Mastodawn

Braid in trains

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Today, my railway journey from 🇹🇭 Bangkok back to 🇫🇷 Alsace finally begins.

Marking the start of my trip, I visited the Hua Lamphong railway station. The beautiful building with a huge departure hall, flowers and fountains is sadly only served by commuter trains and the subway in present times since the mainline operations were completely moved to the new Krung Thep Aphiwat Central Terminal in 2016.

Nevertheless, the railway station nowadays hosting a museum with beautiful old Thai trains serves as an excellent location to start my trip : I will spend the next two weeks all on trains : Sleeper trains, high-speed trains and adorable regional trains will hopefully safely guide me for 17.000 km on rails spanning from Thailand via China, Siberia and the Ural to Europe.

Follow #FOSSRail or this account to travel along with me in this thread !

🌈✊🏽

#CrossBorderRail #TeamNightTrain

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My first train : The comfortable Special Express 25 will bring me over night to 🇹🇭 Nong Khai, the border town of 🇱🇦 Vientianne.

The train consists of 13 carriages, sleeper wagons of different classes and a @diningcar .

While there is a direct train from 🇹🇭 Bangkok across the border to 🇱🇦 Vientianne, this train only consists of a couple of old carriages of third class and couchette spots ready for the scrapyard. Instead, the transfer in 🇹🇭 Nong Khai is an excellent opportunity to grab some breakfast before crossing the border into 🇱🇦 Laos.

Sweet dreams everyone 😴 !

🌈✊🏽

#FOSSRail #TeamNightTrain #CrossBorderRail #SleeperAndEater

Braid in trains

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Good morning Fedi 🌄 !

I had an excellent night and my sleeper arrived in 🇹🇭 Nong Khai on time.

Despite amenities on the train, I was too sleepy and my bed was too cuddly to motivate myself to have a shower before arriving.

The morning arrival of the Special Express 25 in the morning always is a spectacle : All passenger leave and jointly walk to the ticket office, queue up and all request the same, a connecting ticket to 🇱🇦 Vientianne. The queue dissolves quickly, not even 10 minutes after the arrival all passengers were issued their connecting ticket for the Rapid 133.

Why all of this ? I have no clue. The ticket office in Bangkok could also issue the tickets and you can buy them online. Maybe all the Lao people are fond of paper tickets as much as I am 🤓 ? Who knows 🤪. Anyways, I now obtained my connecting ticket and will hopefully also be able to purchase a ticket for my train once arriving in 🇱🇦 Vientianne later.

Now I have two hours in 🇹🇭 Nong Khai waiting for my connecting train. The station is very comfortable, with a minimart, toilets, even showers and some little cafés.

My train was meanwhile shunted over to platform 2 where it's waiting for its departure back to 🇹🇭 Bangkok in the evening.

While there are minibuses and tuck-tucks to 🇱🇦 Vientianne every few minutes which would allow me to take an earlier LCR train to 🇨🇳 Kunming, my inner purism wants me to wait for two hours to actually travel every little bit possible by rail.

At least I will spend the two hours looking for some breakfast !

🌈✊🏽

#FOSSRail #TeamNightTrain #CrossBorderRail #Thailand #Laos

Braid in trains

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Meanwhile an adorable type NFK DMU for the Express 76 arrived and suddenly the station was empty.

#FOSSRail #Thailand

Braid in trains

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🇱🇦 Laos, or as I call it : Difficult border crossing 🙃.

Not that anything could ever go wrong here but it's slow, chaotic and random. Always plan two hours of buffer. Train arrival at 9 a.m. and connecting train at 11.30 a.m. can end up in a speed run.

#FOSSRail #CrossBorderRail #Laos

Braid in trains

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Definitely not on my bucket list for today : I won an overnight stay in 🇱🇦 Boten, the special economic zone right at the border to 🇨🇳 China.

