It was with great excitement that I anticipated the huge journey across Siberia from Ulaan Bataar to Moscow. I had fantasized the lovely first class room. Scintillating conversations with fellow travellers in the Club Car. Wonderful meals in the dining car with its white table cloths. Maybe Cary Grant will be there–without Eva Marie Sant this time (North by Northwest). Maybe I will find the missing old lady (The Lady Vanishes). Maybe there will be an assasination (Murder on the Orient Express). So there you go.
As all of you know a slight change in perspective can make a huge change in execution. Wyatt plays baseball and a tiny change in your stance or your alignment with the pitcher can send the ball in totally new directions. Mike plays golf and a fraction of a change in the grip or the follow through and all kinds of possibilities open up. What about the changes an Fstop can make for Janice or Jamie or Carey? Or a choice of dark vs. Light for Fabi or Jose or Ruthie which will make the object move forward or back in the painting. I say all of this because I was forced to make a change in my perspective. In fact, I had to do a wholesale shift.
- No club car. Alas no club car was included to create a setting for those long conversations with curious and engaging people.
- And those people? It started out great with a nice couple from Australia and their two teen age kids. But the immigration people took them off the train as their visas for Russia were mis-dated and they would be denied access. I told the girls that this would be a great adventure since they would be spending the night in a Mongolian border town. A nice couple from Sydney who had been to Uzbekistan were good company but they, like EVERYONE else, left two hours into the second day.
- No restaurant car for a day and a half.
So I needed to change my perspective. I needed to view this not as an opportunity to create dialog, but as a chance to watch beautiful scenery and entertain myself. So here is how I fared.
YEAH NO PEOPLE
OK. There were some worker bees. My luxury accommodations was in a carriage with 19 other people. Sharing two bathrooms. No shower. LUCKILY they all left!! So I had a whole carriage to myself for two days with Irina–who was there ostensibly to attend to my every need. She insisted on ordering me out of her way in Russian so she could vacuum (11PM) and clean our two toilets. I smiled. Since I owned the carriage I took full advantage. I did my exercises every day in the passageway. I strung my clothesline along the same passageway and hung up my clothes which I washed in the sink. Irina didn’t complain and the best part is that no hint of criticism would ever befall me. Instead, she will go home after this trip and tell her husband that AMERICANS are strange. The beauty of travel is that our CULTURE, not the boorish habits of individuals, will get the blame for any outlandish thing we do. Yeah!! Off the hook.
It is exactly 5’3″ wall to wall. I know this because that is my height and I stretched between the walls to test it. This is the luxury accommodations. Many people in other carriages had two beds on top of these and , as I explained earlier, they could all be strangers. Those people also have no little table between them.
I also put my feet on the furniture because that is what AMERICANS do!!
Not to be deterred I created a home entertainment center for myself.
As you can see I have my phone. I also brought an OTG cable (On the Go) to which I attach either a flash drive as you see here or I have another which takes the memory card from the camera and I use that to upload pictures to this blog. I also have ear phones and some wonderful binoculars. An aside. I had purchased binoculars like this 40 years ago the first time I went to Japan. 30 years ago they got stolen. On this trip it took me six stores to finally find them again. I LOVE them, They are tiny and powerful, like a lot of people I know.
On the flash drive I downloaded 5 movies and an audio book. So at night I lay in my little bed and watched Grosse Pointe Blank, After the Thin Man, and Bull Durham. I also read two books and began listening to another.
After they attached the restaurant car on the second day I went there every day at different times to see if I might chance upon an English or Spanish speaker, Here was the result.
No English there. And, I was the ONLY person I ever saw in the restaurant besides these two ladies. The one on the right had one real duty and that was to tell me “nyet” for whatever I tried to order from the menu (including Language Soup which I figured must be translated as TONGUE SOUP by a rookie dictionary user). So I had Greek salad everyday or one of these.
They really are quite tasty and they were the business once I learned something like Capitsky which means vegetables and I was the carrot and cabbage queen of the restaurant car.
