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.