#FOSSRail #CrossBorderRail

Braid in trains

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After the border check in 🇱🇦 Vientianne Khamsavath railway station took 2 hours, I sadly missed my train to 🇨🇳 Kunming - the last one of the day. Without train timetable, internet or language knowledge I decided to at least travel as far as still possible today.

In particular, that means I bought a new ticket for the C82 train ending in somewhere in the Lao mountains close to the border to 🇨🇳 China. To be honest, I don't understand why this train doesn't proceed to 🇨🇳 Kunming : The later of the second train across the border arrives there at 9 p.m. - this one arriving at 10:30 p.m. would be a good addition to the chronically overcrowded trains between the two People's Republics.

Arriving in in the middle of nowhere around 5 p.m. was definitely an experience : Neither do I speak Lao and Mandarin, nor did I have Lao kips to pay or internet. Internet could be arranged after buying a SIM card at a kiosk, but when I tried to buy a connecting train ticket for tomorrow I sadly had to realize how Alipay didn't want to work. All the currency exchanges only did Yuan to Kip, whereas I could not exchange any Thai bath anywhere.

I finally discovered an ATM and could get my train ticket to 🇨🇳 China for tomorrow.

After all, I also found a hotel, got some food and could rebook my remaining journey to match my delay.

🌈✊🏽

#FOSSRail #CrossBorderRail #Laos

Braid in trains

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Traveling from 🇹🇭 Bangkok to 🇫🇷 Alsace, day 3 :

I had a relaxed morning, good breakfast and arrived at the immigration checkpoint before the arrival of the passengers from 🇱🇦 Vientianne so that the passport check went smoothly without any queue.

My destination for today is 🇨🇳 Kunming, the city of spring. I'm looking forwards to discover the beautiful sides of the city after @iamejp warmly recommended to to give the city center another try - because so far I had only seen the ugly new development district south of the city on my outbound journey.

The journey by D88 train takes about 5h30 even though one hours comes to the border check in 🇨🇳 Mohan.

#FOSSRail #CrossBorderRail #Laos

Braid in trains

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Immigration in 🇨🇳 Mohan went smoothly, now waiting for my train to continue its journey through the 🇨🇳 Yunnan province to 🇨🇳 Kunming.

#FOSSRail #CrossBorderRail

Braid in trains

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My journey northbound goes on : Today, I will tackle 2.000 km by Gaosu Dongche high-speed train from 🇨🇳 Kunmingnan Zhao to 🇨🇳 Beijingxi Zhao followed by a 1.500 km Zhida Tekuai leg onboard of the luxury 🇨🇳 Beijing Zhao - 🇨🇳 Qiqihar Zhao train.

The Huxing Hao is uncomfortable and shaky as any Chinese-built train but lucky me could still buy a wickedly expensive upgrade to Business Class onboard where at least the seats are comfortable enough to survive an 11 hours trip after with the stress and exhaustion carried over from the past two days.

I'm looking forwards to reaching northern China enjoying the more relaxed atmosphere in Inner Mongolia since I'm not a huge fan of the busy and crowded south and west coast.

Braid in trains

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If you're wondering why I don't toot any picture of sights, the landscape or just anything not related to trains, please keep in mind that I'm transiting not any country but China - with all its implications.

Everything I'd share here, everything I'd show or advertise here would be a political statement. A statement contradicting my values. While I will just be silent while I'm traveling here, I'm looking forwards to sharing experiences later.

🌈✊🏽

Braid in trains

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From 🇨🇳 Beijing on, I took the Kuaisu train to 🇨🇳 Qiqihaer in the far north east.

I was lucky to get one of the rare first class Superior Soft Sleeper compartments available on few selected trains. While the rolling stock was of chattery Chinese quality you know from anything produced at CRRC, I had a surprisingly relaxing night and was only woken up by the conductor at 10.30 a.m., 20 minutes before arriving at my destination.

In 🇨🇳 Qiqihaer, I had a layover of 1.5 hours. Enough to find some vegan ramen in the departure hall's little store.

