3rd November: Adventure to Ukraine

There is little as stressful as that moment where you leave the house to go away, going through all the possibilities in your mind of what you might have forgotten. I had a particularly bad moment that day we left for Ukraine, remembering, as I got onto the trolleybus, that I hadn't got my migration card with me; I didn't know exactly what this document did, but I was pretty sure I might need it to cross the border. In a panic, I phoned Alexia and then Ben, who, to my relief, picked up and told me he didn't have his either – so at least we’d be in the same situation, as it was too late to turn back now.

I reached the station in good time to find Alexia already there waiting. Of course, we were waiting for the boys for ages – Ben’s excuse was that he was looking for his lost migration card (meaning I was now the only one without!) and Sean had been held up by the fact that he’d been sick again before leaving the house (he has a mysterious unidentifiable illness that hasn't seemed to fully go away ever since he’s been in Russia). Nevertheless, we made it onto the train on time and, as it was a sleeper train, found the few free seats and settled down for an uncomfortable journey to Moscow.

The time passed surprisingly quickly and we were soon pulling into the station. We decided to make our way to the Arbat, the main street, to find something to eat before heading to Киевский вокзал to catch our next train. By the time we had eaten and bought supplies for the journey it was nearly 7.30 and we had to rush to get to the train on time. Our tickets were плацкарт, the cheapest sort, and we weren't even in a group of four together, but split up into two pairs along the outer wall, on the top bunks so we couldn't even communicate easily.

It wasn't long before I was already getting restless and wondering how on earth we were going to pass twelve hours like this, so I decided to go to the toilets and check out the restaurant carriage on the way. To get there, first I had to pass several groups of dodgy-looking Russian, Ukrainian and Moldovan men sneaking a cigarette between carriages, who were all disproportionately interested in what I was doing moving about the carriages, whether I was cold (I only had a vest-top on as it was so unbearably hot in my carriage) and why an English girl was on this train altogether.

I made it back alive and brought Alexia to the restaurant carriage with me, where we sat down and wondered what on earth we could order so we wouldn't get thrown out back into the fiery hell that was Wagon 9. Within two minutes our problems were solved; two of the guys I had seen between the carriages walked past our table, gave us an ice cream each, and carried on walking. Confused, but knowing better than to look a gift horse in the mouth, I started to eat. A few minutes later, however, the motley crew returned and sat down on the booths next to us. Alexia and I looked at each other dubiously.

Before we knew it, the Moldovans were ordering unknown meals from the waiter and I was being shown the different bottles of Moldovan wine on offer; we took one red and one white. It all seemed harmless enough and the guys, whose names were Gregorii and something else typically Eastern European, were friendly enough – it was a good way to pass the time, at any rate. It wasn't long, however, before the conversation between Gregorii and me had taken an alarming turn and he was asking me to be his wife. I just laughed and asked him if it might not be a bit early to be making a proposal, but before I knew it he was daydreaming about a house in the country with two kids and a beautiful wife to keep house. I raised my eyebrows at this ridiculously outmoded ideal (by western standards, at any rate), and challenged him, “And if I want to work?” He said earnestly, “I will earn the money. You will look after the house and children.” I laughed and said I saw my future a little differently; I didn't know how to express myself clearly in Russian so just said I was going to work as a UN translator. As if this weren't enough of a shock, I told him that men and women should be equal – in marriage, in work, and in life. He didn't think much of that at all.

His dream, he said, was to have a wife to greet him from work with a kiss and a hot dinner ready on the table. I scoffed and said skeptically  “Ah well, everyone has dreams”. I find it fascinating that this is the way society still works in these places; it’s as though they are thirty years behind the western world. But Gregorii was undeterred and invited me to stay with him in Moldova for ten days whilst he was back home for his holiday; his mother would cook, he said, Alexia could come too and he would pay for everything, even our transport back to Moscow. He even wrote down all his details on a napkin and added his number into my phone, ringing his own with it so he had my number (oo-er). I said that was very kind but we were travelling with two other guys and we were all going to Ukraine together.

As ever, he seemed unfazed by this and continued by asking me what I wanted out of life. This seemed a bizarrely open question but I decided to run with it and told him I wanted a big house in the country with two horses, four dogs and maybe a husband and kids. Gregorii said he could give me all of this, but he couldn't let me work. He repeated his invitation to his house and I declined again, wondering now how to escape this situation. Luckily, just at that moment Sean and Ben appeared and came to the rescue. Sean started talking to me in English and Gregorii was forced to talk to the others across the table, much to my relief. That was the beginning of his deep-rooted hatred for Sean, and when Alexia and I had gone to bed, he apparently spent the rest of the night referring to Sean as a condom.

That night was one of the most uncomfortable of my life. The heat, the smell and the noise of snoring were almost unbearable and eventually I stripped down to my underwear in the hope of managing to sleep just a few hours. I was completely unprepared when we were abruptly woken at the border in the early hours and asked to present our documents. I wondered what would happen when they realised I didn't have my migration card and imagined being thrown off the train in my undies. But it was too late now and all I could do was sit and hope for the best.

The sight of a group of border guards in full Russian army uniform is really quite disturbing when you are sitting in your underwear missing one of your documents. When my turn finally came around and I was asked to present my migration card, the border guards all looked at each other in irritated confusion and didn't seem to understand the fact that I simply didn't have it with me. My heart was in my mouth for a few minutes before I was told to fill in a blank one as quickly as possible, which was then taken away for who knows what purposes – I was sure we were meant to get them back for the return journey.

Just when we thought it was safe to try and settle down to sleep again, we came to the other side of the border and were subjected to further interrogation. This time, people were asked to show their baggage and we were asked all kinds of questions about what we were doing in Russia and what the purpose of our trip was. Finally we made it through and were on our way to Kiev.

I was just beginning to relax when I was rudely brought fully back to consciousness by what I thought was another border check, but turned out to be insistent peddlers trying to sell sweets and everything else you could possibly not want at 4.30 in the morning. We were woken again by the conductor at 6am local time (two hours behind Russia) to give in our bedding, and when we finally arrived in Kiev at 7.20am it felt like we had survived an ordeal.