The "Friendship" Train of the Soviet Era

Photo: Vlad Ispas

An Internet vlogger named Noel posted a video of his trip on the “Prietenie” (Friendship) line, a Soviet era train, connecting from Bucuresti, Romania, to Chisinau, Republic of Moldova. He was excited to travel in the first class, Soviet-era style car, on a 13-hour overnight ride that involved changing the wheels on each train car before the Moldovan border, as their tracks were not the same size as the European ones, they were wider. He had hoped that wider train wheels would translate into a smoother ride across the border into Chisinau, but that was not the case.

The vlogger is overly enthusiastic about the prospect of traveling in Soviet-era comfort, just as he was thrilled, in a previous video, about his stay in a five-star hotel in Moscow, hotel reserved for Soviet and world dignitaries, such as the dictator Stalin and the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. He was so ecstatic about staying in such a historical place, that he propped up his socked feet on the desk where Stalin allegedly signed important documents. I cannot say that I share the vlogger’s enthusiasm about Stalin, a killer of his own people.

Noel arrived at Gara de Nord in Bucharest, a very familiar place to me, having spent two years of my young adult life there during my daily commute to college, to and from my hometown of Ploiesti to the capital, Bucuresti, arriving and departing from Gara de Nord.

Seeing my old stomping grounds, I was overcome by an intense sadness and the tears of distress flowed. The place had not changed much since those two years of my youth, it only looked cleaner.

Noel boarded a very familiar-looking train, sporting a fresh coat of blue paint, but the same interior, albeit it much cleaner compared to long ago, with brocade drapes and worn-out carpets, something that second class train cars in the Soviet era did not have.

The W.C. (water closet) had the same stainless-steel commodes and sinks but so much cleaner than I remembered them. The daily commuters tried hard not to use the bathrooms on the train, we knew how disgusting they were. We just held our bladders for one hour or more until we reached Gara de Nord where we could use their facilities, a little bit cleaner, but quite smelly.

During my two years of commute to the university via the train and then the tram, I made lots of friends who either rode the train to work or to school like me – a railroad administrator, an ophthalmologist, college students, future architects, linguists, engineers, teachers, mechanics working for the railway system, a few doctors who were party-connected and lucky to practice medicine in the capital, a couple of theater actors, a ballet dancer, and my English college teacher who always said that I did not take her class seriously enough and nothing good will ever become of me.

We took the train daily at 5:35 a.m. and returned in mid- or late afternoon when classes were over, or work shifts ended. Late commuters sometimes jumped on the train as it started to move. Once I did the same, not realizing that the metal bars were iced over, and my hands would slip; I would have certainly fallen under the tracks had it not been for a quick and smart man who grabbed my coat collar and pulled me inside the train. That moment had been etched into my memory forever and it flashes through my mind from time to time.

Each morning, we were all sleepy, bleary eyed, standing and crowded in the dirty hallways, the seats were always occupied from the previous stations, packed like sardines in a can, looking through dirty windows at the passing landscape. We swayed back and forth as a single body as the train stopped and started abruptly after each station.

The controller would push his way through, squeezing this mass of humanity huddling in the hallways, to check for tickets or monthly passes. The tickets, although subsidized by the communist government running the country, were not cheap. My mom and dad struggled to pay for my monthly “abonament” (pass). And the train did not exhibit any of the “luxury” the vlogger encountered on the Moldova train.

Noel’s destination, the Republic of Moldova, formerly part of USSR, was carved out of Romania by the Soviets after WWII as war reparations. A large majority of inhabitants of Moldova are Romanians from the state of Moldova in the eastern part of Romania, who speak Romanian at home.

The vlogger was unhappy about his accommodation on the first-class train from the Soviet era – the bed was too uncomfortable, the ride very bumpy, and punctuated by constant jarring of stop and go, resulting in 13 hours of misery and inability to sleep. Everything was spartan and minimal but clean.

And our American Millennials, Generation Z, and others want socialism/communism instead of capitalism. Be careful what you wish for, you might get years of misery in your “utopia,” thinking about our National Anthem and the Pledge of Allegiance you protested against and bent the knee against at sports events.