Exile on Dzerzhinskogo Street
November 25th 2007 The train from Ulan Bator to Irkutsk was tattier than the one in which I'd arrived in Mongolia, and the unexpected bonus of toilet roll in the loos and a towel in the linen package was offset by the surliness of the provodniks/provodnitsas (carriage attendants). There weren't many passengers in my carriage and in fact only 1 in my compartment - Tatiana, a Russian professor whose teaching time was
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