From here on, my next Kuaisu train will get me northbound to 🇨🇳 Manzhouli, the town at the tripoint between 🇨🇳 China, 🇲🇳 Mongolia and 🇷🇺 Russia.

I booked a couchette in a second class Soft Sleeper compartment which is supposed to host 4 passengers. Opening the door, I was in fact not really surprised to find 7 passengers already using the compartment : 5 adults and 2 children.

My roommates shuffled free a little spot in the corner of a couchette so that I could join the party : I can now enjoy 10 hours of smelling food, Douyin tunes, crying babies and parents trying to lift the children's mood by ratteling instant ramen packages 🎉 !

I love traveling by train 🥰 !

🌈✊🏽

#FOSSRail #TeamNightTrain

Braid in trains

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Can someone explain me why suddenly everyone puts on their shoes, jackets and packs their luggage ? The next stop of this train is in three hours. I guess I'm definitely missing something 🤔 ?

Meanwhile the steppe is becoming more and more arctic and my train is climbing up the slopes of the Greater Khingan range ⛰️.

Braid in trains

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The Harbin - Manzhouli railway was initially constructed in Soviet broad gauge.

The Chinese later regauged it to Chinese standard gauge.

When the region went under Russian rule again, it was converted back to Russian broad gauge.

Eventually the railway was regauged a third time back to Chinese standard gauge and retained as it until today.

And Europe fails at coping with different track gauges still nowadays 🤡🤡🤡.

Braid in trains

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After 10 hours, I reached my final destination for day 5 of my journey : 🇨🇳 Manzhouli. I quickly figured out how saying "I speak English" in *Russian* is the most important conversational skill to survive here as a foreigner. Fair, the city is populated by more Russian-speaking than Chinese- and Mongolian-speaking residents together and neighbors to 🇷🇺 Zabaykalsk in Russia.

The experience at the railway station was peak CR service : Three employees at the ticket office, in the middle of the night with no more train today. Of course, they could *not* sell me a ticket to 🇷🇺 Irkutsk and explained me I'd need to buy this in 🇨🇳 Beijing. Only bad, that in Beijing Zhao at the international ticket office, they explained me there are no trains to Russia.

At least we all agreed there in fact is a train leaving to 🇷🇺 Irkutsk tomorrow at 2 p.m. and they suggested that one of the many Russian travel agencies will likely be able to issue me a ticket.

My hotel was also highly confused how I don't speak Russian, also cannot fill a form entirely in Russian, didn't want to pay in Russian Rubel and showed them a foreign passport that was neither Russian nor had it a Chinese visa.

At least the receptionist told me there's a Russian travel agency right next to the hotel and she was convinced they could sell me tickets.

After all, this will be my quest for tomorrow.

Good night Fedi 😴 !

🌈✊🏽

Braid in trains

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Oh, and did I mention : It's -16 °C and according to my weather site it "feels like -26 °C" - which I can confirm after walking for 10 minutes looking for a taxi 🥶🥶🥶.

Braid in trains

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If you're wondering what I'm referring to when saying "various Russian travel agencies" : In a radius of 500 meter around my hotel, there are 15 different travel agencies - even though my hotel is half way surrounded by a lake.

I don't know why exactly but travel agencies seem to be a very cool thing here. The reason for sure isn't the huge demand of international railway tickets.

Braid in trains

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I'm really looking forwards to having a dining car with vegan food again tomorrow 😋. I'm sick of instant ramen and cookies 😵‍💫.

Braid in trains

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While travel agencies are *really* a thing here, currency exchange seems to be strange here.

Finding a travel agency who could issue me a cross-border ticket to Russia took me less than 10 minutes, I was searching for a currency exchange for over two hours - unsuccessfully. Even the banks were astonished when I asked them whether I could exchange money.

After three hours, I was finally told that the regional headquarter of the Bank of China does currency exchange and this is where I'm waiting now. It btw. took almost 10 minutes until I could clarify that I don't understand Russian.

