Christian and I had read up about the trans-Siberian train on the Internet, we had an info pack supplied by the our travel agency and I had the lonely planet guide, so together with a true british sense of optimism we felt ready for what was awaiting us. We were not! We should have been suitably worried when a group of Russians we met in Moscow were astonished that we had decided to take a train, asking "why the *#~* are you taking the train? You know you can take a flight to Siberia.". We ignored their warnings until we found ourselves on platform two at Vladistovsky station.
The train itself is a solid soviet machine with no frills. Inside is basically the same but with a couple of patterned frills straight from the sixties, by way of carpet and curtains.
And here you will see the bedroom, compact with a retro finish, and my personal space for about ninety hours.
The class system on board
We had bought second class tickets which meant that we shared a small four-berth cabin with two others. Our cabin was about two metres by one and a half meters with bunk beds on either side. There was storage space beneath the two bottom bunks and a small table by the window. It was very basic, the orient express it is not. A first class ticket is the same cabin but for two people. A third class ticket buys you a perch in a carriage similar to a battery hen shed (see the secret video we filmed walking through these carriages). Walking through the third class carriages was a real eye opener and my heart beat slightly faster every time we went through to get to the dining car. There were feet and hands sticking out at you from all angles and suspicious eyes would follow you. From the sullen expressions on the faces of third class passengers you would think that they were being transported against their will, and as a result we referred to third class as hell (i.e. "shall we walk through hell again?")
First night on board
After a solid five hours of reading and gazing out the dirty window into endless trees we wandered up to the dining car, via hell. It was pleasantly spacious compared to our cabin with a bar at one end and six tables set with lace table clothes and vodka glasses. I went to pick up a menu from the bar and had my hand actually smacked by the evil waitress. We took this to mean table service and so took a seat. The hospitality from the waitress continued as we ordered from the menu. Unlike the two French men across from us who pointed at other people's food and held up fingers to indicate how many they wanted, we actually put some effort into speaking Russian. Even with these efforts, we were still met by "nyet" at every request.
Eventually we were able to choose food that she agreed to serve us and when it eventually arrived it was surprisingly tasty.
Later in the bar we met a fellow Brit Dan, and also a huge Russian man named Vladinkee. He was set on getting drunk and keen for us to follow. After toasting Winston Churchill and Roman Obramovich, the two guys (Christian and Dan) were challenged to an arm wrestle with the Russian giant. Since his arm was twice the size of theirs put together they declined the offer until a few drinks later. The vodka glasses shuddered as British arms hit the table, and Vladinkee roared with laughter. After the British were truly defeated by the Russian, we made a swift exit before any more drinking or wrestling was thrust upon us. Christian learnt from this night of vodka drinking, and continued to drink vodka every evening before bed, claiming that it helped him sleep (in fact as I write this entry, Christian is drinking vodka... And it is not even bed time).
After a dreadful nights sleep in my upper bunk we were woken by the evil waitress bringing round a selection of donuts filled with sausages, meat or cabbage. This was unfortunately the staple breakfast on board.
Life on board
Days on the trans-Siberian are pretty laid back and consist of reading, napping, writing and gazing out the window. Highlights that break up the monotony include making a cup of tea, changing your watch to local time, and going to the toilet. Another highlight in the train was when people left our little cabin to be replaced by new people. You never knew who was going to poke their head around the door, greet us with "strasveetye" and then practically sleep next to you for thirty hours in silence until they left with a solitary word "dosveedanye". Trans-Siberian flings!
We weren't completely captive with our prison mates on the trans-Siberian, at certain stops along the way we were able to get out (for good behaviour) and stretch our legs.
We shared our cabin with a couple of polite middle aged men, an ice hockey enthusiast who tried to share his enthusiasm for the sport with christian (unsuccessfully), a computer geek (who gave us a jam donut), a well to do couple, and the most cheerful man in Russia (we suspect he was from somewhere else).
Unsaid rules of the shared cabin are that you and your posessions must not cross the invisible line that separates the left from right side. That line also extends across the table. If you are the last person to bed you should lock the door, and if you are the first awake in the morning you should piss off your cabin mates by opening the blinds, regardless of how early it is and how late they might have gone to bed. Rules on your carriage are enforced by a pair of women called the Provodnistas. They are as scary as they sound and one seemed to take an instant dislike to me, shouting at me in Russian whenever I ventured out of the cabin. From what I could gather I wasn't allowed to use the toilet, wasn't allowed to use the hot water, wasn't allowed to pour water away, and was generally a nuisance.
Outside of Moscow the city thinned out and wooden villages took over. As we travelled further east into Siberia, the towns and villages grew further apart and there were huge expanses of of open grassland or forest.
On the Tuesday we crossed into Asia which looked absolutely no different, on the Wednesday morning we woke up to snow and on Thursday morning we eventually stepped out of the train into Siberia. It was very cold, but boy was it the most welcome cold I had ever stepped out into after four stuffy days in our moving prison. The travel agency we booked through entitled our tour the "trans-Siberian experience", and we couldn't agree more. It would have been false advertising to claim it to be the "trans-siberian pleasure" or the "trans-Siberian adventure", but an experience it certainly was.
We made it!
Christian and Fiona
Location:Moscow - Siberia
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