This train is bound for.... Blagoveschensk
After half running half walking at a brisk pace the length of the train I was confronted with the bull of the woman who was to be my provodnitsa - guarding over the door of the carriage like a lion over its prey - there was no way anyone was getting on to that carriage without a ticket. However once I produced my ticket, and passport and she had checked those over and looking back and forth between my passport photo and myself to make sure it really was me (two years of loitering must have really aged me) she tore the edge of my ticket, smiled a churlish smile as if to say, You have no idea what you are in for, and ushered me on to the train with the nod of her head.
My allocated seat was at the other end of the carriage, meaning I had the opportunity to walk the entire length of the carriage and check out my fellow travellers. Barely had I time to find my seat, get my bag on the shelf and cop a few stares from my curious co-travellers when without fanfare and on time the train pulled away from the station and we were off and the journey had begun. Despite thinking that I look rather foreign and quite international backpackerish everyone seems to presume that I am Russian and in the initial few conversations everyone speaks to me in Russian at full speed. I am sharing my cubicle with the Wharfie couple who sleep on the right side opposite me (him up, her down), Ms Short Shorts (down) and the Drunk (up) on the left side opposite me. Below me is the Mother (of the two daughters) but her daughters have the beds in the next compartment along so she shares that table (with the Grandma) whilst I get the table where her bed folds up alone. The Mother eventually concludes that I am not Russian, and despite trying to tell her I am from Australia I hear her refer to me as Americainey when talking to the others. It seems most people are sceptical that I can't at least understand Russian, but I overhear the kids practising phrases in English to each other like "What is your name ?" but none of them are game enough to try them out on me yet.
I climb up to my bed and try to stretch out to find that even if I sleep with my head in the corner my feet still hang off the edge and in the aisle, clipping a few people in the head as they walk past. Although it doesn't appear that way, the lateral beds are actually quite short. Unfortunately every single bed in the carriage (and the entire train) is taken so I just have to get used to it. A couple of hours in, after a small power nap we stop for the first time, and I get to get off the train and stretch out a little on the platform. An hour or so later, in the twilight of the late evening we stop again in a small town and this time everyone puts on their coat and heads for the door. Upon climbing down from the carriage it seems the entire village is on the platform with something for sale -there are wheelbarrows filled with soft drink, beer and vodka (Beer comes in huge two and a half litre bottles - like soft drink) buckets of wild berries, trays filled with dried fish, pickled vegetables, meat patties, boiled vegetables, loaves of dark bread that is almost black wrapped in tea-towels, salami and cooked sausages, lots of different vegetable fritters and ice creams. Curiously Russians also call a slab of ice-cream between two biscuits an Eskimo - and I buy one only so that I can tell people I have eaten ice cream in Siberia. We wait around for half an hour during which the engine is decoupled and shunts off the be replaced by another blue beauty. The provodnitsa herds us back in to the carriage as two men with mallets walking the length of the train and tapping the wheels (which give off a gentle metallic tone as if they were tuned gongs) and the brake boxes, and after an initial jolt we are rolling again.
A History Lesson
It wasn't until as late as the 1840's that the Russian started to take an interest in the huge mass of land that lay to the east despite its proximity (the Scramble for Africa was going on at about the same time) The adventurous governor of Siberia surveyed the area and noticing the Chinese hadn't occupied a large chunk of it he redrew the border with China, nicking some land in the process. As with most industrial development the main driver of the trans-Siberian railway line was the desire to exploit the resources of the huge territory and to exert de facto sovereignty to back up paper claims. Prior to the railway being built is was quicker to go the long way around - from Moscow head to the Atlantic Ocean and sail across it, then traverse the American continent, and then sail across the Pacific Ocean. In the late 1880's work commenced on the railway line, and several parts were constructed simultaneously. It would have been tough work, whilst most people know Siberia gets bloody cold, it also gets bloody hot - 40 degree plus temperatures in summer are not unheard of, and all the water means plagues of mosquitoes. Using imported and forced labour and working at a furious pace, by 1916 it was possible to take a train all the way from Moscow to Vladivostok without getting off - it was possible to go overland earlier than this but such a journey required getting off the train and sailing up rivers and across Lake Baikal. Ironically because of the speed of construction of the line and the narrow gauge, it was only possible for the trains to travel at 25 kilometres per hour meaning that it was still quicker to go the long way round. It wasn't until the Soviets took power that the line was upgraded to a double line with a wider gauge and bridges were reinforced that trains could up the speed. Electrification was started in 1929 and finally completed in 2002, meaning trains could be longer (and heavier) and faster.
