Night train from Kiev

This is Alex again, part of his sleepless night update…

Wednesday, June 10th

Irina wanted us standing outside our apartment at exactly 10:20 pm with all of our luggage so that she could take us to the train station. I wondered if a small family standing out on the sidewalk at 10:20 pm was a good idea but we have learned that we just do as we are told… We waited in front of the building for about 15 minutes before we got picked up. People walking by did look at us oddly but luckily we did not have any issues. Ann’s comment: We had mentioned in a previous post how nervous we were about the train and getting all of our luggage off in the allotted two minutes. For this reason, we really had tried to consolidate our luggage as best we could but we still ended up with seven bags and some backpacks. Oleg and Oksana were driving to Dnipro and thought it would be a good idea if they took most of our luggage with them (for a “small fee” of course!). It was funny to see Oleg explain to us that we would not be able to fit all our luggage in our compartment, as the place to store the luggage is only this big (and he made a motion with his hands to indicate a small area) and our luggage is this big (his hand motion indicating something very large). Once we got on the train and saw our compartment, we knew that Oleg was totally right and that there would have been no way to fit our luggage and us in there, too. We would have probably ended up abandoning some bags on the way off the train!
The inside of the train station was very grand. I had watched the first few minutes of Benjamin Button and it reminded me of that. The train we got was very new and modern - the only problem we had was how hot it was inside the train. It felt like an oven and we took turns standing outside on the station platform where it was cooler until we left. We were told the air conditioner would turn on once we started moving. When it finally did start moving, the air conditioner did not start right away so we were worried but shortly thereafter it did turn on and the rest of the time on the train was nice. I believe everybody slept most of the way. Ann’s comment: Wouldn’t this have been nice! Alex slept most of the way, while Tony woke up to eat and then had a hard time going back to sleep because it was very dark and he didn’t know where he was. My mom was the one that actually commented that it was almost 6:00 am and weren’t we supposed to be at our stop at around 6:00 am? Allie was awake also. It was just Alex that was sound asleep…
We all started to wake up around 6 am (really just Alex – since everybody else was already awake!) and shortly after Elena came in and told us that our station was coming up in seven minutes. We were surprised we didn’t get woken up an hour before getting to our stop like other people had commented. I found out it was because the attendant thought we were getting off at a later station. Luckily that mistake was averted. Oleg was waiting to pick us up at the station. We took a quick ride to our apartment where our luggage was waiting for us and then went back out to get a few groceries. It was very early and the bigger stores weren’t open so Oleg told us to just get a few things for this morning and later we would go get more groceries. Later this would turn out to be a bad idea. Back at the apartment we all rested and waited until it was time to go see Katya.
Ann’s comment: I have to tell you a funny story about Elena. All day, Elena had been getting Alex back for the whole “Helen is a grandma’s name” thing. At the SDA office, she had looked at Alex’s passport picture and said he looked like a criminal and she had said some other funny stuff during the day. I told her that she reminded me of Alex – with her sarcastic humor. When we first got to the train station, Alex asked her if she had the tickets. She looked at him with a straight face and said, “What tickets?” and after Alex seemed a little distraught started to laugh. Allie commented, “That sounds like something that daddy would do!”