Tales from the Rails
A roommate
Just before the train departed, another person joined my room. An older guy, traveling for work. He introduced himself and immediately he was kind of a jerk. After exchanging names and where are you from, I don’t really possess enough Russian to have deep philosophical conversations. At which point he begins speaking English with me, asking why I am traveling alone. And how can you travel alone when you can’t even speak the language. Ok, condescending jerk. We don’t generally expect tourists to be fluent in every language of every country they visit. I have done just fine until now and I don’t like your tone. What a judgmental jerk. Anyway, after an hour or so, dinner was delivered to our car. Sitting at our little table, awkwardly making conversation, I asked what he does for work. He is a professor (of course) of economics, going to participate in a dissertation committee in Krasnoyarsk. I tell him I am also an academic, with a Ph.D. and suddenly “Oh, we are colleagues”. Hmph. He asks if I travel often and again softens upon hearing that I do speak other languages, just not Russian very well. I did not come here for your approval, dude who will fortunately only be on the train for 16 hours. I am eager for his 10 a.m. departure.
Dinner
The food served at dinner is, at best, airline food. Little compact trays with chicken in a cream sauce and rice. Pretty flavorless. He pours ketchup all over his. Afterwards, there is nothing to do but stare out into the darkness and write. This train is far different from the previous ones. Both of the 2 trains I took previously, there were only 2 cabins occupied in each train carriage, out of maybe 10. Neither time did I have a roommate, and things were generally very quiet and relaxing. This, however, is not the case today. The actual trans-Siberian route stops often, with lots of noise and jerking. And as the engine goes over a patch of ice, loses traction, and picks up speed again, a ripple of jerking and swaying is felt throughout the length of the train. The ladder to get to the top bunk is tiny, and I wrench my shoulder getting up there. The carriage is packed, with every cabin occupied. I haven’t really examined who is where except to note that there is a family with small children and crying babies in the cabin to the right. All night long, jerking train and crying babies. I had expected this to be more relaxing than going through customs from 10p.m.-2 a.m. but no such luck.
Parting ways
In the morning, we awake around 8 a.m., and amusingly both go through the same morning routine of coffee, followed by bread and cheese for breakfast. I try the 2 Russian cheeses I bought in Listvyanka: a soft creamy cheese that’s pretty flavorless and a packet of braided cheese with some type of meat and maybe a smoked cheese braided into it. The second cheese is weirdly also mostly flavorless except for copious amounts of salt. I had brought my own packets of instant coffee, knowing that people here prefer tea over coffee and it wouldn’t always be readily available, but hadn’t thought to purchase sugar packets. So before going to the train station in Irkutsk, I had stopped at another supermarket, looking for a hairbrush, but purchasing only sugar cubes for my coffee. Everyone here, even in restaurants and cafes, drinks instant coffee. I do not know why, only that I have rarely seen an actual pot of coffee anywhere. Cafes do offer espresso drinks like cappuccino, but I’m not sure if they’re powdered or fresh. Roommate guy wants to talk about the education system as we have breakfast, asking if our universities have any Chinese students. When I affirm that we do, he asks if they are good students. Then he goes on to explain how terrible the Chinese students here are and that the come from the rural northern parts of China, don’t speak Russian, ask to speak English in class, and then can’t speak English. I definitely wanted some casual racism with my morning coffee, tyvm. He wants to know if we have Russian students in our universities, and I say I’m sure we do, but I don’t know any or how many in each school. He really wants me to validate that the Chinese students are somehow not as good as the Russian ones, but I’m not biting. Finally he departs in Krasnovarsk, and for 40 long minutes I sit on the train at the station hoping no one else boards and takes his place. I am so relieved as the train leaves the station and I am alone in my room. Even if it’s only until the next hour or so when we stop again, at least some peace and quiet and time to organize my things is appreciated.
Exploring the Dining Car
Around lunch time, I decide to check out the dining car. Having heard that the Russian car is the worst of the 3 countries, I have low expectations and so am pleasantly surprised. Like all of the other dining cars, the menu is maybe 8-10 pages long. But only needs to be 1-2 pages as you point to things to order and the waitress says no, we don’t have that. So it was that I ended up with a Spaten Dark beer instead of a Russian beer because they were out of all of the Russian ones. The dining car is kind of sci-fi spaceship-y with bright green seats and decor. There are no other tourists, no one speaking English in the room. There are, however, 6 Russian men at a couple of different tables, all wearing track suits, all drinking Budweiser. And I sit alone drinking my Spaten. I order a bowl of solyanka soup and something on the menu marked as ‘French toast’. The description says ‘toasted rye bread with garlic’, so I am hoping it is similar to the fried bread with raw garlic I was so fond of in Prague. When she brings my food, it is clear that that is not what I have ordered, but rather, just rye-garlic croutons, which are actually perfect for soup and make me look like I knew what I was doing. The soup is quite good, and the garlic croutons sprinkled on top give it a bit of crunch and cut through the slightly undesirable lemony flavor. There are diced potatoes, ham, black olives, and pickles in the soup, among other things, I’m sure. Pickles in soup is pretty genius, works well. Not sure how black olives became a staple of Russian food, but they seem to be in everything, and I am not unhappy about this. I spend nearly an hour watching out the window as the snowy world passes by, leaving the restaurant once I have finished my beer and a couple of the Budweiser-guys start a loud argument across tables. The waitress lady is having none of it and comes to settle things, so I take my leave.
Train Vendor
I go back to my cabin and leave the door open so I can see out the window on both sides of the train. There’s a young, very beautiful woman who works the train, walking all the way from end to end, selling things. This morning it was chips and chocolates and sodas. Now it is piroshky and baked goods. She smiles every time she walks past the open door. She is also the woman who brought my dinner last night, and she speaks no English. We were able to communicate fine, as she told me my chicken would arrive in five minutes. But Mr. roommate guy took it upon himself to chastise her for not speaking English if she works on the train, in the tourism industry. She is traveling the world, you leave her alone.
Relaxing
I stare out the window, looking out a the beautiful snow. There are many ‘dacha’ or summer villages outside the towns. I was told to pick them out because none of the houses have smoke coming from the chimney. They are places for the people who live in cities to come during the summer, have a couple of acres of land and a small house, and farm vegetables. The houses are tiny and wooden and adorable and, because the villages are completely uninhabited during the winter, none of the snow is disturbed, so it is also perfectly white and smooth.
