Brest Hotels
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We leave the West behind...
Entry 11 of 62 | show all | print this entry |
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A nudge, a slight jolt, almost imperceptibly we started to gain the momentum necessary to move the Moskva Expres away from Berlin Hauptbahnhof Track #12. Soon we gained speed and headed east.
We settled in for what was going to be a long, jostling 36-hour ride to St Petersburg. So to celebrate the start of this phase of our adventure, we had tea and desert. The tea, courtesy of our two carriage attendants, and the desert, courtesy of Kaufhof am Alex back at Alexanderplatz.
Three hours later we crossed the Oder, the border between Germany and Poland. We found out with a bit of sign language and some rough German, that our sleeping carriage and one other bound for St Petersburg were going to be detached from the Moskva Expres at the town of Orsha in eastern Belarus, where we were going to be attached to another St Petersburg bound train coming from Odessa.
After an impromptu dinner of salami, cheese and wine, we made up our bunks, settled down, and herky-jerkily crossed Poland.
The carriage attendants woke us at 04:00 in preparation for crossing into Belarus. The border guards were "matter of fact" and strictly perfunctory checking our passports and Belarus and Russian visas, and soon (2-hours later) we were off to Brest.
The Brest station was vintage Soviet architecture. Through the dim early morning light we watched new passengers boarding the train. After gaining these new travelers, we prompt pulled out of the station - BACKWARDS towards Poland. What the hay? We didn't go backwards very far though, only to the edge of the rail yard where they disassembled the train and shoved groups of cars into the bogie (wheel) changing shed (Russian and former Soviet Republics used wider width wheels).
It was fascinating watching them jack-up the carriages then rolling in new wheel assemblies underneath. The process took a couple of hours, and then we continued heading east towards our rendezvous point with a northbound train...
Latest Comments (1)
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Enjoying this Chuck...... (reply)
Aug 16, 2007 08:38 EST by rouxsterman
Thank you for including me in your travelogue... I am enjoying the ride! Lots of what you have done to date, reminds me of my travels in the 80's & 90's. You are now, however, in uncharted territory for me, so bring on the detail. Will be interested in the descriptions of your meals going forward. Godspeed.
Patrick
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