Halfway down the Danube

Gara de Nord

Went to the Gara de Nord today. That's Bucharest's largest train station, and it's a couple of kilometers from our house. Alan and I go there most weekends. I go to buy a copy of the Economist magazine, and Alan likes looking at the trains.

(One of these days I must do a post about Economist roulette, or the interesting experience of buying foreign magazines in the Balkans. Remind me.)

The Gara de Nord has seen better days, no question. It's kind of dirty. The platforms are crumbling -- run to catch a train, and you could break a leg.

Inside the station lurk several sorts of scam artists, waiting to glom on to unwary tourists. Nobody behind any counter will admit to speaking any foreign language.

Outside, street children dressed in odd bits of mismatched clothes dart through the crowds. The park across from the station is strewn with trash. An empty pedestal stands in the middle, presumably where some hero of Romanian socialism once stood, shaking his fist agains the capitalists. The railroad hotel, the once-lovely Hotel Danube, stands dark; the doors are chained shut, and pigeons flutter in and out of broken windows on the upper floors.

And, as always, there's Romanian bureacracy. Every entrance to the station is watched by bored security guards who charge you 4000 lei (about 12 cents) for a ticket to enter.

(And, as usual, there's a way around if you know what you're doing. There's a coffee shop that has both an outside and inside exit. Enter the station through the coffee shop, and nobody will try to stop you, and you're in. Go figure.)

But the Gara de Nord has its points. It's well-lit, with big skylights up above to let in the sunshine. There are lots of little kiosks selling sandwiches and magazines and groceries. There are nice touches, like the wall memorial listing all the directors of the station back to 1873. (Surprisingly few of them.) The park may be littered with trash, but the Bucharesters stroll freely through it; nobody seems worried about muggers or junkies. Back in the station, people smile at the little boy who's waving bye-bye to the trains.

And it's a busy place; trains are coming and going every few minutes, leaving for points all over Romania and beyond. It's not New York's Grand Central Station, but people walk briskly and look like they're getting on with life.

And things are getting, slowly, a bit better. When we got there, there were no train schedules. There was only a single enormous wooden board, hung high up near the ceiling, painted with a list all arrivals and departures. There weren't any electric signs, never mind electronic ones, nor were there any schedules at eye level. And you couldn't buy paper train schedules.

Well: you still can't. But there is an electric sign for arrivals and departures now. It's the slightly old-fashioned kind, and looks like they might have bought it second-hand from somewhere. But who cares? It works. It lists the next six departing and arriving trains, and their tracks, and whether they're late. Pretty basic stuff... but, you know, it brought a smile to my face when I first saw it.

Progress.

And Alan does love those trains.

Posted by douglas at December 6, 2003 10:49 PM