Drinking Russian style
When I applied for my visa in Helsinki I picked up a copy of the City-In-Your-Pocket tourist guides for St P and Moscow, and they both had a section about drinking in Russia which started our with "Stereotypes about Russian drinking habits are mostly true". So I wasn't surprised when my first drinking session started about six hours in to trip, not long after the second stop. I was standing in the small compartment at the end of the carriage, sitting on the rubbish bin waiting for the toilet when Sasha (the Drunk no. 2) lurched in from having a smoke outside and took a sudden interest in me when I answered his comment to me in Russian with "Sorry I don't speak Russian. I don't understand). Despite his inability to say much other than Hello and What is your name ? in English, he took it upon himself to give me a proper Russian welcoming. After working out what each others' names were, he signalled me to wait and disappeared in to the carriage and came back with two of the biggest cans of beer I had ever seen. He seemed to apologise that the alcohol content was only a miserly 6.4 percent, opened both cans, said the equivalent of cheers in Russian and made sure I started drinking. A few moments later he made a face like which seemed to say, What was I thinking ?, again he disappeared in to the carriage and returned with a bottle of vodka and an apple. At this point I was starting to get a little nervous, but I like to try new things, so I watched as he showed me how to drink vodka. Basically it involved taking a large swig straight from the bottle (he had proudly showed me this was 60 percent proof) and then bite the apple. He insisted I have a go, and the vodka was actually quite palatable, and chewing the apple did distract from the gentle burning sensation in my stomach. When he insisted that we continue drinking the vodka this way I was a lot nervous. Fortunately we ran out of apple after three or four rounds - leaving about a quarter of the bottle left - so we had to console ourselves with drinking the weak beer. Whilst all this was going on he was nattering away to me in Russian, and growing of tired of repeatedly telling him I didn't understand, I just started nodding and smiling. Eventually we ended up back in the carriage at my seat and the hospitality continued - he laid out all the different food he had bought at the stop and was a little upset that I couldn't eat much of it due to it being meat. I am sure his continual talking to me in Russian only helped convince my fellow travellers that I did indeed understand Russian, but after a while he needed another drink and when he disappeared to get one I took the opportunity to lay out the bed and then lie down on my own.
The noise of the train is actually quite loud, and initially the rolling from side to side of the carriage makes getting to sleep a little difficult. The fluorescent lights that remain on all night shine right on my face and I have put up the straps in the middle of the bed to stop me from rolling out, so wedging myself between the window and the straps, and constantly changing between bending my knees and curling up my legs or trying stretching out my legs and trying to find somewhere to rest my feet on the edge of the bed eventually wears me out and I fall asleep.
A slight thawing on day two
Inside the train it is actually quite warm with most of the windows being closed, and all the sleeping bodies pumping out heat. The thermometer at the end of the carriage reads 25 degrees, so during a stop in the middle of the night I take the opportunity to get outside in the fresh night air, and have a stretch as the bed is a little cramped. Eventually I do manage to get a bit of sleep, most of it in the early hours of the morning. When I finally get out of bed the Wharfie opposite me says good morning and then using hand signals asks if I had slept well. The roving drunks had clearly been up for hours and where already under the weather - walking around struggling to stay upright against the roll of the train - I later discover that they get up very early and start drinking.
The view out of the window is quite limited, it is pretty much lines of trees on both sides of the track, with the odd clearing with a few dachas (summer houses) every now and then. From time to time we rumble through a city and all the concrete blends in to a single building.
