[Rick Lee]

I took a train from Krakow to Kiev around 1992. Trains entering the former Soviet Union have to be converted to the old Soviet track gauge. So our entire train was hoisted up by these monstrous jacks, all the wheels were pulled off and new ones installed. This took around three hours. Then we got to have border formality fun, entering the Ukraine.

I think the trains in eastern Germany still have the old "DR" or "Deutsche Reichsbahn" painted on some of them. I heard East Germany was too poor to rename and repaint their entire train system, so they kept the old name, one of the only remaining vestiges of the Third Reich. I don't know how they were able to cover up all those falcons and swastikas, if they were too poor to rename/repaint everything else on the trains.