Getting stuck at a border to save 20€...

The ticket from Ternopil to Bucharest was 40€... A bit expensive when you know that we paid 5€ maximum for longer distances... So we deceided to take a ticket til the border and then we will "talk" with romanian controler. I've already done that couple of time so I can imagine that will be the same... I imagine bad sometimes...

So Luba left us at the train station and we had 15 minutes before the train leave. So i go outside of the train to smoke a cigarette and the controler comes to speak to me... He speaks very close to me and very quite....even if nobody is around! "americancki??" "niet.... franshuski" And he start a quite long monologue... i don't understand anything except some words like "dollar" or "euro"... In fact I understand exactly what he wants but i play the one who don't understand... i finish my cigarette and go back in the train. We leave.

My "friend-controller" comes again to talk to us. He wants 36$ and we have the ticket to Bucharest... We try to explain to him that's too expensive, we don't have any dollars, only few hrivnas left... I do a little drawing to explain him that we will buy the tickets to his romanian friend... He doesn't understand and leave us. Good... but not so good!

We fall asleep and one hour after someone knock violently at the door... My dear "friend". He screams on us that's the border and that we have to leave the train quickly. We do. We go down of the train and we see around 20 border keeper. We try to talk on romanian with us. some of them understand. We explain them that we will buy the ticket in the train and that we want to go to Bucharest. But the controler has already closed the door of the train and we are outside, in the cold. They check our passport. They say to us that we have to wait for the big chef of the train station to ask if we can go in the train even if we don't have any ticket... We really hope cause we are in a kind of asshole of the world, and only one train a day pass by... They tell us to go to the ticket office to buy it... But the price is still 36$... we don't want to pay that price. Other border keeper come to us and this time they take our passport. They just tell us that we will get back our passports in "lot of time"... OK!! lot of time means for them 2 hours!!

During those 2 hours the train left cause they have to change the wheels... System of rail isn't the same in the ex-USSR and other part of the world...
During those 2 hours we are cold and waiting...
During those 2 hours we see the romanian controler! We start to talk with them and say them our story. They say to us that's ok we can buy the ticket to them in the train... but we still don't have our passports...

2 hours later our passports are back with the stamp to leave the country. We can go in the train!! We are waiting the romanian controler now. But he doesn't come, instead of that a new ukrainian boarder comes to us... He just wear a t-shirt, nothing official and we don't believe him that we have to pay money to him. He doesn't speak romanian so he calls someone in the train able to translate our chat. We tal 15 minutes, the controler is very patient and we don't want to pay to him. he ask us 10€ each to go to suceava, 1 hour from where we are... He is very patient but after 15 minutes he starts to be angry and say to us that now we can choose between giving money to him or leave the train... We give money. In suceava we can go to buy an official train ticket! No romanian controler anymore... He comes later but luckyly doesn't ask money to us. We ask him if we can pay the ticket from Suceava to Bucharest. He justs answer 3with or without ticket?" we reply "the cheaper!" It's 10€ each again... We give him 20€ , takes it tham gives it back to us saying that we will pay later... But he doesn't come back and we fall asleep!

Again we are wake up by someone knocking strongly to the door... The ukrainian-controler... "suceava!!! leave the train!!!" so we start to pack our backpack and leave the train. Then he tell us that he can give us the ticket to Bucarest for 10€ each... Here we go!! At 7:00pm we ar in Bucharest. We spent a lot of time chatting; arguing, stressing, waiting, paying but at the end this "train ticket" was 23€ instead of 40€ we had to pay with the official way to get it...

Damn! Home Sweet Home!