Through An Open Door

It is a dull and wet Saturday in Debrecen; from my hotel window I watch the low, grey rainclouds skim the chimney tops of the power station behind the Palyvaudvar. By lunchtime almost everything in the city will be closed or closing, the streets empty, the shops shuttered. I walk into town and spend the morning in the internet cafe, until that too closes. I catch one of the few afternoon trams back to my hotel and sit in the sagging armchair and read. I walk over to the station mid-afternoon and buy a drink in the Bufe. There is something deeply melancholy about a grey weekend in Central Europe; its as if the town and it's people have just given up and left Debrecen to the rain and the falling autumn leaves. There are no trains for me to catch today; the station is still busy, though. People come in from the countryside to the town's markets on a Saturday morning - their once weekly shopping trip - and carry their loads back to the station for the train home. The trains are infrequent, and people settle in to wait for hours for the only departure to their village or halt. I sit in a corner of the Bufe where I can look through the open door into the booking hall. To my left are the windows over the platform and I watch as an M62 stops to change drivers in the station. It has been rebuilt - the staggered cab doors moved, air-conditioning radiators fitted, it's engine silenced and it's bodywork painted - and it seems reduced by this: the Russian bear tamed, it's appearance and behavior altered, domesticated, made more acceptable.
Through the Bufe's open door I watch as three women spread out a blanket and sit along one wall of the booking hall; the faces beneath their headscarves are dark and deeply lined - they are, I think, Romanians from the countryside - and they sit upright with legs straight out as they lay out a meal of black bread and dark, fatty sausage. They build a protective wall around their camp of bulging woven nylon sacks - much like the blue and white laundry sacks you would see in Britain - and endure the stares of passers-by with blank features. An old man with a greasy homburg and dirt-encrusted fingernails sits at my table, his overcoat reeking of stale food, and drinks a glass of Borok; through the Bufe door I see his wife silently watching him, waiting outside for him to finish his drink, surrounded by bags of shopping. He does not hurry, and she makes no complaint.
The Bufe door is always open. Now a younger man walks in and joins the queue at the counter. His jeans are too long and he has turned them up on the outside; the hems wobble just below his knees as he throws his head back and downs a glass of vodka in one swallow and leaves. He has a thin multi-coloured shell top over a faded lumber-shirt, and his brown plastic shoes are split at the heels. There is an air of despair around the people in the Bufe; when I look into the eyes of a man who hovers at the counter drinking shot after shot of some clear spirit, I am reminded of Don McCullin's photograph of the Marine at Hue. If I could read his thoughts, would they be about a new lover, a promotion, an unexpected windfall, or would the only thing going through his mind be what is the point? Another man stands just outside the Bufe door and counts out his loose change, glancing from the pricelist to his small handful of Forint coins; his cheap holdall is crammed with cabbages, bread, and bags of pale ill-shaped pasta, the thin metal clasps at the handles pulling apart under the strain, the zipper toothless and gaping. He affords a small glass of Borok diluted with tonic water; the plastic lenses of his thick glasses are yellowed and scratched, the sunset-red eyes behind them magnified horrifically. For these people the Bufe is some respite, and the train a lifeline. All those seemingly pointless, perfunctory stops on the way to Putnock or between Kosice and Debrecen are for people like these. An old Wartburg or tiny Polski Fiat 126 is an aspiration these people cannot afford to have, and the local train to town is the only means escape from the village or housing scheme, even if only for a few hours. In Britain, the rail traveling public are those who can afford the price privatisation has levied; in Central Europe it is the people that capitalism has left behind who travel by train.
As I walk through the Bufe's open door I see a little boy surrounded by cotton pillowcases stuffed with empty Coca-Cola cans and discarded plastic mineral water bottles, collected from the litter-bins of Debrecen to be sold for recycling; he chews distractedly at a crust of stale bread while he guards the bags: his parents are getting drunk at the booth outside the station.
For a moment, I think of turning and closing the Bufe's door behind me; I feel sympathy for these lost people, and realise that to close the door on them would be to close my mind to what I see around me.
I walk to the Non-Stop and buy six bottles of Borsodi to take back to my room. It is still raining and the pavements are slick and washed with reflected streetlight, empty, uninviting. I walk straight past the Etterem, go upstairs and draw the curtains, and set about drinking myself to sleep.