Food on the move
I had prepared for my seven day adventure by finding two bowls in the camp ground in Helsinki, the gift of a therms flask from Sari, a dozen packets of instant noodles, some old freeze dried army hiking food from Sari's brother's time in the Finnish army - sachets of pasta, soup and apple and cinnamon drink, some salt, pepper and plastic cutlery borrowed from the boat to Estonia, a loaf of bread and packet of porridge from Estonia and the need to lose a bit of weight after being fattened up in Finland. Whilst their was a restaurant car on the train, and a couple of times a day the waitress would wheel a trolley with food on it around, the constant availability of boiling hot water allowing me to cook up soup, noodles and pasta and the food available at a lot of the stations we stopped at meant I never used these services. It was a bit of a lucky dip each time we stopped as to what would be available - I scored boiled potatoes in a garlic sauce a couple of times, a very tasty loaf of dark bread, prepared salads with beetroot and carrot, beans and peas, blueberries, raspberries (twice) mandarins, tomatoes and cucumbers, corn on the cob, pine nuts and plenty of biscuits, sweets and of course - ice cream. There was also plenty of meat on offer - Russians really love there salami and other processed meat, they also go in for the garden variety sausage, and big, fat greasy meat balls - one of which could smell out the entire carriage. When we went around Lake Baikal we had an onslaught of smoked fish sales people board the train - and the fish was surprisingly good (although possibly radioactive)
As the confusion of time and boredom started to grow on me meals where pretty much what marked out the day - breakfast everyday was porridge with some home made blueberry jam I picked up on the first day, lunch and dinner were more varied and depended on what I picked up during the day. My fellow travellers were always intrigued by what I was trying to whip up in my bright yellow egg shaped bowl, and I guess they started to feel sorry for me or maybe curious and would send random ingredients my way as gifts. Surprisingly many of them survived almost solely on pop-noodles - either the cup variety or in a container - which were available at every stop and even from the provodnitsa.
Russian women in action
Somehow Drunk no 2 managed to remember me from the first day, and when he got bumped from his table he moved the little birthday celebration he was having for one of the women in the carriage on to my table - I couldn't say no as I didn't realise what was going on until too late. Not long after we pulled in to a station for a half hour break and I though it would be a good chance to escape, but he caught me on the platform and I became his porter as he set about buying beer, vodka and almost every item of food he was offered. When I returned to the table my fellow travellers were surprised as I was to see me loaded up with provisions. When Drunk no 2 returned he insisted I have a beer, and then started pouring everyone vodka shots. It was early in the afternoon by this time so the Drunks were quite pissed, rocking around with the movement of the train spilling their drinks and food. After an hour or so it was becoming a little tedious and I was looking for an out when suddenly the Mother sprang in to action and move them on. I couldn't understand a word of what was said, and you could imagine how drunk four men in a bar in Australia would react to being told what to do by a woman, but they actually cowered - not only did they move on, they also cleared up the table before they left. It was interesting watching how Russian women deal with drunken men, they seem to have a lot of experience. Meanwhile, the men seem quite harmless, they bumble around, never really talk above normal volume, are courteous to everyone and other than making the odd mess they don't cause much hassle. In fact they are often the butt of a lot of jokes - especially Drunk no 1 (Alexei) who constantly struggles to get up to his bed. However by the end of day day the party of four are down to two - Drunks no 2 and 3 disappeared on the second night with all their luggage - I never managed to work out quite where they went. Alexei spends the entire time he is on the train drunk or asleep - his routine for the entire trip is to wake around 6am and start drinking - usually in the dining car. He would then return around 10am when everyone else was getting up and have some breakfast and a few more drinks and then he would hit the sack. He would wake again in the early afternoon, have a drink and then have some lunch and then head off to the dining car for some more drinking. By around 9pm he would return and scramble up in to his bed and snore like a trooper for the whole night, only to wake early the next morning to do it all again.
Passing the time
I spend a lot of the day reading (I have brought along Crime and Punishment) and staring out the window. Train windows don't give you much perspective and the landscape remains flat, covered in trees, with the odd river or lake and big towns that appear and disappear with equal rapidity. Sitting is actually quite uncomfortable - the thin cushion under me and the laminated wall behind me aren't really designed for comfort, so at every long stop I take the chance to get out and walk around and stretch. Inside the train the temperature is warm - somewhere in the mid twenties, causing the Baltic male gene to express itself - lots of guys take their shirts off to expose there white beer guts, and the rest are in singlets. I succumb to the peer pressure and put on my blue truckie singlet and get a few nods of approval.
