Night Train Once More

The train is fully booked, but with four people per compartment that's not terribly overcrowded, especially as long as no one is expanding all their luggage all over the place to make themselves at home for the night. There are some older men, some families and, shortly before the train leaves, three young people whom I recognize as Germans as they still carry their passports in their hands after showing them to the conductor. So my compartment is complete with two older men from Georgia and Turkey (the latter with a broken foot and without knowledge of any language but Turkish and Azeri) and a German girl scout about my age. The two guys she is travelling with share the next compartment with an Azeri family: mother, daughter and toddler grand-daughter. The three scouts and I sit down in my compartment, sharing food and drink, offering some also to the Georgian (in Russian) and the Turk.

We then build our beds quite early in order not to disturb anyone later on. The very scouts are already familiar with this train as thy flew into Baku and are on their way back now after two weeks of hiking in Georgia. So the men also know that they are by far too tall for the bunks and will once more need to sleep more or less upright leaning against their backpacks. So they are not eager on going to bed early while most passengers do just that as darkness falls and we ride through idyllic landscapes - the toddler refusing to sleep, though. I am not very tired either, so we sit on the corridor an talk about Georgia. I really need to come back to finally go to the mountains, too!

View from the train...

There are only four seats on the whole corridor, so we sit on the floor, repeatedly getting shrieked at by the very short conductor in Russian as she hurries past us in her high heels. The other conductor in contrast is very tall and always smiles at us broadly. Maybe it's the good cop/bad cop concept... Another weird thing I notice about the train is that it seems to think it's travelling through Southern Russia - on October 21, 2002, my 18th birthday, how nice! Accordingly I taste some home made Chacha (Georgian liquor the scouts got from a farmer whom they helped for some days) - that's what the electric writing at the end of the wagon tells us, along with the affirmation that the railway company is ever so happy to make or journey pleasant. Now, isn't this nice?

...and inside

When we stop at the border we don't have to leave, customs (including a mirror to search for hidden goods) and border control, complete with camera and laptop board the train. It takes a while, but there are no problems so we can continue our trip.

After a few hours of sleep we finally approach the capital of Azerbaijan and I am happy to see my student exchange friend at the station!