No More Heroes

My new room is not quite the bargain it first seemed; my window overlooks a busy road junction outside the Palyvaudvar, and the traffic noise is staggering. I eat in the hotel's Ettrem. The waitress cum barmaid is rude and resents my distracting her from her crossword puzzle, and my order is met with a firm it is not possible. I convince her that I will not leave until she takes my order and I have eaten exactly what I have chosen; she admits defeat with a desolutory "ok" and I eat an inexpensive and acceptable Paprika stew with rice. The ashtray she provides is a dirty saucer, there is a group of jobbing Romanian builders conducting a small riot in the corner, and the jukebox is playing a Bryan Adams song with his vocals removed and replaced with a wailing Hungarian woman. However, it is warm.
In the morning I order an espresso from the surly waitress, which sets her face as hard as concrete. I dare not risk provoking her further with a request for food, and keep this in reserve in case I need to eat here tonight. I walk over to the station and buy another coffee at the Hot-Dogey-Burgery booth on the platform and survey the fallout from last night's shunting: a box car with broken buffers leans in the ballast at the end of a rake of container wagons - it must have hit them at some speed to derail itself. I buy a ticket for Fuzesabony - for no other reason than it's curious and entertaining name - and take a seat in the lead coach behind the M41 diesel. As I get on, I notice the Ganz-Budapest builder's plate behind it's cab door; it was built in 1977, it's engine being bolted together and it's bodywork welded as I was riding around on what was then British Rail. I used to spend a lot of Saturdays at Peterborough station - who would think of doing such a thing now? - watching Deltic diesels on the East Coast Mainline. Light, fast, and powerful, their name derived from the delta shape of their engines, which had originally been developed to power Second World War torpedo boats. The triangular, two-stroke engines had a unique sound - part Spitfire, part cow mooing in labour. They disappeared from BR in the early 1980s, along with a dozen other types of diesel, some to be preserved, most to be scrapped, all of them missed. The nicknames around these diesels reflected the times: Rats, Skinheads, Growlers, Slim Jims, all tearing up the tracks to the sound of The Sex Pistols, The Clash, and The Jam. The Deltics carried the names of racehorses - Alycidon, Nimbus - and regiments - The Black Watch, Royal Highland Fusilier, while the Peaks bore the names of mountains like Great Gable and Scaffel Pike. The class 45s carried on the military theme with names like 3rd Carabiner and Royal Ordnance Corps, while the class 40s took the names of Merchant Navy vessels; Aquitania was one of my personal favourites, and a preserved example was named Atlantic Conveyor after the ship was lost during the Falklands conflict. The Warship class diesels plied the rails with names like Benbow, Onslaught, Greyhound, and Dreadnought; all 72 of the Western class used their official nickname as a prefix - Western Lady, Western Patriot, Western Enterprise - and real tears were shed by their drivers when these engines were scrapped. The smaller engines remained anonymous and largely ignored until mass scrapping started in the run-up to privatisation, by which time it was too late. By the late 1980s most of the Rats and Peaks had gone, and all of the Warships and Westerns were consigned to history. Identical Intercity 125s took their places, and British Railways was never the same again, never as interesting and diverse.
As I sit on the platform at Fuzebody an M41 drifts through the station with two wagons of sawn timber; an M62 arrives from the fuelling point and couples onto a mixed freight that the M63 shunter has put together. Over the border, goggle-eyed 754 diesels and frowning 749s are everywhere, as are the smaller class 742s, and it is not unusual to see a Russian TEM2. None of them carry names, but that doesn't matter: they are real trains, characteristic and idiosyncratic.
I catch the late afternoon train back to Debrecen and drink a Kozel in the Bufe, listening to the crashes and clangs of another night's shunting over the jukebox playing Making Your Mind Up by Brotherhood Of Man - quite why this should be a selection in a station bar in Eastern Hungary is beyond reasonable logic, but I can't say it surprises me. The Hag Of The Etterem is hunched over her crossword when I poke my head round the door, but I really can't face her tonight and sneak back to my room. I wash and change and walk across the park to a little bistro called Kino; I sit at table in the corner with a plate of pasta and study the film posters and photographs that decorate the walls - John Wayne, Charlton Heston, Marlon Brando. Perhaps there really are no more heroes anymore.