Day 3 - Curiosity gets the better of shyness
By day 3 I can see that curiosity is getting the better of my fellow travellers, the kids are responding to my winks when they walk past. The Wharfie lets me know when when a long stop is coming up and we head out of the train together and stand around together on the platform. I meet the Student - Maxim, who brings his laptop over to my desk and uses his Russian-English translating program. Everyone crowds around and it handles the basics - so they get to find out that I am from Australia, a lawyer, no wife or kids, on holiday, not able to speak Russian, on my way to China and a vegetarian. The Wharfie's wife gets Maxim to ask me whether my mother misses me, and so I go through the whole 15 kids and grandchildren explanation - but I don't think they really believe me. As the questions get more complex the translations stop making any sense - Maxim types in something to do with me doing something about the drunks because I am a lawyer and it comes out as complete garble - so I laugh and we give up.
The Kids now see me as fair game and they ask me if I want to play cards. They deal out the cards - a Russian version of gin rummy, and I don't really understand the rules so they have to tell me when I play the wrong card. They don't seem to mind that I can't understand the rules or anything they say to me. They are three brothers travelling with their babushka and seem to enjoy the attention from an adult that has some very childish mannerisms. They try and think of what they know in English and all they can come up with is "I'll be back" from Terminator. They are so impressed by my Arnie impression that they run off to tell everyone about it and walk around all day saying "I'll be back" every time they see me. After a while I get bored with that so I say the only other line from the movie I can remember "Hasta la vista, baby" and they are even more impressed.
Later in the afternoon Maxim helps me buy some potatoes and some sort of fish patties when we stop and then he buys me a beer (1/2 a litre of 7.4 percent) and we eat dinner together, sharing what we have bought. Maxim then explains the rules to me and we end up playing cards with the Wharfie and a couple of other guys until late. The other kids in the carriage start to spit out a few words in English to me, and the Mother's two daughters even find a page on Australia in a learning English book they have. The Mother even says 'Thank you' when I get her mattress down off the shelf, and then 'Goodnight' when I get in to bed. I struggle to get to sleep, and discover that drunks can be annoying, as Alexei snores so loud all night without a break even my earplugs can't keep me from hearing it. I make the mistake of going for a stretch when we stop in the middle of the night. Outside it is quite chilly and I don't really get back to sleep until the early hours of the morning.
Day 4 In a Russian
We must be late because this morning the driver is going hell for leather, causing the train to rock from side to side. This makes my attempt to keep sleeping impossible, so I get up and manage to accomplish the challenge of making and eating breakfast as the train rocks without spilling anything. The Kids come back for some more cards and then we end up playing Russian Chinese checkers. I beat the three brothers (gotta take whatever victory you can) and so they recruit an older kid to play me. Turns out the Russians have different rules - like jumping forwards and backwards, and kings being able to move the entire length of the board - which I only find out when I make a wrong move. Needless to say the kid beats me, and I lose interest.
Communicating Russian style
The train had 17 carriages, and they were all pretty much full, so at a rough guess there were about seven hundred people in total on the train. In my carriage alone there were sixty passengers and not one spoke English, and I guess this was true for the entire train. However that didn't stop people trying to communicate with me - even on the fourth day, knowing I spoke not a word of Russian, they would still speak at me at full tilt in Russian, perhaps hoping that I would miraculously understand. Russians seem to have that same defect as English speakers who presume that really everyone innately speaks their language and if they keep at it long enough they will be understood. Sadly for the Russian there aren't that many non Russians who do actually speak Russians. What made it even more difficult was that unlike the Arabs who I had spent a while with, Russians use almost no hand movements or facial expressions - they would just stare at me and expect me to understand. I guess the education system during the Soviet times didn't place much emphasis on learning the language of the capitalists, and Russia still remains very proud of their own culture and a little inward looking.
