Last week I read Harry Potter & The Chamber of Secrets, by J.K. Rowling, and A Lesson Before Dying, by Ernest J. Gaines. I also watched “The Notebook” and “Lawrence of Arabia” on DVD.
Emily insisted that I post the story of our train station adventure from last week, so here it is!
In preparation for a trip to Ukraine in September, I wanted to find out the schedule and cost of the Kiev train. Emily walked to the train station with me one day last week. We found the counters for international trains; there were 3 ticket windows, 2 of which had long lines but at the third a worker was sitting with no customers. From experience, I suspected that there was a reason no one was at her window, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to start there instead of going straight to a long line.
I said to the young woman, in Russian, that I needed information about the schedule and price for the Kiev trains. I couldn’t hear her response through the small hole in the glass window separating us, and I bent down to try to hear better through the little crevice where money and tickets could be passed through. She seemed to think that my difficulty in hearing her was related to the language we were using, and not the volume of her voice, as she repeated herself in broken English. Fine, I thought, we’ll do this in English.
“I want to go to Kiev on September 15. What are my options?” I asked. The woman pointed to a calendar on the wall, showing the month of August, and lamely shrugged her shoulders. Emily and I looked at each other and she whispered to me “What, she can’t flip the page and see September?” But apparently not. So I tried a new approach. “I just want to know, in general, when are the trains to Kiev.” This prompted her to pull out a little book, in which she looked up Kiev and told me the train leaves at 11:00 pm. OK, that’s a start, I thought to myself. “And when does it arrive in Kiev?” I asked. “12:30 in the morning,” she answered. “You mean in the afternoon? After lunch?” “Oh, yes,” she said. OK, some progress.
Now I knew there was at least one other train, since I had traveled to Kiev in April, and we left in the morning, not at night. “Are there any other times?” I prodded. “11:30 a.m.,” she said. “And when does that one arrive?” “1:30 in the morning.” A pause while I wait for further information…
This is one of my pet peeves here, that people seem only to be able to deliver one tiny little piece of information per question. It seems logical to me that a person inquiring about a train schedule might want to know both the departure and arrival times, as well as whether or not there might be more than one option. But requests for information here usually require the same question to be posed multiple times to assure you get the whole story.
So, I asked yet again if there were any other trains. “Yes,” she said, “but those two are the only express trains.” Apparently I don’t even need to consider the other options.
Then it occurs to Emily to ask the smartest question of all. “And those trains go every day?” “The 11:30 am train goes every day, but the 11:00 pm train goes every other day.” Now, wouldn’t you think that’s an important piece of information worth mentioning? No, in Moldova you have to know the right questions to get all the information.
“So which days does the night train go?” I asked. “I don’t know,” she said. I stared at her a moment, waiting. “That’s in the computer, and I don’t have a computer here.” She swept her arm across the empty space of her desk, to emphasize the absence of the computer. “Do they have a computer at the other desk?” I asked. She stared at me blankly. I would have to be more direct. “Can you find out from someone who has a computer?”
She grudingly stood up and walked around the divider to the other ticket window. She was gone a couple minutes, then came back and asked if I wanted to buy the ticket today. “It depends,” I replied. “First I need to know what days it goes on and how much it costs.” In a rare display of giving more information than was requested, yet wholly unrelated to the question I actaully asked, she told me that I could buy the ticket no more than 20 days before the departure date. “I can’t sell you a ticket this early, it’s not allowed.” “But could you tell me what days the evening train goes and how much it costs?” She again waved her arm over the empty desk and said “I need a computer for that.” And again my idea to check with someone who had a computer. “They are very busy right now.” This point I had to concede. After all, I had bypassed the long lines at the other 2 windows to ask her my questions.
And as I had suspected, there was a very good reason no one was standing in line at this window.
Anka in Kyiv 