I remember my first train ride at age six, but somehow I have trains wired in my brains with every 1930s-40s Black & White movie. It's the romance and expectation that get to me.

My only real experience is travelling from Budapest to Sofia in July 1990. My Hungarian friends had told me that the food situation in Bulgaria wasn't that great. (This turned out to be somewhat true, and even truer during the winter of 90-91.) Anyway, we decided that I would "smuggle" out sugar, coffee, and chocolate out of Hungary. (At that time, I was told that it was not permitted to take them out of the country.)

So I get to the Hungarian-Yugoslav border and, of course, I'm rather nervous. Then I see that the Yugoslav border guards are going through luggage and even throwing suitcases out of the windows and making some people get off the train. (I was told by a Bulgarian grandmother travelling in my compartment that that they were East Germans and/or Russians.) So by the time the guards get to me, I'm really nervous...compounded by the fact that I was told that I needed to get a visa at the border.

The border guard took one look at my passport, smiled, stamped the visa in my passport, and then proceeded to give the grandmother just a little trouble. He didn't even open up my suitcase. The coffee and other stuff made it into Bulgaria safely.