Also, for those of you who have been subjected to my Russian accented English, ("Victor, you are a very unattractive man") just wait to you hear me now. What I found out whilst being around Russians is that my accent was actually way,way too subtle, and that in Russian all those back of the throat sounds are actually pronounced very,very strongly. So when I thought Russians might take offence at me doing my silly pronunciations of place names like Blagoveschensk or Krasnoyarsk, in fact rather than getting in to trouble I was offered a drink and encouraged to say it again.
Police checks
After the drunks had disappeared a few times a couple of uniformed police wandered through our carriage - each time they would check the passports of the two Chinese guy sitting behind me. Perhaps not recognising that I was a foreigner they passed by me each time, however once when I was waiting to go to the toilet and speaking a little English with Maxim two cops walked in and looked at me a little strangely. Luckily the toilet door opened at the same time so I disappeared out of view. When I came out they were gone, but Maxim told me not to worry. However, I explained to him by showing him my passport that whilst I did have a valid passport, my visa was due to expire on the last day of the train trip - so I needed to go straight from the train station to the port to catch the boat to China. Maxim said "Hmm" and then was distracted by the other visas in my passport.
Staying clean
One thing that the house on wheels lacks is a shower. Apparently tickets in the higher classes give you access to running water, but down in platsky all we get are a toilet and a basin. However, even for a renowned ablutions avoider like myself, after even a day of living in close quarters with sixty or so other people, at an average room 
temperature of 25 degrees, with the few open windows allowing in all sorts of air-born dust and not really displacing the pungent combination of smells arising from the mix of seemingly always garlic heavy food and sweaty bodies, I needed a wash. I observed how every once in a while one of my fellow travellers would toddle off to the toilet and come back looking, and smelling, a little fresher than the rest of us. The Wharfie even bought some shampoo for his wife, took some hot water to the shower and helped her wash her hair. So with the small, white hand towel that came in my linen package, and some Finnish wild smelling soap I headed off to to see if I could rid of the rising smell and thick layer of dirt that was building up everywhere on my exposed skin. As you can see from the photo of the toilet, there wasn't really much room to swing a cat, combined with the constant rocking and unpredictable violent lurches (the door to the toilet is locked when we are stationary) and the small basin and low tap, it took a few attempts before I worked out that the best clean I could get was to completely strip off, and throw the freezing cold water over myself using my handy yellow bowl. Then I would lather up, and at this point things got tricky because any slip I would have ended up sitting in the toilet. So I would quickly get as much water on myself as I could before I took a fall or the cold water caused my circulation to completely stop. Drying myself was an equally difficult challenge, and I have to confess that a number of times I left the toilet less than bone dry.
All this had to be accomplished in a relatively short time, for the sake of being a good neighbour to your fellow traveller (only 2 toilets between 60 people - which were also the only place to shower and wash food, plates etc) and in fear that the provodnitsa would start banging on the door to vacate the toilet so it could be locked as we approached a station. By da
y four I had worked out that late at night and just after the lunch rush were the best times to try and get a wash in. However, as the days passed the build up of the small amounts of dirt and scum that these rushed and precarious showers were removing only encouraged me to give up on cleanliness and accept having a layer of scum between myself and the surrounding air. You can almost see the layer in this photo taken on the sixth day !!!
Day 5 A change of scenery across the twilight zone
On the morning of the fifth day I woke at 3am Moscow time, which was around 5 or 6 am where we actually were, to see the (still) flat landscape covered in a thick fog. I went to the toilet and the wind coming in the window was biting - it was getting cold. The strange thing was that I had slept in my singlet and shorts, using only a sheet every now and then to keep me warm - one of my fellow passengers had borrowed my blanket - but I wasn't cold. In the morning the Wharfie told me about how cold he was (because his wife had nicked his blanket), so I started wondering if there was something wrong with me - not feeling the cold when Russians who live in Siberia are complaining !!!
