KM Marker 5185…
When we first boarded the train, I am happy to report that we managed to find our birth with no major difficulties. It was one of the cabins towards the end of the carriage, #8 out of 10 to be exact. Amazingly we were excited at our future trek (this feeling would fade) and even more excited that it appeared we lacked bunkmates!
All this enthusiasm was quickly taken away when we started to actually look at the train itself. It was old. And I mean really old. Like, we think it was made during Stalin’s time old. The walls were a lovely fake wood. The nice bench seats we had become used to on our previous 2 trains were replaced with something that was as soft as plasticized rock. Gone were the helpful electronic displays (or even lights for that matter) that let you know when a washroom was in use. The padding for the bed we received was the thin, stripped mattress that you often associate with prisons. Even the hall rug that is normally present in the central corridor was absent. We quickly concluded that this was going to be a bit more real than we bargained for… and then our bunkmates arrived.
They were a nice couple (about our parent’s age) who were also riding the train, although they were locals and didn’t speak any English. This complimented our lack of Russian nicely. We fumbled about for the first couple hours and were able to establish names and state where we were going, where we were from and why this nice couple had a crazy pair of Canadians with them in their cabin (go tourism!). We also made a quick dash some of the nearby carriages to see if there were any other Anglo- or Franco- travelers – there wasn’t. And thus began our long journey.
Fairly quickly though you start to learn about the train and its quirks and habits. For example, our carriage was old and crotchety. We say this since any time it had to go around a bend, even a slight one, we heard this large KA-CHUNCK noise right beneath our feet, followed by some clicks as things straightened out. One of the other travelers was an old man we referred to as old Smokey. Like clockwork, each 20 minutes he would pass by our door towards the end of the carriage, where he would go to the smoking ‘compartment’*. His constant back and forth, as well as other people smoking/moving about led to a lot of smoke coming into the main hallway, making our ride much less pleasant. As a whole our carriage was older, subdued and a bit of a chain-smoker. Other carriages included the tech car (lots of young people with laptops and cords everywhere), as well as the flower carriage, where the provonista scented it with lily of the valley.
After some exploring and attempts to communicate with our bunkmates we got ready for bed, which would be our first of 4 nights on the train. It was okay, at first, and Alicia took the bottom bunk and I the top, each of which had their own challenges. The trans Siberian train tracks are littered with small stations and villages everywhere. Each of them are very well lit – much to Alicia’s dismay. The curtains didn’t close fully in the room, so every time we stopped at a station or passed through a village, she had the lovely, blinding glow of the station lights to disturb her.
I was much less lucky. I was too high for the lights, but was doomed due to 2 major design flaws in the world: hot air rising and historically poor nutrition. The heat is easy to understand. The cabins were heated, even with the warm temperatures outside and could only be cooled by opening a window in the room. This window had 2 positions, closed and hurricane. So in an effort to allow others to sleep, it was kept closed and I quietly was baked as the hot air rose in the cabin and didn’t escape (since the doors are closed at night). My other problem was that due to poor nutrition, the designers of the train were short, and as were all of its original passengers. The top bunks are designed to fold up against the wall for space, but hang down flat for people to sleep on. In the Chinese train they used large padded shelves, where the bunk could rest on, and here they skipped the shelves and decided that chains in the wall would do nicely instead. The result is a 6’2″ man laying on a plank that is 6″ long, with chains where his head and feet should be. So I would stuff my pillow around the chain and push my head into that space, and would carefully put one leg to either side of the chain. Rolling over was an exercise. Needless to say, we didn’t sleep that well (mostly due to the smoke).
We wake up, eat, got our bearings (thank you km markers) and readied ourselves for the first chance to stretch our legs.
KM Marker 4197 wizzes by. A while later we arrive at Krasnoyarsk, the third largest city in Siberia.
The signs were helpful, but in Cyrillic.
It was cool outside, but the warmth of the train made the ice cream bars look rather tasty, so we indulged.
