January 12, 2004
The Train Station, Again
Sunday morning Alan and I went to the Gara de Nord again.
It's about 3 km (a bit less than two miles) from the apartment. Usually that's about half an hour's walk, but with the snow it was closer to an hour. We bundled him up in multiple many layers of clothing, plus blanket and little footwarmer, and put him in the big three-wheel stroller.
He couldn't really move, but he rolled his eyes around a lot.
It was fairly quiet at the train station -- Sunday morning, I suppose. I bought this week's Economist, then I took Alan out of the stroller and put him up on my shoulders, and we went and looked at trains. Alan watched the loading and unloading with interest, and then waved to the trains going away -- bye bye!
After half an hour of this, we went to the McDonalds in the station, and had a cup of coffee (for me) and a large fries (for both of us). Alan is still rather thin after his illness, so I encouraged him to eat; he wasn't terribly interested, but took a dozen or so fries in a spirit of companionship. Then we went and looked at trains again.
Two changes at the Gara de Nord. One, there were a couple of security guards at the entrance to the coffee shop, charging the 4000 lei "station entrance" fee. I guess they finally realized that the coffee shop was a loophole in, uh, station security.
Second, there was an interesting new train. It's called the Blue Arrow, and it's the "snow train" to take skiers up to to the mountains. It's a small train -- just two cars -- but it looks very modern, all streamlined white plastic. And when it left the station, it left fast. And apparently it gets up to Brasov in less than three hours. Maybe we should give it a try.
Alan fell asleep in the stroller on the way back. I put stroller, Alan and all in the quiet spot under the staircase, and he slept for a couple of hours there.
And that was Sunday morning.
Posted by douglas at January 12, 2004 11:13 AM