogdan had a party on his bus? I'm realizing this story is not traveling in a particularly linear fashion, but I mean, come on – while Tom and my bus was hellbent for Bucharest, Bogdan's assistant driver had broken out a bottle of champagne and was offering it as a prize to the best dancer. Dancing champagne party! This is what happens when you have a choice of buses in Istanbul, apparently: one is the fast one, and the other is the party one. Next time I'll know to pick the party one.
So where am I? Oh, yes, in a mysterious bus parking lot somewhere in Bucharest, Romania, creating a comedy routine of making big luggage fit in little car at 3 a.m. Lucky for Tom and me, the Bogdan family thinks picking up random foreigners in the middle of the night is highly amusing. Somehow we manage to cram everything, musical intruments and all, into the car's various crevices, and we're off... on a tour of Bucharest! Bogdan's mom points out the parliament building off in the distance, which is in fact the second-largest building in the world, by volume, after the Pentagon. All we can see are the lights on the roof, but that's pretty good for a free dead-of-night tour, no?
Railway station at last. It's closed till 4:30. We have an hour to kill. We – and by we I mean all of us: me, Tom, Bodgan, sister Andrea, and mother Luiza – visit a gas station/cafe. Despite Tom's and my desire to pay for coffee for them all, Romanian hospitality wins the night. The three of them all speak excellent English, and are happy to have this unusual opportunity to be our hosts.
4:30 – back at the train station. While we can now get into the building, the international ticket office doesn't open till five. We wait some more. Finally, the window opens. While I did my homework and diligently wrote down the names, numbers, and times of the trains I intended to take to Ukraine (I really wasn't expecting to have three translators!), Tom was flying by the seat of his pants, and really didn't have a clue as to where he wanted to go or when he wanted to go there, as long as he ended up in Dresden by whenever. Or something along those lines. He was up for pretty much anything, and he and Bogdan were having long negotiations with the ticket lady. Meanwhile, the young woman on line behind us overhead all the translating, and she wanted some of that good stuff, too. Can I tell you how nice it is to have someone translate for you during these sort of instances? Yes, I can – just you wait.
So this woman, whose name was Lutse, was Hugarian, from Budapest. Naturally Bogdan and company were enjoying translating so much they agreed to do it for her, too... and Tom had just decided to travel to Budapest, so he and Lutse could be train buddies! And, while we were all waiting at the platform, she even told him she would be his guide for Budapest. Lucky Tom!
Thus ends the English-speaking segment of my journey.
Which is not to say the honeymoon was over. My train, though by no means new, was uncrowded and more than amply comfortable. It was headed all the way to Moscow, and even though I was traveling during the day, I was given a sleeper compartment, which I had all to myself. Traveling in style! While Bogdan's family may be disappointed to hear it, I'm not ashamed to say I slept through all of Romania.
Till the border, that is. I'm always confused by border crossings – someone wants to wake me up, someone wants to know what my deal is, I always know six words in one language or another and I always use the wrong language for the wrong dude... The leaving of Romania wasn't bad, but the Ukrainians had very probing questions as to my business, what I was carrying, how much money I had, and they did a bit of poking around in my luggage. Not bad or anything, and their English was very good. There was this whole cast of characters who would show up, one or two at a time. At past crossing they'd always been guys, but Ukraine has a more progressive system, I guess. Two female passport checker ladies came one – one was very tall and beautiful and nice, and wore camoflage and a furry hat, and the other was straight out of central casting for the not-nice Ukrainian border lady. In fact, I could swear Cate Blanchette used her as the template for her character in the last Indiana Jones movie – right down to black straight-bang haircut.
So, the tall, beautiful border lady was very nice indeed. I told her I had left out the address of my friend Vova Lypchuk in Rivne on the form, because I didn't know it, and she sympathetically mentioned this to the not-nice one, who grumbled but let it slide. Then they left... with my passport in the nice lady's hand.
Which was fine – I figured they just had to go to the official stamping booth to run it under the official ultra-violet passport detector machine and give it its official stamp. So I just waited.
And waited. And waited. I grew concerned. When the train started to move, I grew extremely concerned, and made a desperate plea to the conductor: “Passport???”
“Passport, da, da, da,” she said dismissively.
What does this mean? I mean, I know it means, “Passport, yes, yes, yes,” but what did she mean by that? The train was moving very, very slowly. After 200 meters, it stopped. Then it started moving again. Then it stopped again. There only appeared to be two of us in this railcar besides the conductor – me and this little old bubushka lady. We were both standing in the aisle, looking out the window. I was looking out the window wondering what was going on. Was she looking out the window wondering what was going on, or was she just looking out the window? Had they taken her passport, too? Was she worried? She appeared calm. Why was she calm?
The train started moving again. Alarmed, I once again pleaded with the conductor: “Passport?”
This time she said, “Don't worry!”
Ah, English, Don't worry, music to my ears! No, I wouldn't worry. I would just sit there, not worrying at all.
The train stopped again. We couldn't have been more than 500 meters from where I last saw my passport. The train started heading back in the other direction – could it be? No. It stopped again. What was going on?