Despite the Transsiberian travelling across six different times zones, and the existence of 11 different time zones in Russia, all train timetables in Russia, and all clocks at train stations across Russia are on Moscow time. So, for example, when the timetable says my train will arrive in Blagoveschensk at 11.25am, it is actually 5.25pm local time - something which nearly got me in trouble with Russian immigration. Initially I thought such an idea was a hangover from the Soviet days, imposing uniform human will onto variant actuality, but after thinking about it for a while it actually makes a lot of sense, to solve what could be a rather difficult problem. (Unlike the Chinese, who have only one time zone for the entire country - meaning the middle of the night is the middle of the day in the far eastern regions). Think of the chaos and confusion that would prevail in trying to organise the huge rail system that requires strict co-ordination of time to ensure that no two trains are on the same track at the same time and that replacement engines and carriages are available when the train rolls in to town. A single time across the entire network seems like a simple solution to a lot of problems.
The time zone conundrum is also confronted of a personal level - when exactly should you change the time on your own watch. In the beginning, when the difference is slight there isn't much to notice - get up at 7am - really it is 9, or go to bed at 9pm - really it is 11pm. It is dark when you go to bed, light when you get up, and the day just drags through the middle. However as the difference gets bigger, and the monotony of constant travel and an almost unvarying landscape pushed me toward using the hours as a way of breaking up the day and pretend I was civil - get up before 9am, lunch at 2pm, go to bed after 9pm, I started getting confused. Did I get up on Moscow time or local time - I had to wait until it was light. What time exactly did I go to bed ? or Why am I eating lunch at 5pm ? And perhaps as a combination of sleeping a lot on the train, the odd hours I was keeping, and the fact that it was dark at 5pm and light at 1am, made me feel as though I was suffering from jet-lag (on a train) !!!
That is where the tourists are
In the late morning on the fifth day we arrived at Irkutsk - formerly known as the Paris of Siberia - a city of half a million people, 5,200 kilometres from Moscow - and about halfway to the Pacific !! At the station I witnessed the de-training -from first class of course - of a bunch of tourists with their Russian tour guides - all who had spent their time together in their little cabins, to be met by their local guide at the station - off to their hotels with their huge packs and suitcases - and bags filled with supplies - enough to keep a Russian family fed for an entire winter. My fellow travellers watched on as the tourists were shepherded around by their guides, all heading off together. When I got back on the train I suddenly smelt the mix of body odour and food that permeated the carriage (and that the guide books warned off) - but I quickly became reaccustomed to it and it disappeared as we headed off.
Lake Baikal
Seventy kilometres past Irkutsk, Alexei the Drunk of all people started wandering up and down the carriage looking intensely out the window, and the word Baikal started being murmured up and down the carriage - making me rack my brains to think what Baikal actually was. We caught a few brief glimpses of Lake Baikal through gaps in the trees, the world's deepest lake, from high above it, and we then slowly wormed our way around bend after bend until we rounded one last bend and a panoramic view of the lake revealed itself to us, glimmering below us in the bright mid-day sun.
Originally it was too expensive to build the line down to and then around the lake so ships were used to ferry the carriages across the lake, however this proved ineffective during storms and when the lake froze over. During the Russian-Japanese War engineers even laid a track across the ice, but the first train across sank and so that idea was abandoned and the cash was shelled out to lay a line around the southern shore of the lake. Amazingly, Baikal holds one fifth of all the world's unfrozen fresh water and is also home to the world's only fresh water seals. The lake stayed with us for an hour or two as we slowly descended down to its shore, where we stopped for a while. The train was then flooded with smoked fished salespeople, many trying to sell fish through the window. The smell was pungent, but when Grandma offered me some of the couple of bags she had bought, the taste was delicious. We continued to work our way around the lake, and every now and then we would catch beautiful vistas of it from the shore, passing numerous groups of Russians picnic-ing, sunbathing and even swimming !! It was a nice change to have something to look at out the window.
