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Published: July 17th 2009
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Buying tickets in Warsaw central train station for Russia is not the easiest thing you’ll ever do; be prepared for your blood pressure to rise significantly! You have no idea what the people selling the tickets are saying, and they pretty much just nod at whatever you say. After some intensive discussions / sign language though, we managed to book a ticket on the Moscow train which is over 20hrs! - You couldn’t make this stuff up….
While sitting in a café a while later, I began thinking about something the ticket lady had being saying… Belarus, Belarus!! - Now we had told her we had no visa for Belarus (meaning we can’t go there, as you can’t buy a visa on the border) but it got me thinking so I trawled the internet for some good old fashioned backpacker advice. It wasn’t long before we figured out; ALL trains leaving Warsaw go though Belarus. Bloody brilliant!! Now we were in a bit of bother, as we wouldn’t be able to get on the train after forking out €200 smackers for the privilege of this 20h train ride.
What happened next was a blessing from the Gods! Eventually (sometime
later) I plucked up the courage to go back to the ticket counter (where the ticket lady had changed to another new, more unfriendly ticket lady) and I tried to explain in my slowest possible English that we had no visa for Belarus; that we couldn’t board the train and please could we get a refund…pretty please..!! We didn’t know if we were even entitled to a refund or if the “all sales are final” clause had reached Warsaw.
The ticket lady, (God love her!), looked at me like I was from Mars and just shook her head, instead of the nodding which I had been hoping for. I don’t think she knew what we were saying. We kept repeating ‘NO VISA, NO BELARUS, TRAIN NO GOOD, REFUND?” - We were at the stage where we got a sneaking suspicion that our €200 could well be making its way down the swany, 😞 when a young gentleman stepped up from behind us, who had over-heard our tales of woe and spoke on our behalf. He spoke fluent English and Polish and probably a dozen other languages I suspected. After a couple of minutes of excited looks and fast speaking
polish, we seemed to incur a fine of 10% of the ticket price and we got a refund of the other 90% (excellent!). However, we did learn there was no other way to get to Moscow from Poland as far as the ticket office knew.
After sitting down and feeling pretty chirpy on the one hand about getting most of our dosh back, we soon turned glum about now having no way to get to Moscow from Warsaw station. After taking some time to study some of the maps of Europe, we reckoned we could possibly get a train to Lithuania. From there we could possibly get a train from Vilnius (the capital) to St. Petersburg in Russia; visit there for a few days and then possibly get an overnight train down to Moscow (completely by-passing Belarus). Hah…!
Anyway to cut a long story short, we managed to get new tickets sorted out. For some reason though the train didn't seem to be running and we had to get a bus instead overnight. 9 hrs on a bus might seem overwhelming, but for this part of Europe, it’s everyday life for people. All and all the journey wasn't too bad.
We arrived in Vilnius at 8am, made it to our hotel and relaxed for a while. Spent some time wandering around Vilnius which is quite a nice city, and also more time at the train station trying to organise tickets for the train to St. Petersburg in Russia. - That’s another long story which I am going to skip... Suffice to say, we're booked in for Monday night 14th July for the overnight journey (via Latvia) and NOT Belarus, we have been reliably informed!!!
Also at the moment we are trying to do some forward planning and organise our Trans-Siberian train tickets to go across Siberia starting next weekend. Now that should be fun!!
The next two weeks: • 2 days in St. Petersburg
• Overnight train to Moscow
• 3 days in Moscow
• 3 days on the Trans-Siberian train to Irkutsk
• 2 days in Irkutsk (Siberian City)
• 1.5 days from Irkutsk to Ulaan-Bator in Mongolia
• 4 days in Mongolia
• Then finally 2 days on the train to Beijing….. China - here we come 😊
Some Trivia • Lithuania is one of three countries known as the Baltic States. The other Baltic State countries are Estonia and Latvia. However the concept of Baltic States is misleading as it implies some sort of political unity between Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia which is not the case.
• In 1989, to demonstrate the Baltic States' wish for independence, Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians joined hands forming a chain stretching from Vilnius to Riga (Latvia) and to Tallinn (Estonia).
• Lithuania was the first Soviet republic to declare independence from the USSR.
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