The Horror Express

Finally something happened in my generally uneventful life so I'm not gonna miss the oportunity to mail you something different than the usual work-is-all-the-same-and-Uni-is-boring-what-am-I gonna-do-after-I-graduate kind of crap :)

Remember an old horror movie with Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and Telly Savalas -"The Horror Express"? It's about a train going through Siberia and some weird events going on... Transporting a frozen prehistoric creture, presumably "The Missing Link", through the Russian wilderness and before you know it the creature comes back to life and flashing around with glowing red eyes it leaves a trail of corpses with bleeding eyes and as if that is not enough by itself the train is attacked by Cossacks, it comes out that the prehistoric creature is actually just a body "inhabited" by an alien form of life that came to Earth a billion years ago and just when you think it can't get any worse, the creature resurrects all the corpses and the train gets full of zombies!!

Cool, isn't it? Well, my story is a bit similar :)

This Sunday there was a Jedi meeting in Sofia, the 1st since December (and in December I couldnt go). We started our website and forum 6 years ago and we have this tradition, each March we get together and celebrate - it's the best oportunity to reunite with my old Star Wars buddies! By the way this Sunday we'll celebrate again, this time in Plovdiv :)

I was to take an early train at 8am and be in Sofia 10:20. My mom of course laughed at me, she never believed I can get up early and get together my stuff and take my lazy ass to the trainstation in time... But I proved her wrong! After all we're not talking about some stupid lecture at the Uni where I dont even want to go, let alone be on time...

The meeting was to start at 14:00 so I had some time to kill and I met with Temenuga, a girl who gave me and Ania some shelter when we were in Sofia, a good friend of mine. We wakled and talked, went around the bookstores where I couldn't resis but spend some (ok, ok, not "some", "a lot of") money on a great big encyclopaedia in English about the history of the comics and graphic novels.

Then I met with my Star Wars pals, we had some beers and we were talking about life in general, how cool the new "Clone Wars" TV series are, trying to remember if we celebrate 5 or 6 years birthday and so on... Time is never enough when you are with friends, I know that well, cause even four months in Poland were not enough. When it was time to go some of them came with me to the station and thank God, cause otherwise maybe I'd miss my train - it was in some remote area with no lights at all, only the red stops of the back car were on to indicate that there is something out there.

It came out that it's an international train going to Turkey. It was old, broken and with no lights. It was also nearly empty. I got in the 1st compartment, where it was just me and some of those guys with stupid fashion haircuts and sunglasses I hate. My friends were trying to tell me something from the outside, so I came out again to see what they were saying. They told me that there's a free compartment I can get for myself, they saw it from the outside but mby the tiem I got there it wasnt free anymore. So theer was one man in every compartment of 6 places, but I didnt want to spend the next 2 hours in bad company, so I was trying to see in the dark who is in the compartments... Another stupid looking guy, some prbably talkative grandma, some drunk bum, some old guy... Ok, a young woman! Usually they don't eat, blow their nose, pick their nose, smell bad, get drunk or talk to strangers on the train. (And by the way probably she would like to have someone normal there just in case, if something happens... I guess it's not exactly a pleasant experience for a girl to travel all alone by night on a train like this... but back then this didn't come to my mind. I was yet to realize it... )

I threw my backpack inside and opened the window to talk to my friends while the train was still there. Then the train started to move... I was listening to some music and relaxing, fortunately after some 5 minutes the lights came on and I could read a book. I was about to finish H.G. Wells' "The Invisible Man" ... (What a coincidence, Peter Cushing's character in "The Horror Express" is called Dr. Wells :) )

All of a sudden something falls outside in the coridor! I see a man, going down like a cut down tree and BANG! on the floor! I left my book right away and opened the door. A man at about 60 was laying down in the coridor, he wasnt moving at all, his eyes were open... I kneel and I ask him "Are you OK? I will help you to stand up..." no reaction at all. His eyes are so dim that I can't really tell if he is blind or drunk or something else.

A frame from "The Horror Express"... believe it or not, but the guy on the floor looked a lot like this, only without the blood.

I didn't feel any strong smell of alcohol. Are you OK? no answer, I wave in front of his eyes and I get no reaction at all, he moves his hand a bit and blinks, so he is alive ok, but still... What can we do? I ask and the girl has no idea. I go around the car to see if the ticket control guy is around but he wasnt. I ask the man again if he wants me to help him and f he will stand up but he doesnt respond... What can we do? I close the door and the girl is scared and stressed, and I tell her "Wow, geez, what kind of things happen on these trains..."

I see some movement in the coridor and I open teh door again. Out of the next compartment there's a guy coming out, 60 something, and ugrly as hell, like some drunk-London-beggar-criminal-right-out-of-Oliver-Twist or something. His hair greasy, his clothes dirty and his face crooked in a horrible grimace. "Do you know him?" I ask and I point at the guy on the ground. "Is he from your compartment?" - he waves and makes some sounds that cannot be possibly categorized as human speech. "Wont you help him stand up?!" and he waves with his hand like trying to say "The hell with him, leave him there, who cares!"

I closed the door again and me and the girl exchanged some words, she was scared and I asked her where is she going. She said she is from Pazardjik (I mean Пазарджик, whatever the English spelling is), it's one stop before Plovdiv. And introduced ourselves with nice to meet you and everything, talked a bit, it came out that she studies History in Sofia and so on...

And then some movement again, the guy in the corridor tried to stand up. At about the third try he managed and walked down the corridor. We continued our talk. "And I thought that Ive already seen things on trains!" and she asked me about it and I told her about my trip to Prague with Mesut and Gosia and the adventures we had...

After some time the ugly guy showed and knocked on the glass. I opened the door and asked him what does he want. He was mumbling and guesturing with his hands. I understod that "the other drunk man" ... did what?! went there? where? outside?? "yea yeaaa.. ousside!" outside?! outside of the train??? "yea yea, off da train... hez craizy" he fell of the train?! OMG!! and the girl was speechless too!! I closed the door, OMG he said that the other guy went there and fell off the train! - But they wont stop the train for him now? - Of course not, we cant even find the ticket guy, and even so he wont believe him, even I am not sure if I believe him... and the girl said "Let's NOT believe him!" - after all what could we do except hope that the drunk bum didnt fell out and died...

The ugly guy came again and again, waving at us and guesturing like "the other is crazy, he is out of the train", then he went away... and we were sitting there talking, then this guy walked down the corridor again! So after all he didnt fall out!! Thank god!

After some time the ticket control guy came and put some order into things, "Come on, I wont deal with you all night!" and I think he threw them out of the train on the next station or something, I dont know.

And this girl was telling me "So you see, you wanted to direct movies and you find yourself in a movie! Who could direct this crazy thing?"

So finally it was her stop, we exchanged phone numbers and then I was waiting alone for my stop.

Before I was back home and that's the end of my adventure!

But let's wait and see what will happen this Saturday on my trip to Turkey :)))