Day 18-19: The Way to Warsaw

Kiev-Warsaw: Approx. 530 miles
Total distance traveled since Vladivostok: Approx. 8380 miles

True to the grumpy-train-station-lady-behind-the-counter’s word, it was a packed train going to Warsaw (all four cars that departed from Kiev on the Jan Kiepura express) and so Dad and I were bunked in separate rooms.  We spent most of our time standing up in the aisle talking anyways so it didn’t matter that much.  In my berth none of the other occupants spoke English (or if they did, they didn’t try to talk) though Dad had an 18-year old Ukrainian student in his compartment who speaks fluent Ukrainian and Russian, and is conversational in English and German.

At around 1AM, we were woken up at the Ukraine-Poland border crossing.  Over the course of the next two hours, border control came through and stamped us out of Ukraine, and another set stamped us into Poland.  While this was going on, engineers were switching out the wheels on our train cars.  The reason is that the railway gauge (the distance between the rails) is wider in the former Soviet Union than it is in the rest of Europe.  This came quite in handy for the Soviets when the Germans invaded in 1941 as it delayed logistics and supplies since the Germans had to either use captured Soviet rolling stock with the delays associated with that, or rebuild the rail lines as they advanced. 

Switching out the wheels on the train cars.  It was a long and slow process as each car was successively uncoupled, wheels replaced, and recoupled to the train.	Now in eastern Poland, the architecture and surroundings take on a distinctly European feel.

We finally arrived at the end of our journey at the Warsaw Gdańska station the morning of Monday, August 13, for a ten-hour layover in the capital of Poland.