Tumbling at 120km/h through the mist-quashed early morning countryside, the rattling blue train carries the waking and the wary towards the border. Tall wintry poplar spikes follow the contours of the dark quiet rivers, and beside the rough-ploughed fields jumbles of mistletoe throng on the crowns of ivy-free oaks: a familiar European wintry seasonal scene from Brest to Belarus, but for the regular crop of black, fat, onion-like baroque church spires that proudly adorn each low-set village. The train is leaving Moravia.
The České dráhy guard proceeds nimbly down the aisle, cropped blond hair gelled à la Jimmy Somerville. Sporting small silver hoops in both ears and large chunky statements on more fingers and thumbs than not, he flits from carriage to carriage, greeting the early folk that sit in a variety of states. Bright as buttons, the birds check their accounts for nightly email dross. A few stretch out in their own darkened cell compartments, content that the extra, uninterrupted sleepy hours will be harvested in privacy. Some have been up all night, waiting for and making the connections, bedless and weary with ragged hair and distended discomfort.
Unlike daytime journeys along this route, the corridors are satisfactorily empty. Between hissing automatic doors, the snakey route brings those that hunger and thirst to the dining car, population 1 – busy typing on a massive pre-cambrian laptop. All is terribly quiet, the soporific stillness in marked contrast to the usual hive of light refreshment industry that is a Czech railway catering car: on this ghost train the galley is bereft of living souls. Over the other side, beyond the rattling bar, are seated in a cosy window booth for two the silent employees, as deep in slumber as the rocking cradle of international transportation can arrange. Their blubbery faces supported on fist-props in an act of petrified self-pugilism, their cumulative awareness of the non-sleeping world is a big fat zero – an early start; a late night; both?
“Prosim… Prosiiim…. PROSÍÍÍÍM!!”
With flickering lids, the galley chef comes to in black apron, white shirt and striped waistcoat. Alerted to the symbolic association of an urgent voice with action, he peels back eyelids – Oh… a customer... SHIT! We’re asleep! He rouses his similarly-waistcoated colleague in white apron, his refreshments trolley parked close, but for him the hill is steeper, the well is deeper, the bosom of sleep more reluctant to release its motherly embrace. They apologetically busy themselves, fetching the ordered steaming black káva and thick horká čokoláda without broaching eye contact. It could have been their jobs.
The shakey rolling bogeys cross points making the return journey a scalded one. And the insipid and uninspiring liquids were certainly not worth the jaunt, nor the Kč 39, even at 5 a.m. The temporary view of the baby-soft, sleep-fixed faces of the railway employees, oblivious to the corporeality of waking life, however, was priceless.
Across the border, the new OBB lady guard perfunctorily checks all tickets (don’t forget it’s pronounced, err, bé-bé!) Such unprofessional lapses by staff are not to be found when crossing the rich farmed plains of eastern Austria. It’s doubtful that coffee- or chocolate-flavoured hot water from livelier staff would taste any better.
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