Getting out of Moldova

Our train from Bucharest to Chisinau left at 17:00. Melissa paid for our rooms so I would pay for the train. I was assured there would be a cash machine at the station. The ticket woman calculated what we would pay as I was travelling with a Balkan Flexi-Pass. Once she had the final amount, I ran to the cash machine. Murphy’s Law tells me that it wouldn’t work and sure enough, it’s didn’t. We had 20 minutes until the train. I ran hysterically through the train station (the nicest I’ve ever seen in Eastern or Western Europe, actually) asking all the workers where the nearest ATM is. They all told me to use the one outside. "It’s broken!" No one knew of another one. I ran outside, up and down the street. I finally found a money-changing place and they told me there was a bank in a nearby mall. I ran like hell. Of course, the mall was across a busy intersection with no crosswalk or traffic lights. Luckily, traffic wasn’t too bad. I saw the bank and ran in. I was accosted with a young beggar but I could truthfully tell him I had no money. I didn’t see the cashpoint, so I went into the bank. I asked in perfect Romanian where the bank machine is (ok, in reality, I asked for the money machine and made a motion with my hands which, looking back, probably seemed closer to animal husbandry than inserting a bank card into a bank machine).

"Lei? Euro?"
"Lei! Moldovan lei!"
"How much?"
"It doesn’t matter! I just need the machine. Where is it?"
"Do you need to change to euros?"
"No! I’m going to miss my train! Moldovan lei for the ticket!"

Finally, he pointed me outside and watched me like a hawk while I withdrew 500 lei (about $75). I ran back to the station and arrived with literally three minutes to spare. Coming into the courtyard, I saw a conveniently placed bank. !@#$ I met Melissa and we grabbed our bags and of course, ran in the wrong direction for the train. A kindly ticket man pointed us in the right direction. We easily found our train and settled into our sleeping compartment. I asked an agent if I had time to get some food but no, the train was about to leave.

A passport control agent came soon after and asked for our passports. Horrors! I couldn’t find mine! Melissa and I dumped out all my stuff and finally, it was hidden in a secret location in my backpack. Relief! We decided to get some food. I went off in search of a restaurant cart.

I found one in the back that looked like an old country diner. They had chicken soup, bread, beers and a variety of Russian chocolate bars. I ordered two soups with bread and grabbed some croissants and a variety of chocolates for the long trip to Bucharest (13 hours).

I bit into the chocolate bar and made a face. It had a strange texture and tasted like…
"Soap?" Melissa ventured.
"Yeah, that’s about it."
She used to live in Russia and said that Russian chocolate does taste like soap. It wasn’t bad. It just had a strange flavour, like extremely cheap Easter chocolate.

I bought about six croissants. Inside each bag was a puzzle piece: 1.1

Each croissant we ate had the same puzzle piece! We didn’t know if the train bought all the croissants from the same batch or if this was the railway version of Communism: everyone gets the same piece.

(Later, when we were leaving Brasov, Melissa ate the last croissant and shrieked: piece 2.1).
Our food was decent. We ate by the window and watched the Moldovan countryside roll by. It seemed like such a stereotypically Soviet meal, being eaten in a stereotypical Soviet train, in a stereotypical Soviet country. We were coming up to the border so headed back to our seats.
I knew what to expect. Because the former Soviet Union was afraid of train attacks, they made the tracks smaller so Western couldn’t just roll into their area. Now, the trains are lifted up 2 metres in the air and the wheels are changed. I had no idea what to expect, but I imagined a huge magnet lifting the train up and leaving us dangling in the air.

In reality, it was much more ordinary. The train went back and forth a few times. Each time it stopped, I heard a big clank. I went outside our compartment to look and realised the entire train was separated onto different tracks. Workers removed all the train wheels and fitted the cars with huge vices. Then they slowly raised the train into the air, while the wheels, fitted on cables, where rolled out of the way and new wheels were rolled underneath. Beside the trains were stacks and stacks of wheels. I was glad that we were seeing this at 20:30 and not at 05:30 when the train goes from Bucharest to Chisinau.

I was running up and down the corridor, taking pictures like a manic. Melissa remained calmly in her bunk, reading. She had seen it before when she went from Russia to Poland but for me it was exciting. Then it was our turn to get raised. You couldn’t even feel it but after about ten minutes, we were two metres in the air!

I went to the back of the train to get a better view, snapping more pictures. I had just closed my camera’s lens when a ticket agent came into the area. He wagged his finger at me and told me that pictures weren’t allowed at this was technically border control. Oops! As soon as he left, I sneakily shot a few more pictures. By now, it was getting dark, so I headed back to the cabin.