I'm slightly nervous because my 🤝🏽 train is leaving in less than an hour and I know how picky Chinese railway workers are when it comes to international trains. I will time-gap waiting here to 15 more minutes and otherwise cross the border with just my 20.000 spare Ruble hoping for an exchange opportunity in Russia even though the rates will be much worse there.

While I expected a boring printout of an online ticket, I was handed a wonderful classic ticket booklet consisting of the cover booklet ticket, distance fare, sleeper ticket and transport remarks - all written in Chinese, Russian and - of course - German.

#FOSSRail #CrossBorderRail

Braid in trains

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Goodbye 🇨🇳 China, hello 🇷🇺 Russia !

The Bank of China told me it'd take two more hours to exchange currency so I had to leave without. Idk, I always thought currency conversation was strictly regulated in Europe but in China this seems to be an even more restricted business.

I arrived at the station 25 minutes before the departure of my 🤝🏽 353Ь train hopefully bringing me to 🇷🇺 Irkutsk.

I say "hopefully" because I don't have a ticket. My cross-border ticket is literally just for the 25 minutes ride between 🇨🇳 Manzhouli and 🇷🇺 Zabaikalsk whereas there hopefully is an electronic reservation for the rest of the journey stored with my passport number. Fingers crossed 🤞🏽.

In any case, it stays interesting - may the journey behind the enemy's line go safe 😇.

🌈✊🏽

#FOSSRail #CrossBorderRail #TeamNightTrain

Braid in trains

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I got a brand-new Kupe carriage I shared with one other traveler. After 40 minutes of travel time, we arrived in 🇷🇺 Zabaikalsk. The Russian passport check went much smoother than expected. I was notably told by the immigration officers that I'm the first (!!!) western (or how I'd phrase it : enemy's 🫠) traveler showing up here since the suspention of international trains in 2020. That's quite a title 😇 !

Sadly, my journey has to preliminarily end here. I gladly found a room in the station's Komnata Otdika, the hour-otels present at every railway station of Soviet style. I absolutely did not expect to spend a full day in a Komnata Otdika but wonderful memories to good old times and amazing railway trips immediately came up again 🥰.

I'll replan my journey tomorrow. Spontaneously rebooking the transsib is a nightmare since 1st class and often even 2nd class is always booked up. I'll need to split the bookings to subsections of the trains so that I'll still find free couchettes. Sadly that means my travel time highly increases and the tickets are becoming incredibly expensive. That sucks. I planned buffer time in 🇷🇺 Irkutsk before continuing westbound - but definitely not for almost two days of delay.

Let's see, this will be fun.

In any case : Day six and country four achieved 🎉 !

🚂🇹🇭🇱🇦🇨🇳🇷🇺

🌈✊🏽

#FOSSRail #CrossBorderRail

Braid in trains

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The advantage of staying in the Komnata Otdika : You can watch all the cute trains right from your window 🥰🥰🥰 !

My mission for today was to exchange enough Chinese yuan to Russian ruble that I can rebook all my trains - that's a complicated mission since Russian regulation officially does not permit to exchange more than 40.000 ruble (400 EUR) of foreign currencies per day.

Despite trying several places, I could indeed only exchange 40.000 ruble sice apart from one Bank, they all could not process passports written in Latin scripts.

I hoped I could just rebook my online ticket but I learned it's only possible to refund them to the original payment card. Sad, since that was a foreign credit card which obviously doesn't work in the enemy's country thanks to the solidary sanction regime.

After all, the kind employee at the Kassa gave her best to help me. She was so kind and friendly, she really made my day. And damn, my Russian is getting really much better here. I actually understood everything she said apart from the fast numbers.

After all, I could afford all preliminary tickets up to 🇷🇺 Sankt-Peterburg by booking two days in 2nd class Kupe. Once I'm able to exchange more money I'll consider rebooking the tickets - after all the travel stress I'm not so keen to spending 52 hours in a compartment with crying children.

