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.