8 rituals and traditions in Passenger Trains that you should learn before Traveling
For some, a train ride is a burdensome part of a business trip, for some it is a pleasant experience, for some it is an opportunity to travel. But no matter how you feel about it, you should know that passenger trains have their own traditions and rituals that should be followed. It is about them that we want to tell below.
Grocery chess is a board game in which opponents try to fill the limited area of the table with their food supplies as much as possible. Usually the game starts immediately after landing. Passengers, wildly rustling cellophane bags and foil, begin first of all to lay out provisions on the table, and immediately consume it. Often even before the departure of the train.
Your task (if you are traveling alone) - to win back at least a legitimate quarter of the territory. And if the table is already occupied by the enemy, then try to oust his havchik from his legitimate lands. If the fellow travelers are adequate and companionable, then the parties unite and no longer divide hryuchevo into "yours" and "mine".
In all other cases, fights for possession of the table are fraught with tension, hassle and murderous glances. And if your fellow travelers are traveling with children, then the fight can be immediately drained, since baby food, packages of chips, bottles of all kinds of sodas and so on will be everywhere, including your sovereign shelf. You will have to eat stealthily, from the edge and, perhaps, even on the weight.
Are you young and healthy? Did you get a lucky ticket to the bottom shelf? Then get ready! In nine cases out of ten, this world-old tradition awaits you, because you will almost certainly be accompanied by either an old man or a lady of immense size who bought a ticket to the top shelf and who literally on the move in a voluntary-compulsory form will ask you to change places with them, motivating the request with an iron argument that they will not be able to climb up.
If you do not want to attract the attention of the whole car and make a mortal enemy until the end of the trip, it is better to accept the inevitability and obediently climb up. However, if you are arrogant and artistic, then you can mow under a disabled person by switching the arrow to another sucker. And it is even better to agree that you will climb on the top shelf only during sleep, and in fact you will sit on your shelf at the bottom, otherwise there is a rather big chance that the grandmother/grandfather/ aunt will happily bring her carcass into a horizontal position for the entire trip, and you will have to lean on the edge of your shelf without even being able to lean on the wall.
If you are longer than 180 cm and you are lying on the top shelf, get ready that you will not be allowed to sleep by passengers constantly scurrying back and forth, who will specially scratch your legs with their ears.
Even if you stick them out a centimeter further than the shelf— they will still find them, strike them and wake you up. A popular countermeasure is smelly socks.
Escorts are a good tradition, according to which, in addition to the passenger directly, a crowd of mourners breaks into the car, which makes the car turn into a tin can stuffed with herring during boarding.
As a rule, there is nowhere for the guides to sit down, so they plop down on all the surrounding places, even if your feet are already there. Before departure, the mourners are driven out into the cold with piss rags, but the effect has already been achieved — you have been woken up.
There are two types of unexpected people and, as a rule, they are associated with "illegals" or "semi-legals". In the first case, you go into your compartment and suddenly find that some kind of murlo has already settled in your place. Naturally, you start checking the ticket in shock — did you make a mistake? No, they were not mistaken. It's just that clever conductors put illegal passengers on empty seats, who get off at the next station after yours.
If the illegal is adequate (which is rare), he explains everything and politely asks to be patient for half an hour / hour. But usually a bullish one comes across, which begins to swing the rights and behave in your place like a master. Word for word, well, and then it all depends on your quantity or physical capabilities. Either you run to complain to the head of the train, or the illegal falls out into the vestibule on his own. In any case, the mood from the trip is already spoiling on the vine.
In the second case (often in the middle of the night), a crowd of some puffing citizens with trunks suddenly barges into the car, who first see off for a long time, communicating in a loud whisper, and then the remaining passenger (usually a fat aunt) lands on your feet, and says - "I'll sit here until the next station until my seat is free?" You don't have to answer anything. She will still sit on your feet for the next half hour/hour. Accept it.
If you are a man and a gentleman, if you are traveling in a compartment with ladies, then in the evening before lights out you will have to go out for 10 minutes to smoke. Even if you don't smoke. If you forget that you need to get out— you will be asked modestly. But it's better not to bring it to this — get + 5 to karma and respect.
Yes, yes, girls are shy to change clothes in front of men. Didn't you know? In the morning, the ladies, as a rule, have time to change while you went to the toilet, so do not worry.
They have not yet managed to become a tradition, since the ban on smoking on trains was introduced recently, but everything is ahead. This ban divided all smokers on the train into law-abiding, partisans and cunning. The first ones are patiently waiting for large stations with parking lots for 15-30 minutes, where they let out to smoke on the platform (and these stations happen every 2-4 hours, which makes the smoky anon suffer and suffer).
The second ones are crammed into a secluded and well-ventilated corner (in the toilet with an open window or between the cars) and, without a moment's hesitation, smoke there. Bolder and riskier shots can do this in a regular vestibule, but this is fraught. And those who consider themselves smart let tobacco through their nostrils, suck snus or resort to other non-smoky ways of consuming the substance.
A mattress on a train is a living thing. In the absence of an intermediate host, he sleeps curled up on the top shelf. When trying to tame him, he begins to show temper and zeal, constantly striving to crawl away somewhere. And together with the person parasitizing on it. Therefore, it must be regularly corrected, returning to its place.
Actually, just above the shelf — just at the level of the mattress - there are hooks on the partition, for which the mattress, equipped with ribbon loops, can theoretically be fixed. But has anyone ever seen these loops? A radical solution has been found in modern TVZ compartment cars: there are no mattresses, the back side of the backrest performs their role on the lower sofa shelves, and the soft part of the shelf on the upper ones. The sheets are made in advance, since the bed is already included in the ticket price.
And which of these traditions did you encounter while traveling on the train?
Keywords: Passengers | Train | Trip | Useful tips | Rituals | Tips | Traditions