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Published: October 10th 2007
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Om...sk
Station at OMSK... Om...sk. Four nights on a train. Are we mad or what? Possibly.
To cross Europe overland until Asia. A lifetime goal come to reality. To feel the space of the map as a physical reality.
Gather your noodles, instant coffee, tea-bags, chocolate, crisps, maybe bread or fruit. Anything that can be cooked using the boiling water from the Samovar at the end of each carriage governed by the Provodnista, the lady who manages your carriage. The obligatory (if you drink alcohol) bottle of vodka which sets you back a few euro. You take your backpack and spare toilet roll, you charge up your iPod, ensure you have a good book to read (being a ponce, I of course read Dostoevsky). A deck of cards, the game of Battleships we bought on the boat to Tallinn. Put on the baggy tracksuit bottoms, slip into a pair of flip-flops. Accept that you will be smelly and that you won't get to wash properly for days. On second thought buy more baby-wipes and make sure all your clothes are clean. What currency? Oh yeah, you'll still be in Russia, so more Roubles. Send the last few emails, head down to the station and
Aoife at Platform kiosk
Buying....more noodles. again. and again. wait amongst the drunks, down and outs. Watch a mother feed her one year old Super-Hooch and the father watches on, drunken eyes seeming to smile at it. There's nothing I can do. The soldier isn't even paying attention, he walks on by to shout and hassle an old man who is on crutches.
It's late at night, the train will leave at midnight. I make a final phone call home to my mum, and she seems awfully far away.
Back to the group and we try to joke, shuffle from foot to foot. Then the platform is announced and we race down to the train. Onto our carriage, find our beds, then off again to take a photo of the group, and to feel the solid ground beneath our feet. Already we're leaving Moscow. So soon. And onto Siberia. What will it be like?
I'm on my own in the cabin and the boys I'm sharing with - Alan, the friendly Aussie and the quiet American are outside taking photos and larking about. A voice, English accent booms from the cabin to my left.
'Give me a cigarette woman, I won't ask you again'
In Siberia!
A hillside village in Siberia. Another and another and another for four nights and five days. silence.
'I said, give me a cigarette woman, now.... I'm not shouting, just give me a cigarette now. I will smoke where I want to woman, I'm not going to have my rights infringed, I'll smoke where I want to. I don't care if it's banned on the train.'
'Look I'll get myself a cigarette. Can you believe my wife?' He addresses someone walking by.
'Do you like travelling by train' he continues, 'I can't be doing with planes, no mate, for me it's trains, I find it the most civilised way to travel.'
Four nights I think, on a train with an insane man.
The lads come back into the cabin, full of excitement - the two scottish guys are larking around and the vodka begins to be dished out.
A gentle motion and the train moves off.
The English man, predictably, becomes a nuisance on the second night, but the Provodnista makes short shrift of him, as I said before, I would never argue with a Russian in uniform, not unless I had to, which we will later but enough of that.
The group bond, some people are noisy during
Morning coffee at the samovar
The vital hotwater at the samovar - vital for tasty noodles and coffee and tea and anything really that takes hot water. Sometimes we even used it to burn each other just to make sure we weren't dreaming. the day, then someone else takes over. I talk a lot, play cards, read, watch the countryside slip by. We engineer ways to use the Provodnista's plug socket on the quiet and power up the laptop - one night we watch a movie in our cabin, and it's like a miniature cinema, legs everywhere, hooting laughter.
Excitement on the third night - some Russian men talk to the lads in the dining car and push vodka on them. They have a shot and the Russians gift a lighter to these non-smoking guys. Alan comes back to the cabin to tell me about it, I and the quiet American are having a card game or reading, so he heads off again, but comes back later and plays with us. The Scots have fled the dining car too in fear he says, the Russians are quite serious drinkers and have been in the dining car for hours. The Aussie and a new American friend we met on the way hang out in the dining car. From time to time the train stops and we get off, at these points I catch up on the story from the dining car. The new American friend points out one of the Russians with a lady and tells me that the Russian is paying for the friendship. Later still, the Aussie returns harrowed to the cabin. The lady proposed friendship to him too. At a cost. He declined.
As we get closer to Siberia we watch the colours of autumn, golden yellow on silver birch trees. Wooden homes, real working wells next to wooden houses painted blue. Fields, some of which are tended, some run wild. The difference between city and country living in Russia is stark. When we stop sometimes people try to sell us things - in Siberia we are offered whole smoked fish and shredded beetroot salad.
The train trundles on. Time begins to lose all sense as the train is always on Moscow time, yet we've crossed time barriers. Sometimes the group bond, sometimes I wish I had somewhere to go, just for an hour or two. The dining car is like something from the seventies. I get used to the bathrooms. Sometimes it feels as though the journey could go on forever and I start expounding a theory of train-time, which made sense at the time.
One of the scottish boys spends an entire day dressed in a toga made from towels by the dutch girl. There are games of cards, chats about life. We talk about our journeys, what we hope from them. Some people never stop talking. Sometimes we hear the same story four times from the same person. I avoid the English guy from the next cabin, he has scars on his head and I think he's peculiar.
And then we wake up in Irkutsk and the journey is over. A new Provodnista is onboard and she lies, saying we have robbed a towel. It's been four nights, and a towel was not stolen. My patience is gone, so Alan takes on the argument. She's looking for a back-hander, it's obvious. We were made pay for the sheets even though we were told that it was already paid for. He uses the quiet American's phrase book and outlines our case but she wants to call the two soldiers who travel onboard. He demands a receipt which she reluctantly produces.
I am glad the journey is over, I've had enough of trains, surly angry Provodnistas, I want a proper toilet, a shower, some foodstuff that isn't a noodle, and then just as I disembark I am a little sad, but that passes and there's another place to explore.
xx
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Helen
non-member comment
Gosh! It sounds as if Russia is still a bit risky, just as well you had a tour guide with you in Moscow. I love train journeys, but not sure I'd be able for that one. You'd want the full of your health!!!!!