On The Edge Of The Great Plain

I take the OS7962 over the border to Hungary in the morning. Strangely, the international train consists of just two coaches. I trace the train's progress on my map and find that it's routed along a series of interconnected rural secondary lines. Every few miles it stops at small halts and stations surrounded by farmland; sometimes there are a couple of smallholdings nearby, but often there is nothing but fields as far as the eye can see. The stops are brief - a formality - and no one gets on or off as far as I can tell. At the border, the two carriages are joined to a waiting Hungarian train, and a flood of people get on. Three women with a teenage girl share my compartment. They have bags of textiles and produce bought cheaply in Slovakia which they compare with each other, smoothing creases and rubbing sweet scented leaves between their fingers. The girl plays idly with her mobile phone and chews and pops gum, bored and interested in the women's bargains; when the gum popping irritates me sufficiently, I stand in the corridor and smoke, watching the brown and grey fields rush by, the bright reds and oranges of the autumnal trees flashing by the lineside. At each station, even the ones we pass through, the station master is framed in his office door, standing to attention in his blue uniform and tall hat, a railway tradition. I change trains at Miskolc, and again at Nyiregyhaza. The sun is going down and I'm surprised by how cold it is; my Czech fleece is no defence as I huddle in a shelter on the platform. I find an empty compartment for the last leg of the journey, slide the door shut and turn the heater to full. The sky is as dark and cold as an ocean and threads of chimney smoke shiver in the air over the villages we pass; only the occasional glow of some distant town hints at any warmth outside the window. I have called ahead and booked a room in Debrecen for my late arrival. There is a portable television balanced on the chest of drawers and the forecast says it will be -2 tonight; the radiators are cold, but when I ask the receptionist she shakes her head and returns to her Ciao magazine. I find a shop and buy some bread and spicy ham, some Borsodi, and a can of herring fillets in mustard sauce; I eat this with some pickled paprika and feel warmer, if a little sour mouthed and acidic. At 11pm the radiators clunk and gurgle, and for fifteen minutes, I embrace them like long lost friends until the heating is cut off again.
In the morning I dress quickly against the chill. When I draw back the curtains, the sky is crystal clear and the rooftops are dusted with frost. The horizon disappears in a misty haze that reminds me of a January morning in England. The only person I can find downstairs is the cleaning woman, who is quite eccentric. She talks at me incessantly despite my lack of understanding. She gibbers and giggles, wrings her hands and nods her head, and finally concludes: Sindane? Fruhstuck? She makes me the worst espresso I have ever tasted - where is the cook, the receptionist, anybody? - and shakes her head and wags a forbidding finger when I ask for a second cup. Clearly the coffee is as strictly rationed as the meager heating, and I am not going to try negotiating with a deranged cleaner at this hour of the morning.
I am ill-prepared for the change in weather, and set about rectifying this with a visit to Kaiser's supermarket. I have my worthless Czech fleece over my British polo shirt and a highly unfashionable zip-up Slovakian sweatshirt; to this I add a Hungarian waterproof jacket that costs me seven pounds and is branded Cherokee - sets off the headress and tomahawk beautifully, if I may be so bold, Sir. I am now warmer and truly Pan-European in my dress - even if the whole lot has been made cheaply in Bangladesh or Vietnam.
I walk to Debrecen Palyvaudvar and drink a Borsodi in the Bufe that looks out over the platforms and sidings. A Russian built M62 brings in a long freight train from the East and leaves it in one of the holding tracks; the veteran diesel is in a deplorable condition and a thick fog of exhaust drifts through the station as it heads off. It is probably 40 years old and still running on it's original engine if the noise and smoke are anything to go by; never the most economical or reliable of machines, it is a wonder it has survived this long. An M43 shunting engine flies around the sidings, splitting and joining the trains - a couple of tankers from that one, three or four coal wagons from this one, all backed onto the string of timber wagons over there. The man who hooks and unhooks the couplings hangs precariously from the engine's front steps, leaping off before it comes to a stop and diving between the moving wagons, an acrobat. Sometimes the engine driver simply nudges a wagon and lets it roll down the siding alone, where the acrobat is waiting with a wedge to throw under the leading wheels, a primitive brake. I watch as a tanker of corrosive liquid rolls slowly towards him and hits the rail-wedge; it pushes the brake a good 30 feet, the front wheels locked, shuddering and screaming along the rails. I can feel the floor of the Bufe shaking under my feet. It comes to a stop in a cloud of dust, and when the wedge is pulled away, limps slowly forward again, the wheels worn flat in the skid and seriously damaged; it bounces back a few feet on it's buffer springs then finally meets and is joined with the waiting train. It is a risky business and relies on split second timing and the skill of the engine driver. When it gets dark I stand on the platform and watch as a wagon of steel coil rolls silently out of the darkness, as slowly and stealthily as a ship with doused lights. Somewhere beyond the reach of the station's lights I hear a metallic scream followed by a crash as the wagon touches down. I do not envy the shunter's nightshift.
As I walk back, I go into the Debrecen Hotel for a drink; I enquire about rates and find that a warm room with as much coffee as I can drink is available for two-thirds of the price I am paying to freeze. I walk back to the room and pack my bag. I leave the key on the deserted reception desk, unlock the front door and let myself out. Nobody sees me leave or asks whether I would care to settle the bill before I walk away.

Strange Town

In the morning I feel quite a bit better and walk to the confusingly named Cafe Cafe for an espresso. I go to the Agro supermarket on the corner and buy some Titan washing powder, bread, cheese, and orange juice. I ask for a bag; it has the face of a large ginger cat printed on it. As I walk back to the Panzion, people look at my carrier bag and laugh; an old woman crosses the street to avoid me; a Skoda 120 with hand painted white wheels and a scorpion sticker in the blacked-out back window slows as it passes and I try to ignore the Meow from the open passenger window. I wash out and soak some socks and pants in the sink - I use the carrier bag in place of the missing plug, the only reason I brought that embarrassment on myself.
I walk to the Stanice and catch the train to Roznava; it is a regional express with five coaches behind a 754 diesel. The engine cuts out every time power is reduced, and there is a loud whine from one of the axles. It makes hard work of the climb into the mountains, and has developed a rattle from the engine compartment by the time I get off at Roznava: I doubt it will make it to Zvolem, another 100 kilometers of steep climbing to the West.
The town was little more than a village in the middle of a wide mountain plain until socialism began to exploit the surrounding ore deposits; from the early 1960s it developed quickly into an industrial new town of tower blocks and steelworks, and there is hardly anything other than a few cottages that are older than these. The sides of the surrounding hills have been gouged and chewed away by mineral extraction, enormous orange-brown scars against the densely wooded sides. The station is far too big for the modest size of the community it serves, and is as silent and echoing as an empty church; the architecture is slab-sided and purely utilitarian, unattractive and underused. There is nobody around. The Bufe looks as though it locked up for the last time decades ago; there is no shop, no booth, and absolutely nobody here but me. It has an eerie quality, and I feel like a trespasser in this ghost town's desolate station. Across the vacant carpark I can see the smokestacks of a factory in the distance; there is no traffic on the wide and crumbling road that leads to it. The tower blocks of the town rise further down the same road, just the odd cottage in the lonely expanse of plain between the two, and a stillness hangs over the whole scene. There is the faint sound of traffic on the main road which seems to bypass the town completely, but other than that, only birdcalls and the occasional ring of an unanswered phone somewhere in the station. I hear the blast of airhorns and watch from the platform as two 749 diesels head through the station with a long train of logs, another pair on the rear rumbling and smoking as they help push the train up the long gradients. A minute later a solitary 751 pulls into the platform with a dozen ore wagons; a wheeltapper emerges from somewhere in the station and uncouples the locomotive, which sets off back in the same direction. Twenty minutes later it returns with another string of wagons. The wheeltapper hooks the whole ensemble together, and the 751 continues it's journey West. Twin sets of engines for the heaviest trains, along with two helpers, and if you run out of engines, split the train at the bottom of the hill and make two trips with one engine. I spend a long time waiting for a train back to Kosice, and when it arrives it is a single railcar: it is packed and more and more people squeeze in at every stop. I spend an hour wedged sideways into a narrow seat, unable to move but grateful I am not standing in the crush of the gangway.
At Kosice I drink a Kava at one of the booths strung along the crumbling walkway between the station and the Autobusovy Stanice. The booth has a small fenced off area to the side which offers some protection from unwanted attention, and a view of the elevated railway lines; there is a patch of litter strewn wasteland behind it, ending in the damp-stained side wall of the station itself. I watch as the serving woman emerges from the booth, a cigarette dangling form her mouth, and throws a vat of old cooking oil over the fence into the patch of scrubby ground. A few minutes after she goes back in, I hear rustling in the weeds and turn to see half a dozen rats sniffing and lapping at the discarded fat; as I watch, one sits upright and nibbles daintily on the brown husk of an overfried chip that is held in it's front paws.
I walk back into town and drink a Zlanty Bazant at a bar near the tram stop on Sturova. There is an old television fixed to the wall over the counter; everytime a tram passes, the picture flickers and rolls before settling back down to some awful, woodenly acted soap-opera. I frame up the tower block across the street in the bar's window: it is leaning 1 or 2 degrees to the left - will it be pulled down before it can fall down? I walk back to my room and make dinner of my provisions. I drain the sink and notice that the printing from the carrier bag has transposed onto a pair of white pants - the blurred but discernible nose and whiskers of the ginger tom refuse any attempt to rub them away. I finish the last of the brandy and lemon and go to bed. With any luck, I will be at the station for that train to Debrecen in the morning.

