Party Members Must've Travelled this Way

The old woman chuckled when I told her my name was "like the cigarettes." Her solid gold smile glistened in the fluorescent light. There was no doubt she had been doing this job for a long time. Gone were the days of hand-printed tickets, here were the days of computers. And she had been there to witness it all.

I had been speaking Russian to her, while Julian chose Azeri. She seemed positively thrilled at this phenomenon. Then Julian mentioned that his last name was the same as "sugar" in Azeri. The woman could hardly contain herself. What were the chances that two white guys would show up with names resembling such commonly purchased items? Perhaps ironically, she still managed to spell our names wrong on the tickets.

We ended up with two Platzkarten seats costing a total of 5 AZN (6 US). Anything that cheap cannot warrant high expectations, right?

Julian and I met amidst the bustling metro station traffic. It was 8am. The train station square, which adjoined three different train stations and a metro station, was surprisingly busy. We passed through the doors of the old Soviet station building and made our way through the cold, musty air (a trait similar to all Soviet-era buildings) into the tunnel.

Up on the platform, the train idled while would-be travellers loaded cargo and bade farewell to loved ones. Julian and I were expectedly confused by the numbers on the printed ticket. Why can't they just print the carriage number in the carriage number square, we pondered? One attendant was particularly helpful. She found us our carriage and on we went.

Our jaws dropped when we saw the luxury we'd be sitting in for the next five hours. Only three seats per row instead of four, oil paintings on the wall, two TVs at either end, a pay phone, and a restaurant car. Was this Platzkarten or a carriage party members used to travel in?