Day 136 - First Class

train image by kev_bite, via Flickr

I had an unusual schedule in Romania. I had classes only Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, leaving me with long weekends every week. And since Iasi was only a provincial capital (read the equivalent of a county seat in my thinking, quite similar to my hometown of Moorhead), I saw the long weekends as my opportunity to travel to the real capital, Bucharest.

There were two ways for me to travel, by train or by plane. And for reasons that I didn't understand, the price of a plane ticket was less than the price of a train ticket. So I flew often.

The single flight to Bucharest each day left in the late morning, when the sun was still shining and the fog had lifted. The train left late at night and arrived in Bucharest, when there weren't delays, around dawn. The return flight from Bucharest was in the late afternoon, before sunset because the pilots had to be able to see to navigate. There were no instrument-guided flights. The return train also left at night. So while I could usually fly from Iasi to Bucharest, I often had to swap my plane ticket for a train ticket on my return as the Bucharest to Iasi flights were often cancelled because of overcast skies.

There was just one class on the planes. I don't think there was even any name for the class, it was just flying. But the "trip" began before we got on the plane. The only way to get to the airport as to take the bus from the downtown Tarom ticket office downtown. I suspect the reason was simply expediency; not many people had cars, so a bus to the airport was about the only was to get there. There might just have been an element of "security" to this arrangement, too. No one had a reason to have to know where the airport was if the only way you could get there was by having someone else drive. I give some credibility to the notion that security was a factor based on the throughness of the screening of passengers before we could board the plane. Of course, since then, screening of passengers has become almost as intrusive in the U.S., but always in the name of security.

The fight from Iasi to Bucharest was only about an hour. The train trip was closer to eight hours. While there were no separate classes on the plane, there were at least three classes on the train. First class had two bench seats, facing one another, one side of which could be converted into sleeping berths to accommodate two passengers. Second class had two bench seats facing one another, both sides of which could be converted into sleeping berths, accommodating four passengers. And third class had two bench seats, accommodating six passengers who were lucky if they could get any sleep sitting up the whole trip.

When I traveled by train, I usually went second class. There was plenty of room for four passengers and I could usually avoid conversation - my Romanian was not conversational quality; i could ask directions and figure out what was said so long as the person used a few gestures to accompany the words - by bringing something to read. But one time, I bought a first class ticket. It was a good thing, too, because on that trip the train was delayed by about four hours. I was used to getting up from the sleeping berth just as the sun was rising and just before the train rolled into Bucharest's North station. But on that occasion, the sun was already up when the porter came through to make sure we were all up, and I could tell from the view out the window that we were still miles away from Bucharest. I had just one fellow passenger in the compartment, and I am sure we passed some pleasantries, but there was no conversation. We both got ready to get off the train and we just waited for it to arrive.

On that return trip, I traveled second class. And I ended up in the same compartment as my first class companion from the Friday before. And that is when the big difference between first and the other classes became clear. She was the same person. I was the same person. But the trip was very different because instead of leaving me in my private world in the first class compartment, she wanted to talk. She asked me question after question, none of them suspicious or curious; it was just conversation. Where traveling first class gave me privacy, second class demanded involvement from me. But it wasn't too difficult as the conversation ended once the sleeping conversions were accomplished and we all crawled into our berths for the remainder of trip.

I don't think I ever set out to test this further, but I did end up once in a third class compartment. I am sure it was the result of there not being any available seats in first or second class. That experience demanded even more conversation and involvement since there were no sleeping berths. I think I may have been able to doze a bit, but I recall having my Romanian skills tested pretty seriously on that trip. I concluded that third class meant the ticket included entertainment - conversation with the other passengers.

I always found it curious that there were classes on the trains in Romania at that time since the communist system emphasized the equality of all in a system where everyone took part in mundane community activities such as sweeping the streets and going off to the collective farms during harvest to help gather the crops. It was called patriotic work. All the students at the university were expected to take part. I suspect all the teachers also took part, although the foreign lecturers were not expected to do so. The fact that everyone took part in the work was something I found admirable in a way. It meant that it wasn't possible to know if the person wearing the blue dust coat sweeping the street was a surgeon, a university professor, or a laborer. And I think that meant that everyone was equally respected or disrespected. I am a "the glass is half-full" kind of person, so I chose to see it as respect.