The Kosican And The Revenge Of The Dragon

As soon as I wake I have a fit of sneezing, and my throat feels dry and itchy. I seem to have lost a good deal of my hearing, too. Perhaps the Chinese waiter's infectious mucus wasn't confined to his shirtsleeve alone. I go to the ornate restaurace for breakfast. There are four waitresses and two other guests all of whom throw glances at each other and quickly look away again; an uncomfortable silence hangs over the room. I feel a sense of guilt as I serve myself at the buffet table, as if the staff are monitoring every crumb I consume. Not that I have much of an appetite; I'm feeling lightheaded and constantly blow my nose as discreetly as possible on my serviette. There are two receptionists to speed the process of checking out three guests. In the car park, an old woman lives in a caravan as grey and faded as her old clothes. Her job is to move cones about to free and block parking spaces, and at night the flicker of a television set plays on the frayed curtains in the window of her home. Outside the caravan door she has optimistically placed a bucket of red roses to sell to romantic couples- let me take you to the steelworks of Ostrava, darling. I leave the hotel and go to the station. I buy a ticket for the EuroCity Kosican which will take me through the Tatra mountains into Slovakia, where I plan to change and make Debrecen late in the day. The train is almost empty and I walk it's length looking for the smoking car. There isn't one; it is a five hour trip. I make myself comfortable in the last coach and watch the industrial skyline of Ostrava recede. At Bohumin I am joined in the coach by two men. They have brought beer, wine, bread, cheese, and sausage for the journey and lay their provisions out on the table between them. One of them takes an 8 inch hunting knife from his belt and dices the sausage as the other opens the beer and wine. The meal finished, they take turns in visiting the toilet and return smelling strongly of nicotine; I duly take my turn and return their knowing nods. There is no passport check at the Cacda border crossing - no guards, militia, nothing. As the train leaves, there is the usual announcement over the tannoy detailing the next stop; then another voice takes over and I pick out the words Zakaz, Toalette, and Korouni - no smoking in the toilet. The three of us look sheepishly at each other, and stare fixedly out of the windows whenever the conductor walks by. The journey is as spectacular as any I have made. First forested hills, then deep gorges with crystal clear streams as the train climbs; then the lower wooded mountains, and in the distance, the steep craggy peaks of the High Tatras. These rise dramatically from the plains of a high plateau the train reaches at Liptovsky Mikulas. There is a pure quality to the light, the sky a thin palest blue; it reminds me of pictures I have seen of Patagonia. Towns are scattered around the base of the mountains, and even the tower blocks and factories seem cleansed by nature, white concrete and glittering glass, the chimney smoke lost in the vast surroundings. The trains airconditioning is making me shiver, and I use the last of the paper handtowels from the toilet to stem my streaming nose. We stop at Poprad-Tatry, with it's thermal pools and baths steaming gently in the mountain air, then descend from the plain, back through the foothills and forests to Kosice.
By the time I get off The Kosican I am running a temperature; my legs are shaky, I cannot stop the fits of sneezing, and my right ear is ringing. I cannot imagine another five hours traveling, not today, not in this condition. I start to walk into town to find a room, but turn back halfway across Mestsky Park and take a taxi - my bag is three times it's normal weight and I am drenched with sweat. The taxi takes me to Panzion Nad Bankou - the driver knows the owners - and I climb the stairs to my room and flop onto the bed. The room is small and a television is blaring somewhere; with my partial hearing and fever it sounds like the disturbing, echoing sountrack to a nasty horror film. I wrap myself in the duvet and fall into a horribly nightmare laden sleep, populated by knife wielding Chinese waiters and sneezing dragons. When I wake my alarm clock tells me it is 7 o'clock. I pull back the curtains and am surprised to see early morning sunshine: I have slept of 12 hours solid.

