Köln-Moscow Sleeper diary gleanings, Part 1

"I have just had my second major culture shock, and this one's HUGE and composite!"

After waiting on Köln platform 7 for a while, and being passed by a few trains of various shapes sizes and destinations, the train labelled on the screen as MOSCOW KOBENHAVN WARSAWA PRAHA pulled in. This took a while, as it was a very long train, and I had to run along the platform for quite a distance before I got to my carriage. I got to the door where an American couple were trying to convince the stocky проводнйца that they had paid for first class. When I arrived, the prov. was saying, "tickets to me" and she took from me all the tickets I was holding.
Deticketed, and leaving the Americans to fight their (possibly losing) battle, I climbed up onto the train - and into a different world...

I'm not sure which hit me first: the smell or the colour. It was like walking into how I might imagine 1960s Eastern Europe: all grey-green plastic with slightly rounded edges and a sickly sheen, with the plasticky smell of an anti-nuclear bunker - like a mixture of plasticene, gloss paint and nostalgia that wishes it could be forgotten. Along the narrow corridor and into the box that would be my home for the next 36 hours, where I found a cyrillic menu on the wall (better start learning quick!) and chunky light switches which make a loud CLUNK but have minimal effect...

Sitting down to write my diary, I felt so excited, with a disarmingly similar feeling to how I felt on my first cross-channel ferry voyage at the age of 2. (How I remember that, I don't know, but it just hit me!)

A one-legged man on crutches hobbled past my cabin, then the American guy popped his head round the door and accurately pointed out, "we're not in Kansas any more".

Indeed we are not in Kansas. Nor are we, any longer in Köln.

Now we are in wuppertal... unterbarmen... dortmund... hamm... neubeckum... bielefeld... wunstorf... seelze.... feeling..... sleepy......

The train moves slowly into the night, through many dark towns...