Trans-Siberian

This post could end up like an itinerary – one place after another, so I'll fill it with enough anecdotes to make it interesting.

The route itself that we're taking (here's the itinerary part):

• Vladivostok
• Irkutsk
• Krasnoyarsk
• Kazan
• Moscow

Also, this is going to be rather disjointed, with little glimpses of what we did, rather than necessarily a broad coherent narrative sweep of events. 

The trans-Siberian journey

Much of the train journey so far has been sleeping. You get a bed, and a pack of sheets and pillowcase that you use to make your own bed. They're not the most comfortable, but the train rocks in a random chaos of motion, which has a lulling effect, especially at night.

The trains themselves are really rather long, with multiple carriages, mostly fully occupied. We were travelling in second class, which means that there are 4 people to a room, with five or six rooms per carriage, a samovar at one end, and a toilet at either end of the carriage. We were forbidden to use the toilet half an hour before or after the train was scheduled to stop at stations. I could never figure out which stop we were up to, or what the time was, so I just chanced it and only got told off once.

In Vladivostok we shopped for supplies for the journey - mostly noodles and packet soups for lunch and dinner, but also UHT milk and cereal for breakfast, and bottled water.

Apart from the time spent sleeping and eating on the train, the other half is spent talking to people, or sometimes being talked to by people.

I've been invited into the cabin of some Uzbeks, who offered me beer, bread and fish, and we had a bit of a conversation. They were very friendly. I've found that I recognize a bunch of words, but not necessarily their meaning. Anna has been bearing the load of the conversations – our first few roommates said maybe a few sentences to us, and then left us alone. Next we had the Uzbeks, who hung around with us for a while. After this, we've had a dude who just kept talking, telling me half a dozen times that I should learn Russian, then left and came back drunk a few hours later with a couple of beers. He might have offered me one, but we couldn't tell if he actually was, so we didn't want to assume. He began to snore shortly after this, then half an hour later rolled out of bed onto the floor. Thankfully he was on the bottom bunk.

He fell out of bed that night too, after talking to us for another couple of hours and drinking both of the beers... We were glad when he left. This is also the night Anna decided to start sleeping in the top bunk, and was glad to have done so.

It's been snowing on and off ever since we boarded the train, and it looks bitterly cold outside. Every time the train stops for an extended stop the provodnik(a) walks around the carriage knocking things on the undercarriage trying to dislodge the snow and ice. This morning on the inside of the triple glazing a thick layer of ice had formed where the condensation had dripped down the window and onto the cold windowsill. Inside, though, it's a balmy 20 degrees (this particular train has a display of the time, and the current inside temperature), little kids run up and down the hallway, and everyone wanders around in t-shirt and slippers.

Right now we're sitting opposite a couple of guys who are more patient – Anna's looking up words on her Kindle, which makes the conversation actually work somewhat. It's hard to explain things like “Why are you Baptists?” or what you think of Vladimir Putin when you've got a limited vocabulary. Things seem to be working alright though. I'm understanding a surprising amount of the conversation, which is nice.

One of the guys has left, and another joined us; this one was a soldier in East Germany, he appears to be slightly drunk, and he keeps showing us pictures of a big fish that he caught somewhere in Siberia. It definitely is a big fish, but the wonder of it starts to wear off after the third or fourth time being shown it.

Later that evening we had to switch trains, with our shortest stopover period yet - 25 minutes. We were a bit anxious, but one of our friendly cabinmates said he would help us find the next train. We got all ready and stood by the door as the train pulled up at the station. We detrained, and our friend went to the train right beside ours and asked someone if that was the one to Kazan - and it turns out it was! So we were able to climb aboard without any fuss.

Now we're on a really old one that has a ridiculous heating problem. It's far too hot – everyone is walking around without shirts on. Perhaps something's broken. We seem to be in a carriage that's almost completely full of unwashed men in various states of dress. Anna didn't like it, and slept on the top bunk again. Anyway, one of our cabinmates looked completely out of it draped on the upper bunk, immobile and softly snoring. The other guy decided to show us videos of bears that came around the place where he works in the forest. They're rather large creatures, so I'm not surprised he wanted to show them off, but we were trying to get to sleep. Ah well.

The next morning we were joined by some other dude from another cabin who was just visiting the guy we were sharing with. Such a dodgy-looking dude, he began to ask us questions. Anna feigned ignorance of what he was asking, I told him a bunch of times that I couldn't understand, and then started to make up answers to what the questions sounded like, but of course I could only answer in English. It took him a surprisingly long time to leave us alone. And one of neighbours drank some of our water in the middle of the night, which was already in short supply, so we're not too happy with this particular leg of the journey.