Prosim Pozor

In the morning I buy a ticket to Frydlant Nad Ostravici and stand near the booth at the station with an espresso. I light a cigarette and an untidy young woman with Asiatic features wanders over, proffering a handful of worthless coins and pointing at the pack. I refuse the money; she makes some murmuring sounds, and smiling, lifts her top to expose her skinny, malnourished chest - offering herself. Her teeth are brown against her white speckled gums. The train is waiting at Nastupiste IV behind a 754 diesel, with a second attached to the rear. As I look out of the window, another is attached to the back of this - somewhere in the region of 5500 Horsepower for the four coach local, more than a British InterCity 125. The journey isn't particularly fast, though: the two at the back give a half-hearted push as we leave the station, just to get things moving, and leave the train at Frydek-Mistek - just hitching a lift. Frydant lies on the Ostravici river and is the last outpost of Ostrava's sprawl before the Roravskoslezke Beskydy mountains begin. The peaks of Smrk and Kuchyne rise behind the town, green tapering to grey in the autumn sunshine; within a month the summer walking resort will become basecamp for snowboarders and skiers, the sharp edge to the wind that blows through the river valley already hinting at the snow to come. I zip my fleece and stuff my hands deep into the pockets, but to little effect: I bought it in a market in Plzen for a few pounds and it is of the poorest quality. Thin, shapeless, and ill-fitting, it is almost useless except as a kind of camoflauge, something a local could afford to wear, not something a Western European would entertain. I find a cafe in town and sit in the sun, sheltered from the wind. I order a coffee, take out my notebook and try to capture the essence and atmosphere of train travel in Central Europe:

The Buffe at the Nadrazi with it's ebb and flow people, dark corners, and shared tables: a brief encounter if you could only manage more than an awkward drinks order, let alone flirt. The station booth with a jukebox blasting out Hungarian rock ballads on a Saturday night, and a grey concrete shelter on a weed-infested platform on a Monday morning. Slow trains, fast trains, no trains for hours. Five kilometers, five countries, or start walking. Local, regional, Intercity, EuroCity, NachtZuge, SchnellZuge; cross country, cross border, across town. Locomotive nicknames: an M41 is a Rattler, an M62 Sergei; there are Rabbits and Pershings, Nohabs and Gagarins, and even a Ludmilla. Where do these names come from and what do they mean? Wheel-tappers and shunters at every stop, the clang and clunk of hammers echoing around the station. The Hungarian railway uniform with it's circular marching band hat, the dowdy Polish ticket inspector with a peaked peasant's cap. Seedy toilet attendants, hatchet faced Slovakian ticket clerks, the friendly old conductor on the local railbus to Tapolca, the tension as your passport is checked for the third time by a suspicious border guard. Windows that open, doors that don't. The smell of sewage mixed with cheap perfume and strong tobacco; diesel exhaust and the tang of brake-dust. Fried food, sweat, alcohol, and the bitter smell of Sunflower fields; creosote and engine oil, the ozone smell of an electric locomotive breaking contact with the overhead wires. The Informace office that tells you it is not possible when you know it is. The hooker you give a light - we go to hotel now? The station attendant who walks you all the way to the correct train, opens the door, and wishes you a nice ride. The Czech station annoucement preceeded by a few notes that sound like the prelude to a mysterious discovery in a corny film; the ominous DONG of a trains arrival. The supermarket checkout call of Hungary, the elaborate fanfare of Slovakia. The incredibly scenic climb into the Tatra mountains on a crystal clear morning, the stomach-dropping arrival in a Polish industrial town late in the evening. And, of course, the trains. How could anyone not find all this compelling and absorbing?

I take a tram into town from the Nadrazi and drink a Radegast at a little bar on the edge of the square. I notice a dim sign in the first-floor window of a building across the square: Asienche Kuchey. My table is watched over by a huge, moulded plastic Golden Dragon; the entire ceiling is decorated with artificial foliage. The waiter is rake-thin and stooped despite his early age. Halfway through taking my order he sneezes and without apology wipes his nose on his shirtsleeve, from cuff to elbow. I hear his dry cough from the kitchen as he barks some harsh words at the chef. The food is good and inexpensive, but I feel as if I'm having a picnic on the set of some bad martial arts film in the middle of production. I lament not finding this goldmine earlier in my stay, if only for it's entertainment value. I walk to my hotel and finish the evening with a Gambrinus in the grand surroundings of it's Art Deco bar, the only and most reliable customer.

