This train goes up

[topum]

The train from Chisinau, the capital of Moldova to Bucharest, the capital of Romania takes slightly over 13 hours. The distance is around 285 miles. Yep, that's below 22 miles per hour on average. Moldovans and Romanians will not be taking any prizes for the fastest trains from the Japanese any time soon.

The border crossing and customs take over three hours because the wheels of the train need to be changed at the border due to the rail gauge difference between the two countries. The USSR had different width rail tracks from the rest of Europe as a defence measure to prevent European trains from being able to cross its borders apparently. Moldova used to be part of the USSR, Romania wasn't. The wheel change involves lifting each of the carriages up one by one (with all the passengers still inside them) and, well, changing the wheels. I think that provides for a very rare opportunity to move vertically up in a train carriage.

Here you can see the wheels waiting for the next train at the "wheel changing station" at the border:

Comments

[apel.livejournal.com]

Whoa! That would surprise me too. Were there no announcements before?

[topum.livejournal.com]

No, there were no announcements, they have a "this needs to be done, deal with it" attitude everywhere here.
They lift the carriage very smoothly though, you might not even notice it right away. But if you are looking out of the window and see the ground going down all of a sudden, it does make for a good WTF? moment.

[apel.livejournal.com]

That would never fly here. They'd be sued to high heaven by some middle-aged cry baby in shorts.

[topum.livejournal.com]

Moldovans would laugh even at the thought of suing for this. They are very good at accepting that half of the things in your life are uncertain, do not go how you want them to, are "not right" or are even scary and that you will feel like crap sometimes. They treat it as part of life, do not tend to find something or someone to blame or stop it and move on quickly. I still haven't met a Moldovan with depression or anxiety, there is nobody who has ever had it in the seven villages we work with regularly (and boy, those people do not have easy lives).