So far so good. Now I need to rebook my hotel and move some appointments. Fingers crossed 🤞🏽.

So far, day 7 of my journey : I did not make any travel progress but lots of paperwork.

Oh, and after I haven't eaten anything yesterday and today, I *finally* bought some food.

Having all tickets up to the border in my wallet, I'm looking forwards to be back in a democratic country 😵‍💫.

🌈✊🏽

#FOSSRail #TeamNightTrain

Braid in trains

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The new tickets were 56.000 RUB (570 EUR) in total. 3.5 days in second class Kupe and 1.5 days in first class SV.

I still have 10.000 RUB (110 EUR) left so I'll urgently need to exchange some more of my 5.000 RMB (650 EUR) to Russian rubles. I hope I'll find a bank with Kassa in 🇷🇺 Chita tomorrow morning during my 1.5 h transfer because otherwise the 40.000 RUB limit will hit me hard the day after when I need to rebook tickets, buy some groceries and most notably pay my hotel stay in 🇷🇺 Irkutsk.

I'm really proud of 🇪🇺 Europe how hard we've made it to use Russian rubles - we did everything correctly ! (And yes, that means my trip will be more complicated but that's how it should be. Solidarity with Ukraine !)

🌈✊🏽

Braid in trains

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After 1.5 days of forced break, I'm finally back on track. Leaving the adorable railway station I spent the last full day in behind, I'm boarding the 393ь train from 🇷🇺 Zabaikalsk to 🇷🇺 Chita-2 where we will arrive around 8 a.m. after 12 hours of travel time.

The train is composed of old, comfortable Ammendorf carriages with the sweet smell of slight smoke from the coal heating - by far my favorite night train rolling stock 🥰.

I'm sharing my Kupe with an elderly woman also traveling to 🇷🇺 Chita (I mean, where else would you want to go in Transbaikal ?) and I guess I will have a relaxed night with sweet dreams of democracy and Ukrainian victory 💙💛.

Sleep tight, Fedi 😴.

🌈✊🏽

#FOSSRail #TeamNightTrain

Braid in trains

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After 12 hours, I arrived in 🇷🇺 Chita-2 the next morning where I got a transfer to the Trans-Siberian-Railway on the famous 001Э "Росси́я" composed of 20 modern carriages on it's 6 day journey from Valadyvoshock to Moskva bringing me to my next destination, 🇷🇺 Irlutsk next to Lake Baikal, the world's biggest freshwater reserve with a surface slightly larger than Belgium.

After 33 hours in a Kupe with stinky food, loud music and lots of beer consumed I'm happy to have some rest in a hotel after I arrived here at 3 a.m. local time.

So far, so good. So far day 8 (or already day 9 considering the time of the night ???) of my journey. My mission for tomorrow remains unchanged : I still need to find a place to exchange my remaining 5.200 RMB to Russian rubles.

Good night everyone 😴.

🌈✊🏽

#FOSSRail #TeamNightTrain

Braid in trains

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One day on 🇷🇺 Irkutsk to get everything settled. Groceries and railway tickets acquired after a long hunt for a bank which does foreign currency exchange.

At the Kassa, the prompt "Cancel my direct ticket and sell me two separate tickets for the same route with just one hour transfer in between" left the employee in confusion. It took a while until I could explain how this way there are still SV compartments free instead of a fully booked Kupe.

After the past three unpleasant rides in filled up 4-berth compartments I'm really looking forwards to my own, calm space again.

The 009Н, the cheap transsiberian through-train, will leave tomorrow afternoon so that I can still catch some sleep and some good food before the final 4-day sprint from 🇷🇺 Irkutsk via 🇷🇺 Novosibirsk and 🇷🇺 Ekaterinburg to 🇷🇺 Sankt-Peterburg.

