Makes sense. Thanks for the IRL experience of changing gauges in that part of the world. All the more surreal, if you were a sleeping passenger when they woke you up to do that.
Which I would have been, except the Soviet train folks triple-sold our seats.
At the border, hungry and wanting food, I tried to ask about buying some - but of course, we had been required to get rid of our Soviet money at boarding and unable to purchase Czech money. And the guards insisted they could not speak Russian, only Serbo-Croatian, while we understood
every single thing they said and could tell that they understood us, as well.
I don't think I needed it to be more surreal. (And unbeknownst to me, it would reach that higher level of surreal a few days later, on the train from Prague (Praha) to Copenhagen (K