A train ride with(out) my scooter 🚂🛤️

Love going around with my scooter, but still missing some train rides in indonesia. Close to everything is possible, here, so why not get my bike on a train?😎
As this is very likely my first and last train ride in Indonesia, this deserves it's own posting - only railway stuff here 😬
It's not like our car-trains in Austria, where you can drive directly on a car-waggon, even with your bike. Here you have to give your bike to the train company's cargo shipment. 🚂📦
After doing some research, I decided to give my scooter to the cargo office of the governmental railway company, instead of any private one. This is KAI, or "Kereta Api Indonesia", this company's name's meaning is "Railway Indonesia", but the word-by-word translation of "Kereta Api" means "fire wagon". 😅🥰
At the office, the young lady was a little bit overstrained by a crazy foreigner who wanted to ship his bike, so she called her colleague who arrived 10mins later, clearly not in charge at this time. His English was still only rudimentary, but with the help of the translation app and a lot of talking with "hands and feet", we managed to do all the paperwork. Leaving my scooter, my only key and the official registration to the cargo office felt strange, but the two cargo officers were so nice, friendly and helpful (and a little bit proud, I think 😅), that I've never lost any trust.
Before I jumped on the train, the next day, I passed by the cargo office and met the officers again (now both in charge), my scooter was already perfectly packed and ready for shipment. 😎
So I had a great relaxing train ride and enjoyed some nice views from the train window. My first travel time not riding by myself for more than a month was very nice, even if I've missed my scooter 😅😉But, to be honest, this area of Java is an agricultural area, so most of the time I was watching on rice fields and other agricultural landscapes. Nevertheless, fascinating and once again I felt happy and grateful for being able to travel through this amazing country, passing by several villages, cities and a few industrial areas.
Have seen some oil facilities on my way, too - I've already learned on Sumatra that Indonesia is an oil exporting country, producing way more oil as it needs for itself.
At Surabaya I had to wait for one night for my scooter to arrive, as I brought him too late for a same-day-shipment, which was nice to explore this city a little bit, too.
As they didn't accept my WhatsApp number (only local numbers allowed), I didn't get any notification about the scooter-pick-up (I'm sure they would've called, sooner or probably later... 🙈), so I decided to just go to the cargo terminal. "Going there and asking directly" is in general the best you can do in Indonesia, for most of the services needed. 😅
Getting a lot of attention from the cargo-staff, as soon as I showed my shipping receipt, 3 or 4 guys started immediately to unpack my scooter. 😅 Mirrors, phone-holder and license plates were remounted so fast, my helmet appeared out of nowhere and quickly the scooter was lifted down the ramp by 5 guys. 😲
Everything went so fast, it was just impressive to see! 😎
And now it felt great to be on the road again, looking forward to all the things upcoming! 🤩Leggi altro