The Pioneers' Railway

Today we went for an outing, just Roy and me. The sun was shining, although the weather was quite hazy, so long distance photography was not optimal. We got on the number 6 tram, then on the number 61 tram which took us to the Pioneers' Railway (current non-communist name: Children's Railway) up in the hills. This leftover from the old days is still so sweet and quaint that nobody cares about its delapidated state, the fact that the children are running it is still the main attraction. The old diesel engines are driven by adults, but everything else, the signals, selling the tickets, starting the trains, saluting them as they pass the station are still the children's jobs. The train trip took 45 minutes and most of it followed a level course through lovely woods. There being no foilage we could see all the villages at the back of the woods through the trees.

When we got off at the other end we went for a meal in a restaurant up on top of the hill, followed by a good hour's hike down to the cemetery where Roy forgot to ask something the last time. The trip down was quite interesting without a map. I memorised the rough direction and took a picture of the map hanging in the restaurant with my phone.

We passed some palaces, mostly populated by the nouveau riche and embassy folk. Our direction was so spot on that at the bottom of the lane we followed all the way we found ourselves at the back gate of the cemetery. We did have one slight detour we had to take when we found one gate locked but we got back down to the cemetery office long before the cemetery closed. Unfortunately the office closed long before that, so we will have to go again some other time.

The picture of the grave above is only interesting for the bullet holes in it. Somebody must have had it in for this particular person as we saw no other damaged graves at all. Since then we looked him up on the internet and he seemed a nice XIXth century chap favouring co-operatives, so God only knows why his grave has bullet holes in it. Just before the main gate we found the part where many famous actors and writers were buried, which was also quite interesting.