I decided that they were changing the wheels of the train to fit Ukrainian tracks. We weren't being jacked up off the ground or anything, but I was alone in my Anglophonicity and this is what I came up with. We went back and forth and stopped like this for about an hour and a half. That was when we every so slowly rolled back to the site-of-passport-last-seen, and the passport ladies came back on and gave me back my passport. Silly American!
But that is not where the fun and weirdness ends – oh, no. Not budging an inch from that spot, it was apparently determined that we were now officially in the Ukraine, and the old bubushka lady got off the train – she had to endure all that with her station right there! And some other ladies got on. I couldn't figure out what their deal was – they passed by, muttering something in a foreign tongue, and I just shook my head and they left. A few minutes later one of them came back, right into my compartment, and handed me a paper plate with some pierogies on it. I thought she was giving it to me for free, but it soon became apparent that she wanted money for it. Well, I was a bit hungry, and I had some Romanian money left over that I didn't know what to do with, so I inquired if she would take that. Affirmative. Of course, I was only in Romania for a little while, and hadn't quite figured out the money yet. I handed her some change. No, that wouldn't be enough... but then she handed me a beer. Why yes, I could use a beer, thank you! Oh, right, she hands things first, then wants money for them. I wasn't used to this system. I handed her some one lei notes... she'd take a bunch of those, yes, but more. Somewhere another beer got handed to me – thank y... right. More money. I was having trouble this. Somewhere along the line I discovered that the word “Nyet” is in my vocabulary, and it seemed to work quite well. “Nyet. Nyet. Nyet.” I just had to keep doing this. I wish I had figured this out sooner, though – I had already paid, what? Eight, 12, 15 dollars? For two beers and some cheese blintz things? The total value is probably less than $2, now that I know what I'm doing. Well, heck, Tom gave away his bicycle, I could at least give away some Romanian money for no apparent reason.
Onward. It wasn't long before the train stopped in the small city of Chernovcy, Ukraine, where I had a four-hour layover. I also had to reserve my sleeper bed for the next train, to Zdulbunov. After that I had a five-minute layover, then a ½ hour train to Rivne.
Simple, right? No. The train lady seemed a bit baffled by my list – of course, she didn't speak any English, nor did anybody, apparently, in Chernovcy. I'm not sure how much she cared for the Latin alphabet, either. This was my first real immersion into the world of Cyrillic spelling, and if you think not understanding the language is bad, try not being able to read it, either. Exciting! Especially if your train ticket person has an idea that it would really great for you to have to wake up at 4:12 a.m. and switch to another train in the middle of the night in some random location. Which appeared to be the case. She also wanted to charge me for the sleeper bed, although I thought I had paid for that in Bucharest. Ah, well, maybe not... but that meant I would have to find a Bankomat or money exchange place, and there didn't appear to be one in the train station. Did I mention that my rolly suitcase has a flat tire? Yes, it happened in the Czech Republic, the wheel bent and got jammed, so I started dragging it, and that flattened it out... 8 countries later, give or take, the wheel is now triangular, and not very pleasant to drag. Especially on cobblestones and up and down sidewalk curbs, of which Chernovcy has plenty. But the Bankomat was not too far, and I was soon back to the ticket lady. Who, I think not only charged me for the sleeper bed, but gave herself a tip as well. It's hard to say for certain.
Ah, well. I still had a few hours in Chernovcy. What to do? The station seemed mildly entertaining: There were a lot of stray dogs who lazed about on the chairs, and a cleaning lady who threatened them with a mop. Then she threatened the drunks who were sleeping with a mop. Then she threatened me with a mop.
I had a mission: to find a telephone card so I could call Vova with an update. There was a pay phone with telephone card slot at the station, but the lady in the shop right next to it had no idea what I was talking about. She got a policeman to help, and he asked to see my passport. They were amused by my mime routine of me phoning Vova on a pay phone using telephone card, but baffled as to how they could help.
I left my suitcase at the train station storage area, and headed up the hill into town. There were pay phones every 20 meters or so, and plenty of small shops of the type that sell telephone cards in every other city in Europe, yet none of these shops sold telephone cards. I went to the town square. There were young people walking around, with the women wearing knee-high stilletto-heeled boots and tight pants or miniskirts. This, I've discovered, is the official uniform of Ukrainian women.
I went into a restaurant that had a picture of something resembling a pizza on the sign. There was a teenaged boy working inside. I looked at a menu – all Cyrillic, no pictures. “Pizza?” I asked. The boy nodded and pointed to the whole menu. It was completely incomprehensible. I just pointed at something and hoped for the best. How bad could it be?
It turned out to be ham and cheese and ketchup and sour cream and maybe a few other things. Not bad, really, although it smelled like pickles even though there weren't any pickles on it.
The town wasn't very exciting, so I headed back to the train station and waited there. Eventually the train showed up, and I found my seat, although it appeared it wasn't a sleeper bed. But... a guy spoke English! He looked at my tickets. It turned out that I didn't have to switch trains in the middle of the night – my two tickets were for the same train. And as for the last leg, from Zdulbunov to Rivne, he informed me that Zdulbunov was only a few kilometers from Rivne. He let me borrow his mobile phone and I called Vova, who was already planning to pick me up there. All was well! And, even better, the guy showed me that my seat, which was located in the aisle across from the sleeper beds, actually folded out to a bed. It was about four inches too short for me, but I slept like a baby, and Vova was waiting for me at the station when I arrived.