Besides entertaining myself and trying to talk to the ladies in the restaurant car, I tried to make conversation with Irina but to no avail. As far as I can tell she has duties that require an immense amount of paper work as she was either cleaning or busily completing paperwork. Twice she brought me some souvenirs but I couldn’t be tempted by the tea cup made of base metal and glass for $20USD. I once had the misfortune of not being able to open one of the heavy doors between cars while returning from the restaurant and had to ask Irina’s counterpart in the 2nd class car to help. She leaped up and screamed at me and stomped to the door and pulled it open giving me a withering look. She was shorter than I but outweighed me by 50 pounds so she should have been able to open the bloody door!
As there was no food available there was constant hot water and I had tea bags. No small tea pot for us. OUR hot water boiler makes a design statement in any home.
The first night was the most eventful because we had to pass through immigration and customs (and of course, Irina needed to vacuum at 11PM). For some reason we actually had three bouts with the officials and each time was later and later culminating in the last one at about 2ish.
They were very officious as you can imagine. The first group took the passports away and didn’t come back for 45 minutes. At that time the carriage was full and we all milled around talking about where we were going or where we had been. The Australian couple with the kids live in Macau and I was looking forward to hearing about that expat life. Anywhere near Hong Kong would be an interesting place to live I would suspect.
But as we know they got booted off the train.
Finally the officials came back with the passports. At that point a huge German Shepherd came prowling along.
A woman came to ask if I had any contraband and asked to see the suitcases. I showed her the backpack and little canvas tote. “Where is your suitcase?” She asked. “This is it” I replied. “Well where are your clothes?” I showed her my clothes hanging on the wall. “But where is your big suitcase?” I explained that for such a simple wardrobe it wasn’t necessary to have a big suitcase. She absolutely did not believe me and turned the room upside down including pulling the beds out into the hall. I stood aside happy that I had only the little bags.
People get upset about things like this. Irina was very concerned that I had started in the left bunk and moved to the right bunk. That was NOT my bunk!! She explained to me that I would have to return to the other bunk in very distressed Russian. I explained with hand signals that I had purchased two tickets. She wasn’t having it at all. Finally I showed her that it was my name on both, She went away shaking her head.
It wasn’t terrible being the only person. I could wash my hair in the bathroom sink and walk around barefoot. I missed the possibilites though. The last time I was in Russia I got to do one of my favorite things–trade. I had brought some earrings that I no longer wanted and some new blouses from Spain to trade. I was way too small to trade with the big Russian peasant women but I thought I would have a chance with the earrings.
I was on a trip through the rivers of Russia from Moscow to St. Petersburg to see the original Russia. It was a great trip because we stopped every day and visited the tiny villages. Mostly that became visiting Russian Orthodox icons every day (same tourist planners who suggest climbing up on big rocks to look down). Well after two days of that I left the tour each day and wandered around the villages talking to the people. I am really good at communicating with people in different languages. They speak theirs and I speak mine. Heart to heart. (This skill left me on the Russian train as they had no patience to talk, everybody was so busy cleaning, doing paperwork or saying “nyet.”). Anyway I met a man who was carving a little bear. He was doing a great job and I praised the bear. He invited me in and I spent some time with him while he made me a cup of tea and we talked about living along the shores of a small Russian river vs.living in a fishing village in Spain where I lived at the time.
He kept working on the bear and when he was finished he gave it to me. I couldn’t accept it without paying him but he didn’t want any money. I gave him the earrings as a gift for his wife and he seemed really pleased. Everybody wins.
I had a reason to get that bear. At the time my little nephew was suffering from night terrors and had a difficult time going to sleep as he feared monsters awaited. I took him the bear and explained that it had been made in Russia and carried magic powers to protect children from harm while they slept. I think my sister told me that it worked and the bear did watch over him,
I brought things to trade again on this trip-mostly nice embroidered blouses from Mexico and earrings but I haven’t had a chance to get near any locals.
I have honed my drawing skills however. I was able to draw a really bad cow and a really bad chicken put X’s through each to let the ladies know I only ate caputskys.
So I will send some pictures of my changed perspective. It’s all about scenery and rhythm