On line shopping
The appearance of the fish-sellers were only the last in a long line of on-board (the original on-line) vendors that traipsed up and down the train selling their wears. As many Russians only get out of where they live once a year they snap up the bargains for local products or simply enjoy being able to buy something they can't get at home. From the time we set out from Moscow various men and women, usually dragging big, woven plastic bags, offered differing products coming from where they got on the train for sale. There was a women with furs hats, a few women with knitted cardigans and jumpers, a guy selling plants (Grandma bought a huge stalk, about 4ft long wrapped in newspaper) quite a few people selling lots of different outfits, plenty of people selling home made food, a deaf guy with a whole tray of different toys including a spinning toy whose flashing lasers turned the carriage in to a disco. There were also plenty of vendors exploiting the boredom angle, selling newspapers, gossip mags, crossword puzzles and colouring books for kids. Every purchase usually attracted the attention of all and sundry and usually involved a lengthy bargaining discussion, and then once the sale was made the goods would be passed around to be inspected by all the closet experts.
At last, some English
By the fifth day word of my presence got far enough around the train for me to get to meet Daniel, the army boy. He wandered in to my carriage late on the fifth day with some of the kids from the carriage and when they pointed me out he asked me whether I spoke English. We had a long chat (I hadn't really spoken to anyone who could understand me for five days) about what I was doing and where I was going. He told me how he was off to Blagoveschensk with his team mates to sit an exam. He had been living for a year on one of the islands off the north of Japan that is Russian territory, and as it is so cold you can't go outside in winter he spent most of his time reading books in English. He became the de facto translator for all the pent up queries that my fellow travellers had built up over the previous five days - and there was a lot of hmmmings of understanding when he translated my answers.
He invited me to come and meet his team mates the next day and it dawned on me that I hadn't left my carriage the entire journey, so I jumped at the chance.
Day 6 Chita - off to China
Early in the morning of day six, 6,200 kilometres from Moscow we lost about a quarter of our fellow passengers at Chita, the point where the line splits, heading south to China or continuing East to Vladivostok. Most of the departing passengers cleaned themselves up before getting off the train, but the most impressive change was Alexei the Drunk, who shed his dirty tracksuit and singlet and had a new matching green jean suit on, slicked back hair and the ability to walk in a straight line. Everyone bid each other farewell and Alexei walked off with his bag in one hand and a bottle of vodka in the other, the the shakes of the head and tuts of those staying on the train.
The very model of a modern Major General
Daniel came and collected me in the morning and as we walked the twelve carriages back to his I noticed that compared to the other third class carriages ours was the oldest and in the worst shape - the others looked much newer, cleaner and more comfortable. I also checked out the restaurant car, with its red vinyl rows of seats, bar and TV in one corner and kitchen at the other end. Reaching second class was an eye opener - carpets on the floor, plush red felt on the walls with gold trimmings and even lace on the curtains, Daniel later explaining that the Army paid for the ticket, and you got to ride second class if the journey was over five thousand kilometres !!! I met Daniel's team and the leader, no less than a Major General, who insisted that I put on his uniform for the photo. Showing the generous Russian hospitality that was now getting used to, and despite the early hours (one of the benefits of the confusion of a single time zone system is that you can justify drinking at any time because you know somewhere it is a reasonable hour to begin imbibing) we all shared some beers and the smoked fish they had bought the previous day at Baikal. They were all very proud of Russia and its diversity, repeatedly assuring me that they were all Russians, despite the difference in appearance. (They thought it hilarious that I thought one of them Japanese and another Mongolian) They generously donated me a Russian army hat from their kit, which I wore all the way back to my carriage eliciting a lot of stares and laughs from other passengers on the way back, and a lot of questions from my fellow carriage mates.