Kolonie Viktovice

I validate my ticket on tram 1 to Dublina and do a long loop through the city, changing lines three times. There are distinct areas, almost separate communities; Ostrava Slezska, Moravska Ostrava, Svinov, Marianske-Hory. Each is supported by the coalmines, steel works, and foundries that are an integral part of the city; industry, commerce, and housing overlap, intertwine, and adjoin. I pass by housing estates dwarfed by towering chimneys and huge cranes, pleasant little bungalows wedged between steel pressing plants and coal loading docks; everywhere, the spindly winding towers of collieries rise in the most unlikely settings, factories appear unexpectedly in the middle of quiet suburbs. Railway lines penetrate every part of the city, bringing in ore and coiled steel, taking out coal and iron ingots; spurs, forks, branches, criss-crossing and snaking into every corner. The tram stops at a crossing on an ordinary high street for a rake of loaded coal wagons to be pushed over the road by an old shunting engine. Every few-hundred meters another line bisects the road, and we slow again in anticipation of a warning blast from a trains airhorns. I change trams at Belsky Les. The stop is in the centre of a large roundabout surrounded by concentric circles of massive tower blocks, built to house the workers of the steel works glimpsed between them. It is a barren and unattractive place to spend a few minutes, let alone a lifetime. On the tram to Hulvaky a kid of no more than fifteen sits in front of me; he takes a bottle of Malibu from his bag and drinks, then a few minutes later, a bottle of sherry. I watch him get off and walk unsteadily towards a dingy block of flats with rotten window frames. I get off at Ostrava Kuncice and consult my map: I can walk a kilometer along Vratimovska to the bridge at Rudna, then back on Frydecka to the railway station for a train back; or I can walk a short distance along Sypky and across the tracks. The railway is as wide as a motorway - six mainlines splitting in three directions to the North, three freight branches joining where I stand. I cross the first line and hear the points behind me change. Suddenly an empty freight train is rattling past behind me with a furious blast of it's horn; then a passenger train rounds the curve to the North. I look to my left and see the headlight of another train about to depart the station. There is no way to tell which of the five lines infront of me either will take. I do the only thing possible: I stand as close to the rushing freight train as I dare and hope nothing takes the next track. Both trains pass on the far lines, and I pick my way across as fast as possible. I am shaking slightly as I reach safety, and walk nervously along the edge of the line to the station.
Kuncice Nadrazi is a large station, and almost completely derelict. It looks almost industrial in it's construction: corrugated iron roofing, redbrick and concrete, a footbridge made of latticed steel framework with a wooden floor, parts of some redundant industrial plant. I take a train to Hlavna Nadrazi, the city's main station, built in the crook of two diverging lines. I notice a plaque on the wall outside with a Soviet star and an inscription: I can only read "1939-1944" and assume its a memorial to liberation, hidden in the most obscure place. I take the tram back to town and try to find something to eat. I walk past strip clubs and casinos, past a shop with a glinting array of machettes, and another selling only taxidermy - a dusty badger staring sightlessly at a small lumpy bear in the window. The streetlights are out in the centre and it reminds me of walking through an African city at night, the glow from the bar's windows casting deep shadows, the warm dusty light fading to deepest blue. It has that edge of fear and excitement; the slash of headlights and wash of receding red then back in the shadows. There are no Restaurace open. The town is quiet, almost empty. I notice movement and watch a big rat scuttle along the gutter ahead of me; it hears me and squeezes it's thick body through the grate of a drain and is gone. I find a street lined with bars; on the pavement outside traders have set up foodstalls and are cooking over charcoal embers. I point to a piece of chicken and eat it with salad and bread standing up next to the stall, then drink an Ostravar in one of the bars before going back to the hotel.
As I walk, I can't help wondering exactly what I have just eaten: the stalls looked makeshift and possibly unlicensed, there was little light, and the "chicken" looked about the right size.