The stops en route

Vladivostok:

We started in Vladivostok, and had a couple of hours to shop for supplies and see some of the sites.

The first of many Orthodox church buildings.

Lenin showing off his best dance moves.

A submarine.

Irkutsk:

Arriving in Irkutsk we were immediately glad for the preparations we'd made for the cold. In Bishkek we stocked up on Chinese brands of jackets and boots and woollen socks. I also got some long-johns that said that they're XXXXL, but they fit me quite well. Either they're kids' sizes, or women’s, or they're meant to be ridiculously tight. I'm not sure. Thus armoured we've been able to stay warm enough to ward off hypothermia.

Another Orthodox church. O for Orange, Orthodox, Owesome, and Oxford comma.

The mythical animal on the Irkutsk shield.

I aspire one day to be as manly and rugged as this statue.

We went to Irkutsk to visit lake Baikal, the biggest freshwater lake in the world, containing 20% or so of the world's supply of liquid fresh water. Irkutsk isn't actually on the lake, so we took a bus to Listvyanka.

Perhaps we shouldn't have.

Listvyanka was mostly empty. Half the shops were closed. We could see the lake, which roiled and swelled like the ocean, a steel grey hypothermic menace. A nice day for a stroll around the lake. We managed about a hundred and fifty metres, stopping when we could in the few shops that were open, until we considered the icy glare of the shop attendants to be worse than the icy knife of the wind. We found a cafe that wasn't full of Asians who looked at us politely as if we were a rare species of bird, and sat in the warmth eating surprisingly delicious food while watching some of the movie Seventeen Again dubbed in Russian until the next bus out was due to leave. We later found out the temperature was -13ish, and since the wind speed was around 30kph, that makes the windchill at somewhere around -23. We were glad we went, but since we were concentrating on keeping warm, and since visibility was horrendous we took no photos.

Krasnoyarsk

From Irkutsk we went to Krasnoyarsk. The reason for going to Krasnoyarsk was that there's this nature reserve nearby that has a bunch of interesting looking rocks, and because it might be nice to go for a walk in the snow. We found a bus that we thought would take us in the right direction, but it took us about three quarters of the way there, and then turned around to come back. A website helpfully told us that there was a bus that takes you directly to the car park of the reserve, but unhelpfully didn't tell us which bus that was or where to catch it from. It probably worked out for the best though, since the sun would have been setting while we were still in the national park.

The train station at Krasnoyarsk.

Kazan

From Krasnoyarsk we went to Kazan. One of our friends from the previous train helped us find the connecting train, since it can be confusing. Kazan is the capital of Tartarstan, and isn't actually one of the stops in the normal version of the trans-Siberian, but we thought it'd be interesting. We arrived in the morning (thankful that we were able to get away from our frankly creepy cabinmate) and hit the town. The main interesting thing in Kazan is the Kremlin (no, not that Kremlin, Kazan has its own).

The mosque is such a pretty colour.

The river was frozen, and there were people icefishing out in the middle.

We were only there for the day, and so had to head back to the train for our connection to Moscow.

The trains in Russia have different levels of salubriousness. The one going to Kazan was probably the worst one we've been on. It was rather old, and probably should have had a major refit years ago. The one to Moscow however was probably the best. The different trains are numbered by their level of niceness, with a larger number meaning it's probably worse. The train to Kazan was #377. The train to Moscow was #1. We had our beds already made. We had a little box of breakfast goods for the next morning. We had lights that all worked all the time. We had an extra toilet to go around, and a little plastic bag with toothbrush, shoehorn, toothpaste, shoe-cleaning wipes, and probably other things too.

This post is probably the most disjointed of the lot, since I wrote it over a few days as things were happening. The chronology is probably out of whack, but it fits the experience. On the train the days blend into each other, the rocking motion of the carriages, like a rickety pendulum, hypnotizes you, making your slim grasp on time slip further. The hours clatter by, and you're unsure whether or not you've crossed over one timezone or two. I think overall it was a great experience. My Russian has improved rather a lot, from a negligible amount, to enough to understand roughly what Anna is talking about with the other cabinmates, although I think I've had enough with the suggestions that I need to learn Russian, or that we should have some little kids running around by now if we've been married this long.