🌈✊🏽

Braid in trains

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My progress so far :

- 9 trains
- 8.000 km
- 3 nights on trains (5 night trains though in which I also just slept at day time)
- 8 travel days
- 4 countries

🚂🇹🇭🇱🇦🇨🇳🇷🇺

Still 6.000 km and four nights on trains until I'll reach 🇪🇪 Narva and cross back into the 🇪🇺 EU - I'm looking forwards to traveling my last 3.000 km in democratic countries with these cool things like human rights, independent justice, fair elections and freedom of speech and press.

Always remember how much it's worth fighting for this. How much it's worth supporting 🇺🇦 Ukraine - because Europe's freedom is defended in Charkiv, Cherson and Zaporizhzhia !

Russia's terror regime will not stop after Ukraine. Estonia, Lithuania and Moldova will be next - while the domestic enemy in Hungary, Serbia and Slovakia will continue weakening our fraternity.

🌈✊🏽💙💛

#FOSSRail #SlavaUkraini #RussiaIsATerroristState

Siegfried.19h ago

@lewd If you can find the time. Try to see the lake! It is a beautiful place to be. (I even jumped in the water at around 11 °C in June.) They serve freshly smoked fish which I found exceptional delicious!

MisterMaker 10h ago

@lewd 6 days train ride 😯

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@MisterMaker Aaaahm, I'm traveling 17 days in total 😅 !

MisterMaker 6h ago

@lewd yeah but like that train goes like 6 days non-stop?

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@MisterMaker Enough people to fill up 2 trains with 20 carriages per direction per day.

Else, Someone 3h ago

@lewd
Whoooa, not a thread I was expecting to find when I was opening Fedilab today. This sounds so exciting, I heard most of these names (Harbin, &c), but never been farther East than maybe Samara... Perhaps one day, years or decades. Stay safe and good luck!

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@nobody Thanks ! Hopefully one day it will be safe again to casually travel here.

Sarah Wilson 2d ago

@lewd Electric traction, but still coal fires in the carriages? 🤯

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@SarahAS2 Yeeeeees 🥰🥰🥰 !

Wrzlbrnft 2d ago

@lewd Problems with passports in Latin letters?

"Just transcribe my name to 'Брейд' ".

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@wrzlbrnft Yeah, that wasn't the problem - their OCR software couldn't process it.

Wrzlbrnft 2d ago

@lewd I already assumed that. 😄

@lewd I thought Russia didn’t use containers

Tanja Wawuschel 3d ago

@lewd be safe

@lewd fuerza!

Tante Tarantel 3d ago

@lewd stay safe!

@lewd ah conductors carry rosahajs there too

zugreiseblog_eu 3d ago

@lewd do you have any idea why they have German as a third language on the ticket? I was already surprised when my ticket from Bukarest to Chisinau featured German text, but on a ticket from China to Russia I don’t see any reason why you would use German as a third language.

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@zugreiseblog_eu Germany is the UIC standard language for international tickets. Any UIC member issues classic booklet tickets in German. Another interesting remark : Where every you are in the world, if the railway still issues classic ticket booklets, the agents *will* understand the German terms "Buchfahrkarte", "Streckenfahrschein" and "Bettkarte". This already avoided lots of trouble on my travels in countries where we didn't find a common language.

zugreiseblog_eu 3d ago

@lewd that‘s interesting, didn’t knew that until know. Is that also part of the reason why they use the word „Platzkart“ in Russian?

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@zugreiseblog_eu No, that developed independent of this. But it's also a loanword from German

Jonathan 4d ago

@lewd is my spirit animal 😊

波鉄 (Hatetsu)4d ago

@lewd Presumably because they don't expect the heating to keep up with the tempurature dropping deep into freezing as you climb? Hmm, doesn't explain the luggage thing, though

govinda hari dasa 4d ago

@lewd
😀 envious.🙂
.. And I wish I could get Douyin. Tiktok, I check the uBO panel every few days to see if the Ggl trackers show up.

Jonathan 5d ago

@lewd safe travels!