To Moravia

I leave Krakow on InterCity 240 and find myself in Katowice again. This time, I have researched the connections myself and check the departues board for EuroCity 106; there are no departues after 10.17 according to the display, so I check the printed timetable on the wall. Platform 1 at 10.32, daily. There is a crowd of people on the platform, huddled round their luggage and clutching International tickets. The overhead display remains blank as the clock ticks round to11.05, then suddenly flutters over with a sound like cards being shuffled to: EC106 Praha. The train is made up of four domestic Polish coaches, which I find suspicious. I confirm the destination with the platfrom staff and get on. A few minutes pass, then the conductor walks down the train ordering everyone off. The platform display shuffles back to blank and theres an announcement; two platforms away I see an EC train pulling in and can just make out the display showing Praha. There is a stampede for the subway - pushing, shoving, toes stepped on, shins cracked with suitcases - as the mass of people race for platform 3, where impatient staff are waiting to harry them onto the train, the conductor already standing in a doorway with his whistle to his lips. As the train starts to move, the last of the stragglers make the platform and I watch a man in a suit drop his case and throw his hands up in frustration. The train stops at a station just before the Czech border and I hear the hiss of the airbrakes discharging; a Russian TEM2 diesel couples onto the back of the train where I sit and drags it out of the station. Memories of the Italian man sitting in the detached restaurant car, unaware that his luggage was continuing it's journey alone on the shores of Lake Balaton. I pull the window down and with relief see the entire train behind me, the electric locomotive left in the station. We attach to the back of another EC and leave behind a lurid orange EP05 electric, built by Skoda, and identical to the Czech 242s - which thankfully wear more conservative colours. The militia board the train at Petrovice while passports are checked, automatic rifles slung over their shoulders and a pair of Alsatians straining at their leashes. They ignore me, and as we pull off, I see them sitting lazily on a bench smoking cigarettes beneath a sign which reads Zakaz Korouni.
The train travels a lot faster in the Czech Republic, the track smooth and well maintained. I found Polish railways disappointing - the monotonous decay and neglect, the bland trains and miles of decrepit track sapping my pleasure and enthusiasm. There is variety on the Czech railways, and they have a vitality about them - a value that Polish politics and economics no longer recognise.
I arrive at Ostrava and like the place on sight alone. The station is big and busy; the winding towers of a coalmine rise above the town centre; the main street has a Victorian English feel about it - ornates frontages facing each other across the narrow tramlined road. There are four Informace offices in town, including one at the Hlavna Nadrazi where I book a room a few minutes walk away. I buy a 24 hour tram ticket and take a map.
At the hotel I ask for a safe-deposit box. It takes 10 minutes for the receptionist to prepare the paperwork and I am obliged to sign three seperate documents. I am told in no uncertain terms that if I lose my copies I will be unable to access the safe. I ask if it is possible to lock it in the safe too, which stumps the receptionist. I take a tram down Nadrazi into town and eventually find an internet cafe. Its on the second floor of a tower block and looks like an insurance office thats been left in a hurry; plain office desks and hardwearing grey carpet, the network cables snaking across the floor, ready to trip the unwary. In the corner there is a table with a jar of instant coffee and a kettle, bottles of warm Coca-Cola, a basket of browning bananas and a few brusied apples - the cafe.
I wander through town and follow my map to a bar next to the railway. There is an endless procession of trains - passenger and freight - on this line; its a North-South route through the middle of town between the mainlines on the outskirts, and has never been electrified. Of course theres the Goggle-eyed diesels and Soviet 742s, but in this part of the country theres another sort, too. The class 749 is another distinctive and characteristic piece of Czech engineering; it has a peaked nose, and the slanted overhang of the cab roof gives it a frowning appearance - it could be cast as the villain in Thomas The Tank Engine, or perhaps a Slovakian ticket-office clerk. It starts to rain - low grey cloud hanging over the city - and I watch a pair of 749s rumble past with a long freight train; one engine is red and yellow, the second maroon and grey, soot and oil streaked down it's sides. They have an almost herioc appearance as they battle through the elements, faces set in frowning determination, a thick cloud of diesel fumes hanging in the damp air behind them. The bar's windows rattle in their frames. I stay in the bar for a long time until the rain slows, then catch a tram back to station. I drink an Ostravar beer at the booth outside; I am the only customer, the earlier rain having driven the drunks away sleep it off somewhere, anywhere. I eat something that resembles Chop Suey at the Asiante Kuchey bistro near the tram station. I try a small spoonful of the chilli sauce - it is increbibly hot and seems to dissolve my tastebuds on contact. I alternate between a fork-full of searing food and a sip of Ostravar, a sheen of sweat on my brow and burning coals in my stomach.
I sleep fitfully, the hot chilli sauce providing an unwanted source of central heating, the late night trams rattling by on the edge of my dreams.

Rendezvous In Krakow

I have a busy morning. I change some money at a Kantor - a cheque at a punitive rate 10% below cash - then walk around town looking at hotels. My sister and her partner are flying over to meet me at the weekend and need a room. One 3 star, middle-of-the-road place quotes me 170 pounds a night. I point out that this is more than a 5 star hotel in London ( I don't know if this is true, but it can't be far off ), so they offer me a suite at 230 Pounds instead. At the fourth hotel, I manage to book a room just inside the town wall; when I walk by later in the day I find the road is being dug up with pneumatic drills and diggers - the noise is horrendous.
I try to buy a map of the tram system, but the Information office don't have any; there are so many roadworks that the lines keep being dug up or closed, so they don't bother publishing a map. I walk everywhere instead: through the cobbled streets, the parks with their misty autumnal shades, past synagogues and run-down tenements. I walk through Kazimierz and cross the River Wilsna, pass beneath the railway lines, turn right, then left and left again, and stand infront of Oskar Schindler's factory. It is an unremarkable building next door to a bakery in a bland industrial estate. There isn't much to see: the gates and the offices are original, as is one of the workshops. The rest was added later - after wartime bomb damage - by which time Schindler and his workers were in Czechoslovakia. I climb the stairs to his office and flick through the visitors book. Someone from Bristol asks "why did it happen?", while Jim - from Brisbane - gives his endorsement: "GR8 M8".
I find a Vietnamese bistro hidden in a back alley in the old town and eat for a pittance, then sip a beer at a bar overlooking the square.
In the morning I take the airport shuttle from Krakow Glowny to meet my visitors. It is a modern diesel multiple unit, and the service is franchised out to a private operator who've made great efforts to market it. There are posters and glossy leaflets at the station which promise a fast, efficient service - your best connection to the airport. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite make it all the way to the airport: after a slow wander across fields and un-gated level crossings where we squeeze past cars that get too close to the line, the train stops at a halt. Here there is a bus waiting to take us the last half-mile to the terminal, and a scene of chaos as people heave and drag their luggage between the two.
Once Clodagh and Iain are checked into the hotel - the noise of the roadworks having been replaced by buskers as its a Saturday - we retrace my steps to Schindler's factory, then set out to find the remaining pieces of the ghetto walls. I ask the guide at the factory for directions and he points me towards the ringroad and tells me to walk for a kilometer. We decide to take a tram instead, and find that the station is actually in the former ghetto, no more than five minutes from the factory. We find one short section of wall overlooked by an old townhouse that would have been inside the ghetto, and wonder who could live in a place with such a dark past.
Iain has brought a guide book and finds a nice restaurant with good food and reasonable prices; I haven't room to carry a guide so usually take pot-luck, but can't deny their usefulness. We arrange to meet in the morning for a train to Oswiecim, a town overshadowed by the name it was given by occupying German forces - Auschwitz.
We have no problem buying tickets, and although slow, we arrive at the town's main station with the best part of a day at our disposal. We have decided to tour the camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau independently, and later agree that it was wise to do so: the organised tours are hurried and allow no time whatsoever for personal contemplation, skimming over a few details before moving to the next exhibit.
I am not going to write my impressions or observations of the two museums - there really is nothing I could say that is not deeply personal and private, not to mention inadequate.
Clodagh and Iain have brought me books, socks, and English conversation; each of these have assumed immeasurable value over the weeks I have been traveling, things to be savored and treasured. They return to England on Tuesday; I leave them at their hotel after breakfast and walk to the station, feeling a little sad, wondering when - and where - our next rendezvous will be.