New passengers
After losing some passengers at Chita we gained a few more in dribs and drabs, and hence I got to meet Jamal, the Uzbeki, who was on his way to visit his sister in Blagoveschensk. Jamal travelled with only a small suitcase the size of a laptop bag, which put my huge backpack to shame. He spoke a little English and explained that he fixed mobile phones for a living, and he tried to get me to read the thick tome on electrical engineering he was carrying around. Perhaps because he spoke Uzbeki as his first language, he much better understood the idea of trying to communicate without a common language, and I soon found out that he had a Russian wife and two kids and that he was a Muslim. (My journeys through the Middle East and ability to recite the call to prayer in Arabic impressed him greatly - but seem to raise a little suspicion with the others in the carriage)
Russian bandits
Being so proud of my new hat (with the Soviet star and all) each time we got off the train that day I wore it out, which even got the provodnitsa laughing at me. It did however cause a bit of a problem - having seen me in my new hat, other soldiers on the train in a nearby carriage figured it was a way to make a bit of money. A couple came in to my carriage and asked if I was interested in Russian army stuff. I nodded to agree in the abstract - a little worried as to what would happen if I said No, I wasn't a big fan of the Russian army. So they began by offering me a pair of boots, which must have weighed at least five kilos, then jackets, pants. I tried to explain that I couldn't carry any of the things they were offering, and was a little worried when the Wharfie mentioned the word contraband - but the offers didn't stop coming. I finally agreed on a belt, with a huge buckle of the Soviet Union and I gave my belt in exchange, still not having realised what their real purpose was. They seemed happy and left our carriage only to return about half an hour later. In broken English they said something about vodka and I thought they were offering to buy me a drink, but what they actually wanted was me to buy them some. As soon as my new friends heard this they interceded - telling the soldiers that I didn't have any money and that I was a poor traveller. When the soldiers try to persuade me to come with them to their carriage, just for a short while, my friends repeatedly told me not to go and got rid of the soldiers.
Day 7
Finally the last day of the trip rolled around. I had finished Crime and Punishment which left me wondering if all Doestevsky's protagonists ended up in Siberia. It was hard to believe that by the end of the day we would be rolling in to Blagoveschensk and that I would have effectively crossed Siberia.
Punctuality
Next time you are waiting for a train that is late, just think that the Russian manage to run trains that travel for seven days and still arrive exactly on time. So when the timetable says that if you step on a train at 1.23 pm on a Sunday you will be get off seven days and more than 7,000km later at 11.23 then you can bet your bottom rouble that you will be at your destination at 11.23. Train drivers salaries depend heavily on being on time (but then so does the whole system) and so timetables over estimate the time required, which leads to the ironic practice of sometimes just sitting in the middle of nowhere for a while so that the train arrives at the next station on time. However with so many trains running back and forth I guess being on time is an imperative. Sadly as I was about to find out being on time wasn't going to help me.
Making an elephant from an ant
General discussion on the train had moved on to where people were going and after talking with Maxim about my need to get to China that day, I realised I had a big problem. (Having foreseen the possibility of not being able to get out of Russia before my visa expired I checked on the internet to see if others had a similar experience. It turned out that some had, and at the border they had been sent back to Moscow to get the situation regularised and pay a big fine, so I knew I needed to do all that I could to make sure I got out in time) Rather than arriving at 11.25am (Moscow time) in Blagoveschensk, we would actually arrive at 5.25pm (local time). The last boat to China sailed at 5.30, and the ticket office closed at 5, and the next day was Sunday meaning no boats would sail. After much discussion between themselves it was decided that I would go and stay with Maxim and get the boat on Monday, explaining to immigration that my train arrived late. Fortunately Daniel showed up at this time and did some quality interpreting. He explained that I could actually catch the last boat by getting off the train in Belogorsk - about 120 kilometres before Blagoveschensk at 3pm and then take a taxi to Blagoveschensk and arrive there at around 4.30. My friends continued debating the point for quite a while, but Daniel told me that they were just making an elephant out of an ant, and so I quickly got packing. Whilst I was doing so my friends swung in to action, helping me collect up all my stuff and get it in to my bag, trying to offer me some money and posing for my last minute photos. Just as I was putting the last things in my bag we pulled in to the station and as I headed for the exit I did a rapid series of goodbyes - all hugs and kisses, impressing my new friends with the one Russian word I had learnt to pronounce correctly - dasvidanya.Daniel, Jamal and Grandma joined me as we ran the length of the platform, through the station and out on to the road to find a taxi. Unfortunately I needed to take a taxi to the taxi spot out of town and Grandma gave the driver a bit of paper which explained where I had to go and in a hurry and paid him the fare. I jumped in the taxi after quickly farewelling my friends, and watched out the back window with a heavy heart as they receded in to the distance, regretting the all too often farewells wandering about the planet causes, and without any time to think about the 7,900 km train journey I had just completed.
No comments:
Post a Comment