As we wandered about stretching (and enjoying the ice cream bar), we heard a neat series of musical notes coming from the direction of the train. It turns out it was a series of inspectors going over the train. Each stop they end up tapping away at various parts of each carriage (about 30-40 taps per carriage), and they seem to listen to how it sounds. My suspicion is if it sounds off, something is broken and they fix it.
At the station we came across one of the old steam trains that used to power the trans Siberian train.
However the puffing and coal-fired beasts of old are no more and Russia has modernized its railway significantly since then. The entire trans Siberian is now entirely electric. It is astonishing to think that the entire line is electric (we’re talking well over 20,000km of track – and that assumes a single track, which most of this is dual or more). There is something to be said about the old government here with its grand ideas, money and a virtually free labour force. What is to be said shall remain a mystery. However this train does seem to be the backbone of Russia’s transportation. It moves soooo much people, minerals, goods, everything really. Even the mail is shipped on the trains!
At the station in preparation for the May 9th celebrations, a photo-shoot seemed to be happening.
Throughout the day we made a few stops at stations, however never for long enough to safely disembark the train (for fear of it leaving us behind). We did notice several reoccurring themes.
Turrets. These seem to exist in every small Siberian town we passed through. Why they exist, we don’t know. They look Stalinesque, but some have been decorated to actually be pretty.
And more turrets.
Resources. The amount of black coal, brown coal and oil we saw was mind numbingly large.
Dumbness. It appears it isn’t isolated to home and that even in Russia they need to make signs to point out the obvious. I think this one says, “Don’t do pushups on the side of the train”.
Siberia. It is more beautiful thank you can imagine. It did remind us a bit of home, but with less rocks and more birch.
Siberia is equally as depressing as you can imagine. I now fully understand how and why someone who immigrates to Canada from a place like this (or worse) would be happy in anything we have.
Poorly done English translations.
One of the amusing aspects of train travel in the direction we were going is we finally were able to have more hours in a day. Thanks to the wonders of time zones we had 25 hour days. Not that this was actually productive time, but it does seem humans are adapted to 25 hour days very nicely. However all the time zone trickery was moot since the only time we cared about was Moscow time (all trains in Russia operate on it). And as a person on a train, not knowing where you are, having to not worry about time zones is a good thing.
So what does one do with all that time? Not much actually. The train could be at best described as some form of purgatory. You are stuck in a place, it isn’t bad or good and you are going someplace good, but need to wait out your time first. I think it is one of the few occasions in life where both of us truly did nothing for a period of time. Between the nothingness though we did read the Train Siberian guidebook we brought, wrote some postcards, typed a blog post or two (until the power ran out) and looked out of the window at the forest fires.
By the evening of our first full day on the train we were passing through a section of Siberia that was experiencing a fair number of fires. Most of them seemed natural, and many were quite small. Some of the larger ones followed the train along the tracks for about 10km, with flames reaching at most 3m high. They looked really neat with the sunset and seem to be just a fact of life out there. The ground was so dry since the snow had melted, the rain hadn’t quite kicked in yet and the underbrush was dry.
To end our day we opted to go to the dining car for dinner and see what they had, while we played a board game or two. We were presented these large menus, about 12 pages in all and it was full of all sorts of dishes. There was no shortage of liquor in the car (specifically beer), however ordering food was not quite unlike the Cheese Shop Sketch by Monty Python. Several times we pointed to something, only to find out they didn’t have it in stock (it may have been because no one else seemed to eat in here, only drink). After much pointing and being disappointed she showed us one item which was on the menu – logically it was the most expensive – schnitzel. We were tired and hungry, and even though the cheaper items on the menu used the same ingredients, we gave up and went for it. This was sadly our most expensive meal to date, but it was very good and tasted even better after being on the train so long.
