We finished up our time in Bucharest, Romania on Saturday and had to catch our 1st train to Belgrade, Serbia at 8:45 on Saturday night. We arrived at the train station around 7:30 with plenty of time to catch our train. We decided to buy some water and snacks as we had a 13 hour train ride ahead of us. The train we needed to board arrived and as Jenny described it, we got to play Tetris with our backpacks. We had a 6 person cabin for 6 people, 6 large backpacks, 6 daypacks, a guitar and a few bags of food. Three rules for world race packing.
1) Don’t pack anything breakable in your pack.
2) Shove really hard
3) Shove some more until everything fits.
We managed to get everything in and Ben and Stacie headed off to buy a few more snacks. I was sitting relaxing on the train as it was air conditioned. After a week of 90+ weather, the air conditioning was amazing. I heard a whistle and Michael said, “They do know the train leaves at 8:45.” I looked down at my watch and it was 8:44 and I popped out of my seat heading toward the train door. Thankfully, we were the last car and so I popped out next to the conductor who was clearing the train to leave the station. The look of panic on my face must have stopped him short. I couldn’t decide what to do. Stacie had the tickets. We had Stacie and Ben’s things and their passports. We didn’t have enough time to haul all of our stuff back off the train.
I started hollering Stacie and Ben as the conductor looked at me. He asked where they were and to run get them. I didn’t know exactly where they went in the train station and explained this. He said to call. Michael thankfully is on the logistics team for our squad so he had a phone but didn’t have Stacie’s number programmed into it. He ran back to the train car and was booting up his computer to get the phone number to call them.
Meanwhile, the second ticket taker began to get impatient as we were already 3 minutes after our departure time. I am screaming Ben and Stacie’s name at the top of my lung hoping they will hear it and come running. Finally, the conductor has to give the signal to send the train. I was standing on the platform so hopped on the train as it was moving still looking for Ben and Stacie. I see them strolling (yes strolling) toward our platform. They see the train pulling away and start running. But, the train is accelerating and I don’t think there is any way they are making this train as we are going too fast for them to catch. I’m still hanging out the door, but am at the point of giving up hope when the train engineer hits the breaks. Yep, they stopped the train at the very end of the platform long enough for Ben and Stacie to get on board.
I will say this, I have never in all of my train travel had a train wait for someone and have also never seen a train stop once it was started. I experienced two firsts in a five minute span so our whole team could make the train.
Eighteen hours later (we had to change trains in Belgrad to get Uzice) we have arrived and are enjoying our accommodations. We are staying in a house with 7 other people from Germany/the US/ Holland who work with YWAM and are very thankful for showers and beds until at least August 1.
Tomorrow we will find out more about what we will be doing in the days ahead. Thanks for your prayers, we obviously needed them during our travels.
Tomorrow morning we head off to help set-up an English camp for another ministry. The plan is we will be there until Wednesday when we will return and begin ministry in Uzice.
Prepping for the train ride to Uzice.
