Track geometry

The Caucasus trip has left me with 653 images to sort, rotate and sometimes just understand. Leaving Yerevan, a velvet red car was ageing away with the inscription “Путеизмеритель”. Obviously, my rudimentary Russian failed me with this one:

But long live Wiki, now I know, it was a train geometry car that I saw. In the past I used to feel like one, carefully examining at least the psycho-geographic curvature of European railroads. Remembering the very last day of 1998, a long train ride from Strasbourg to Vienna with Trainristo Gastronomie. In those days, restaurant cars had an experiential dimension, a slow bottle of Grüner Veltliner as the train made its way through the winter mist.

Today, that image came back dreamingly reinterpreted just as I found out that I will be heading down to Villach and Italy in ten days, guiding some Swedish train charter passengers and the TV-programme “Packat och Klart”.