That night the couple gets off the train and around 2am a man comes into our cabin, only to depart from the train 4 hours later. Needless to say we slept very well that night. We awoke to day 2 of our captivity to a new guest in the cabin, who rode with us for a few hours, only to get off the train a few stops later carrying what we think was medical supplies. Norbert and Norman at this point were starting to get a be squirrely (we had to lock them up).
And we had settled into a nice routine. Today was the day we were both glad we brought books with us, since that is all that happened all day.
Some napping occurred.
And conversations to do things the rest of the day went like this:
-You know we haven’t been to the end of the train yet, want to go?
-Sure!
(2 hours later we go exploring. Everything seemed to move on a time-distorted scale.)
We became quite comfortable in our surroundings, even if the benches/beds would have been softer had they been granite. The bedroll is something that we would see an inmate sleep on.
I occasionally popped my head down – this is the joyous look Alicia would wake up to.
And the day was made even more wonderful since we lacked cabin-mates after the medical supply guy left.
And the train kept going. We started to pass through from forest into agricultural land. This was taken in a spot where the Soviet Union had decided to convert and start farming 30 million hectares of land (yes that is a lot).
We did pass many small villages, usually without stopping.
And sometimes we would find a large station in a small village. We were never sure why and wondered how big this village once was.
KM Marker 2099.
We arrive in Yekaterinburg around dinner-time and set out about foraging, so that we can avoid a repeat of the food carriage. The train only stopped here for 20 minutes, which wasn’t long enough to leave the platforms (since the station is quite large). We were able to find a babushka on the platform that was selling hot dinners for 100 rubles each (a little over $3). The dinners were these amazing meat and veggie patties, with potatoes, some veg and even a piece of rye bread. Needless to say it was delicious and so we set up a picnic in the cabin.
Late that night, I think it was near 2am Moscow time (I had given up on the local time zones), another couple enters the cabin and hunkers down with us for the rest of the journey. I think this was Perm, although my judgment at that time of the morning tends to be off.
We wake up with a little over 1000km left to go and proceed to whittle the day away. A lot of time was spent tying up lose ends such as finishing all the postcards we bought, and filming the joys of the train (including the washrooms). We even ventured into 3rd class and quickly concluded that we were happy we were in 2nd class and that we would avoid travelling in 3rd class on the train if we ever come back. Lots of games were played and time passed, with us occasionally popping off the train when it stopped. These station stops became a quest for us, specifically one we started as soon as we first boarded the train. Our goal? To buy some crackers for dinner, as we wouldn’t have anything for the 3rd evening meal.
Every time we visited a store, they were out of crackers. Since all the items were in the window and on display, pointing didn’t work, and we still had some trouble reading the boxes (and also pronouncing them too). So we resorted to taking photos of the boxes and showing them! Score one for digital cameras! In the end we were standing in line and the person in front of us ordered some bread. We didn’t know they sold bread and quickly pointed and bought ourselves a loaf. This allowed us to complete our dinner!
As we got closer to Moscow, we could see several “train graveyards”. I think this may have been this train’s sister, once upon a time.
We packed, went to bed and prepared for our last 500ish km on this train. We arrived in Moscow right on time… 4:20AM.
We weren’t even sure we at the right station at first, as we were expected to have a driver come pick us up and take us to the hotel. He never showed up. We were able to confirm we were in Moscow though, which was a plus.
So after about an hour of exploring the station and not finding our driver anywhere (and also realizing that we didn’t bother with directions to the hotel since – hey we were to have a driver!), we caved and hired a private taxi to take us to our hotel. Luckily for us they were expecting us, gave us our key and we went upstairs to shower and then sleep.
* it is called a compartment, but in actuality it is the area where one would get on and off the carriage onto the platform. This area is usually unheated (not a problem at this time of year), and sometimes has open windows. In the event that the windows don’t open, when people would pass through this area to another carriage, a blast of fresh air would come through this room care of the large gaps along the edge of the floor, where the two carriages meet.
Rails Across the Curtain 