MOROCCO IS ACCELERATING! feature - Alstom
MOROCCO IS ACCELERATING! feature - Alstom
MOROCCO IS ACCELERATING! feature - Alstom
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64<br />
travel �<br />
in the kitchen of the Provotniks, the traditional<br />
hostesses allocated to each car…<br />
Imperceptibly, the Moscow-Nice takes on<br />
a slight air of the Trans-Siberian. Accustomed<br />
to long journeys across the immense white<br />
spaces, the Russian passengers have literally<br />
conquered their cabins, installing teapots,<br />
utensils and provisions, recreating in a few<br />
minutes their familiar microcosm. An entire<br />
world which they carry around with them.<br />
What is more, some of them do<br />
not leave their couchette.<br />
On the recommendation of<br />
Elena, my brunette Provotnik,<br />
I retire to bed early. Tomorrow,<br />
at fi ve in the morning, we will<br />
be crossing the border.<br />
Her advice turns out to be<br />
excellent as the formalities last<br />
three long hours, punctuated by<br />
the successive visits of fi rst the Russian, then<br />
the Belarusian and fi nally the Polish police and<br />
customs: “Passport! Fransuski?” “Da, da”. It is<br />
impossible, after this procession, to fi nd sleep<br />
again. Particularly as changing the wheels,<br />
which makes it possible to go from the wide<br />
gauge Russian track to the European<br />
standard, shakes the convoy painfully, as<br />
the cars are raised one after another with<br />
the aid of a powerful hydropneumatic pump.<br />
The plains of Central Europe<br />
Dawn breaking dictates that I wake. I then<br />
have the pleasure of taking – for the fi rst and<br />
doubtless last time in my life – a real shower<br />
on a real train. It is an extraordinarily original<br />
sensation to soap oneself while watching<br />
the morning landscape slip past the window.<br />
A landscape of peat, dark fallow land and<br />
bare trees lashed by gusts of rain, with here<br />
and there a squat farmhouse. Damp paths<br />
carpeted with willow and birch leaves, which,<br />
I am sure, smell delicious. Warsaw is<br />
approaching. After a stop in the Polish capital,<br />
we head straight south, cutting across<br />
the Czech Republic to reach Vienna early<br />
in the evening.<br />
At breakfast, I met Pieter, a Muscovite<br />
originally from Holland, and the frail Siberian,<br />
Svetlana, who is joining her husband in Nice.<br />
She has taken the train simply because<br />
she is scared of fl ying. She is accompanied