Romanian Railways
I'd just finished cycling from England to the Black Sea (he says smugly) and needed to get from Constanta to Bucharest to fly home. I won't say anything about the nightmare of queuing for a ticket at Constanta's railway station: suffice to say the Romanians make the Italians look like a model of order and restraint when it comes to queuing etiquette.

No, the problem was getting my bike on the train. The chap at the ticket office swore on his mother's life that it would be "No problem, no problem" taking my bike on board. So I sauntered up the platform, started to heave my bike up the massive step to the train, only to have a guard run over shouting "NO! NO! Is BIG problem!"

"But the man said no problem" I countered.

"Is BIG problem."

I thought about this. If I missed the train, I'd miss my flight. And it was Swiss Air, so you can imagine how many bars of Nazi gold this flight had cost me. Hmm...

"Baksheesh?" I asked. And so a few Deutsche Marks later I was allowed on the train. But as the guard was a corrupt bumhole I had to go somewhere I wouldn't be seen, so he directed be to the very back of the train. I ended up in the vestibule next to the rearmost set of doors. Not so bad, I thought. No seat, but it's only for a few hours.

It was only when we set off that I learnt an important fact about this train: the doors on either side of this vestibule didn't lock. Not only that, but they didn't like staying closed either. Every time the train went round the slightest bend, one of the doors would fly open, unleashing a swirling vortex that tried to snatch me and all my goods out of the carriage. I had to climb half out of the carriage, face blasted by the wind, and lean down the side of the train to grab the door handle with questing fingertips. It was like a crappy action film, with me hanging from the side of the train as we went over sheer cliff edges, saved from falling to my death only by the feeble strength of my hands. And as soon as I closed one door, the other flew open and it all started again. All the fucking way to Bucharest.

Still, it was less stressful than commuting on First Great Western's Chav Express as I do now.
( Olembe Refuses to write in this space, Thu 29 May 2008, 15:43, Reply)