One Day, Three Countries

I leave Bratislava on EuroCity 174 on it's long trek from Budapest to Hamburg as directed by the information desk's timetable. Its crowded and I stand in the corridor for an hour before changing at Breclav. The Slovakians inspect my passport at the border - even though I am leaving - but the Czechs don't bother. My schedule should now put me on the connecting EC to Krakow. I find that it doesn't run on a Wednesday; the next departure is on Saturday. My Slovakian ticket is handwritten and includes a seat reservation charge for the non-existent train. Surely the woman at the ticket office knew there was no train today. This means the schedule is useless too: I will have to work out my own route. I consult my map and the departure board in the booking hall and settle on a train to Katowice, the nearest point to Krakow I can get to. It is leaving in three minutes, and if I miss it, I will be stuck in the Czech Republic until the next train late in the evening. I run through the underpass and climb onto the train seconds before the conductor blows his whistle. The train is almost empty and I have my own compartment in one of the Polish InterCity carriages. There is a brief stop at the Polish border for passport control and a swap of locomotive for a faded green EU07 electric with three oversized headlights that make it look like a toy, then the train sets off again, but at a much slower pace. I assume there is a signal check or a freight train ahead that we will overtake shortly in a passing loop, but I am wrong. I look out of the window at the tangle of tracks that seem to head off in every direction, sometimes disappearing into the undergrowth at the side of the line, unused for years, other times fanning out into a marshalling yard a mile long in the middle of the forest we travel through. Wooden sleepers, jointed rails, countless worn-out crossovers and points, weeds and grass growing between the rails. The train manages 50kmh at best - often less - shuddering and jarring over the junctions, squealing round bends, thumping over the worn out railway. We pass huge mines with skeletal gantries and conveyors dropping coal into lines of waiting wagons; every mile or so there is a passing loop with a long coal train awaiting our passage, and more marshalling yards with hundreds of loaded freight cars. The constant hammering of the coal trains, the old rails and sleepers, the overall neglect would derail the train should the driver try coax another 10kmh from the aging EU07. At one station the hulks of half a dozen steam engines fill a siding, bushes growing around them, a sapling poking from one rusted-through tender. Not scrapped, not preserved, just dumped - state sanctioned fly-tipping. At another station, the train waits for 15 minutes for some unknown reason: nobody gets on or off, nothing passes in either direction. I wait for an hour at Katowice - I might try to find a room but the city is unattractive and there is no information in or around the station. I would like a cold beer but there is no bar at the station and nowhere to buy my own. There is no booth, no alcohol, and most noticeably, no alcoholics around the station. There is no litter, the foodstalls are selling things you could actually eat, and no homeless people are sleeping on the benches outside the booking hall. I am shocked. The Polish have obviously realised that alcohol isn't the best traveling companion, and railway stations are not the best place for a night's sleep.
The train to Krakow is even slower. The carriages are a dull grey and pulled by a peeling ET21 electric, the compartments hot and stuffy and crowded. I have finished all of my water before the train is even halfway there. Before each station there is a ding-dong from the tannoy followed by a deafening announcement; every time this happens the old lady sitting opposite tries to answer her mobile phone, then gives an oh-silly-me laugh when she realises her mistake; when it does eventually ring - sounding nothing like ding-dong - she ignores it. We crawl into Krakow and I stagger onto the platform and head straight for the nearest foodstall. I drink almost a litre of water straight down and feel immediately better.
I book a room with the IT information office at the station and walk into town. At every turn there is something to see; churches, medieval architecture, courtyards and alleyways. I pass the American consulate under the watchful gaze of two guards armed with sub-machineguns, then cross the main square and find my hotel at the edge of the park that encircles the old town. As fascinating as the town is, it is also unpleasantly crowded and very commercialised. I no longer feel I'm in Central Europe; this could just as easily be Luxembourg or Koln. It is as wealthy, as expensive, and has the same designer boutiques and upmarket hotels as any city in the West. I go out to eat and find dozens of identical street cafes around the edge of the square. They all have broadly the same uninspiring menu of pizza, grills, chips, and ice cream. There are hordes of noisy people and the constant strobe of camera flashes, street entertainers working the square in front of the tables, and someone handing out flyers every few paces. I drink a beer at the least expensive place I can find but dismiss the menu. I go to a delicatessen opposite my hotel and eat perfectly well in my room in peace and quiet, a bottle of Okocim tonight instead of Kozel.