Trains

Saturday 12th May 2012

I like trains. I didn’t know this before I came to Georgia; it is a new discovery.  I grew up living by railway lines.  One of my Dad’s many jobs was in a station ticket office and I was very impressed that he knew by memory how much every ticket cost for every destination.  Naturally this was before computers when people were made to think.  But using trains in Georgia is like stepping back in time, not just in the past but also into a different era, another time.  Martin has just been reading a science fiction book written by Mary Shelley called The Last Man.  It was written in the 1800s but it is set in 2053 but disappointingly doesn’t refer to the imagined new gadgets of the future, rather it was still firmly fixed in Regency England with horse and carts as transport although there was mention of balloon travel.  I couldn’t but think of Georgia, which has an antiquated transport infrastructure as it crawls in to 21st century.

We have been seeing a lot of trains.  Kaspi, the town we live in, has a station and we have walked around it a few times en-route for country walks and there are loads of trains just sitting there.  These aren’t passenger trains but some kind of industrial rolling stock.  There doesn’t seem to be much activity during the day, but we hear the trains all through the night.  They are completely functional and I kind of like that no-nonsense look.  With the mountains in the background it looks like the Wild West!

Like something out of the Wild West!

Where does it go to? Nobody knows!

Just chillin'

Waiting for the train to cross

We also have a thing for the Soviet style metro station in Tbilisi – Godsiridze.  It is classic soviet style and looks like something out of 1970s futuristic films.  So much concrete!  This is the pedestrian bridge that stretches from the station over what seems like miles of railway tracks.  This is a really bleak place in the winter.  The car park round the corner from the station is just as bad!

Martin about to climb the crumbling stairs to the long footbridge

The long footbridge over the railway tracks

Reminds me of Thomas the Tank engine Land

Classic Soviet Crazy Concreting

My first experience of Soviet style train travel was in 1973 when I went on a school trip to Russia and we travelled from Leningrad to Moscow via night train.  As you may imagine, none of us slept and instead run up and down the corridors all night but I still vividly remember staring out of the window as we travelled through snow covered countryside, eating a stale bun and thinking “THIS IS RUSSIA!”  I have to report that nothing much has changed since then.

 Our first trip on the night train in Georgia was just as exciting but we did get a little more sleep!  We paid for a first class carriage from Tbilisi to Zugdidi for the princely sum of 16 lari as opposed to 11 lari for 2nd class – we didn’t consider 3rd class as we were new to the country and still thought in sterling.  (Unlike now of course 1 year later where we think twice about travelling even 3rd class!).  In third class you do get bunks but it is in open carriages. While 2nd and 1st class are private 4 bunk rooms with 2 bunks removed for the 1st class.  We loved our little journey, we picnicked and drank Armenian brandy (having just returned from the foresaid country) and slept pretty well.  Our travelling companions got into a ruck with the very rude and abrupt Russian guard but maybe it wasn’t surprising as they forced their way into her guard bunk-room mistaking it for the toilet.  We were sensible to give the washing and loo facilities a miss as one look was enough for me, but the Americans are much cleaner than us and so used them anyhow.

This in an older style Night Train the modern ones are much nicer

Our return journey by day train was very slow and very long and also very hot.  We nipped into a café at Zugdidi station for some supplies for the journey and they made us Khatchapuri (cheese bread) fresh for us.  We were so worried about missing our train that we had to leave before it was ready but they took a note of our seat number and brought it to us.

Trains are fairly comfortable but distinctly foreign for example on one train when we came across the boiler and coals for the guard to top up just off the corridor.  Also there is a constant traffic of women dragging boxes, buckets and plastic sacks up and down the carriages calling out their wares.  “Khatchapuri, sunflower seeds, ice-creams, chocolate, sweets, popcorn, polystyrene flavourless things, lemonade, tissues, bananas”  It goes on and on.  One guy sold knicker-elastic.  This doesn’t happen on the metro interestingly enough, just the main trains and the “Electro trains”.

The “Electro “trains have automated doors and stop at the small towns from Tbilisi to who knows where.  None of the trains have maps and none of the stations have signs so you really do not know what goes where or at what time.  One time we waited for over an hour for a train at Kaspi to go to our old village but we misunderstood thinking that the sign for 4 and 5 meant 45 minutes but it meant 4 or 5 o’clock.  Still that was a language problem rather than a train problem.  Except that it didn’t actually leave until 5.50.  The main trains are timetabled but it is still not clear how you actually buy tickets if you are not in Tbilisi as in the local stations the ticket office is not open.  With the “Electro” trains you pay 1 lari (30p) wherever your destination.  

We caught the 1902 small gauge train from Borjomi to Bakuriani at Easter.  It cost 2 lari (60p) and takes 2 ½ hours to up to the ski resort at the top of the mountain, stopping at all the little villages on the way.  The views are spectacular but the soporific effects of the train rocking can send to off to sleep!  It is very slow and you could easily jump off and on again should you want to!

Jennifer desperately trying not to blink as the 20th photo is taken

Waiting at Borjomi

Martin casually relaxed safe in the knowledge that he is so photogenic

Waiting at Bakuriani

We have just completed a return trip 3rd class night train to and from Batumi for a friend’s engagement party.  We went up on the Friday night catching the 11:32pm train from Kaspi.  We seemed to wait ages on the platform, all alone in the dark with a terrific wind blowing and we were both a bit windswept and panicking that we had missed the damn thing!  However we settled into our bunks and tried to sleep but it is difficult.  Martin was worried about rolling over on the top bunk and falling off as he has been known to do that at home even in a big bed but he was OK with some helpful prodding with my feet when I felt it was a close call.  On the return journey on Saturday night the guy in the bunk opposite fell out of his top bunk but despite heroic efforts by his mate in the lower bunk he couldn’t get back up and he disappeared somewhere.  I think the 20 bottles of beer they had each had something to do with it.