Day 13 - Day18, Trans Siberian Railway pt.2

4.08.09 - 9.08.09

The train journey of epic proportions, 6000km and 5 nights on the train from Novosibirsk to Vladivostok. I'm going 2nd class this time as there were no bottom tickets available, which means it should be quite comfortable.

I'm on the top bunk and share my cabin with a mother (Alysa), her son (Yigor), her mother (Tatiana) and father (Sergei). They turn out to be going all the way to Vladivostok and we end up sharing food and having basic conversations, Alysa

speaks English and can understand me quite well. As for the rest of the cabin, they seem to be angry all the time and never smile, I can't quite figure it out, but it seems to be a theme on Russian trains. I end up chatting to a student called Irfim who informed me that it was just the Russian way on trains and people don't really smile.

On the journey, we pass by Lake B

aikal, which is absolutely enormous.

As my book tells me, it's the deepest lake in the world, contains more than 20% of the worlds fresh water, over a thousand plants and animals that inhabit the lake can't be found anywhere else and is the oldest lake in the world. As we went past you couldn't see the other side and it stetched out to the horizon in all directions, it was like an ocean and the scenery surrounding it was beautiful. I wish I got off here, but I chickened out when buying my tickets and went for the safe option of getting a ticket all the way to Vladivostok, at least I get to see the southern side of the lake as the railway skirts it for 180km.

Again, being on a train for so long and confined to such a small space is a weird

experience. You have your bed, about 6ft in length by around 3ft width to live in and that's it. You can stand in the corridor of the train if you wish or use the bathroom, but your allocated sp

ace is where you spend most of your time.

Also being thrown in with a family who I don't know for 5 nights and sharing

what is probably smaller than a prison cell between 4 people and a small child puts you in such close contact. I ended up playing with Yigor and making faces with him so much he started to call me dada, which was slightly worrying.

There are other families on the train, lone travellers, business p

eople and a whole host of characters. By the end of the journey I had made friends with the two train attendants, Julia and Marsha and also with a few other people in the carriage, some origami models distributed and eventually people were starting to look a bit happier.

I think in general people on the trains keep them selves to them selves and don't talk to people or interact much, I decided to go against the grain and it seemed to work.

I wouldn't call the trans Siberian a spiritual journey, but you definitely end up learning something along the way about people and social interaction.

Day 13 - Novosibirsk, Berdsk and the train

4.08.09
Tonight is my departure for Vladivostok, so I need to get back reasonably early to pack and prepare my things. We wake up reasonably early in the morning feeling a bit fuzzy and after our bed sharing experience.

Another walk around Novosibirsk centre and a trip to give Sasha back her keys as she is already at work when we rouse from our slumbers. We take a trip towards home on the bus, but make a stop off at the Railway museam, which is an open air camp filled with Russian locomotives. Some of the older steam models are ridiculously big and a comomon theme with Russian trains seem to be that they are about a mile high and sit so far off the ground. The tracks are also a lot wider then any other country and if you travel to or from Russia by train they have to change the wheels at the border to match the track size.

We eventually get home and I have to rapidly pack and grab a shower before leaving for the train station. Igor's dad gives me a old traditional Russian glass from Berdsk old town that is now flooded and a mosquito nead net as I seem to have tasty blood. He also gives me a special gift, a blue and white striped top, which is the trademark clothing that the Russian Airbourne Forces wear and his Russia SAS. It's not an imitation and is one of his own ones, I am so touched and my gifts of chocolate and food that I bought from the supermarket seem to have no value, but I make a promise to myself to send the family something special from my travels.

It's been an eye opening and fantastic week and their hospitability has left a mark.

Onto the train and a 4 day journey awaits.

Day 9 - Berdsk and Novosibirsk

31.07.09



 Row row row your boat gently down the stream is today's motto. We take a short walk down to the river banks with the rubber dinghy, a homemade life jacket which is quality and a pair or oars. Igor's dad takes him out first and explains a bit of river safety, then we head out together and end up towing Nikolaj around the river.It's quite a small dinghy for two tall people and so if you relax too much you deform the boat and let water in, we also manage to pop the seating boards out of their position, which creates a small moment of panic. Both decked out in aviators in a rubber dinghy, we look like real tourists! On the way back from the lake, we also stumble upon some more mushrooms randomly growing next to the path, my newly learnt scavenging skills come into play and we harvest some fantastic fungi.

The evening excursion was into the academic part of Novosibirsk called Akademgorodok, where we meet some ex students who Igor's dad used to teach, Andrey, his wife Anya and their friend Katia. Andrey's English is almost flawless, although like most people I have met he is adamant he can't speak very well. The special thing about Russia is that you can walk into shops with 1,2,3 or even 4 litre plastic bottles, pick a beer from a list of about 30 and get it filled with live beer straight from the keg. Absolutely amazing!
We go to a subterranean joint that seems to be a beer shop combined with a pub, meet an ex police major who was fired due to corruption, a massive Russian guy who tries to teach me various informal language and a guy who spent several years in Texas and has the accent to match. A lot of beer and cured seafood saw us away until the early hours.

Unfortunately for both activities today I deemed it too risky to take my camera and so no photographic evidence exists.

Day 8 - Novosibirsk

30.07.09

Shrooms is the order of the day and we wake up at 5.45am don our forest gear and proceed to grab a bus out to the forest. Once there I get the low down on what mushrooms you can eat, which ones will make you ill and which ones will send you off a journey of another sort. Igor's dad comes out to the forest early to pick, as lots of old men and women come to the forest and gather the mushrooms and they live near by so if you arrive later in the day, they will all be gone. He also tells me that in the morning the grass is still wet and so he can easily see where other people have been and picked, so he can find the spots which haven't been touched. We end up gathering 3 bags of mushrooms and Igor finds an absolute beast! I manage to stumble upon some kind of mushroom holy ground and harvest a collection of beauties right at the end, which fills my bag out nicely. We are dressed for the occasion and among our items we have over boots, made by Igor's dad from Russian radioactive/chemical warfare suits. Safe!

We get back home at around 9.30 and clean all the shrooms and cut them up. The big ones are massive meaty buggers as big as my hand and look amazing.


The next task of the day is to get what Igor called the true Russian experience and have my visa registered. We get to the police station just after 3pm and end up leaving at about 6.20pm. The details are too long to go into, but it involved a mass of forms photocopies, queuing, confusion, unhelpful people, helpful people and letters written on my behalf. An interesting experience.

Day 7 - Novosibirsk

29.07.09

Today as Igor's dad puts it, is business day. We have admin stuff to do and bits and bobs around town. The main tasks for me are to buy my train ticket and also register my visa.

I manage to get my ticket to Vladivostok at the train station without too much trouble, except the lady at the ticket window seemed to have woken up on the wrong hemisphere, let alone the wrong side of bed. I should also probably state, that I didn't get my ticket, Igor got it as my Russian skills would still have her barking at me now. A train ticket bought from Novosibirsk to Vladivostok takes just over 4 days, and you travel about 6000km in total to the east crossing 4 time zones. It cost me 9430 Rubles which is about 197 quid, not so cheap, but for such a long journey and travelling second class (Out of 4), it's not so bad.

We also try and get my visa registered today, but the police station is closed, so put it off until tomorrow afternoon.
Igor's dad is quite creative and creates mosaics and makes medieval armour and swords, so we obviously don the chain mail helmets and take a few snaps.
Tomorrow is mushroom picking day and a 6am start, so we call it a day quite early in preparation for our forest adventure.

Day 6 - Novosibirsk

28.08.09

Today is Igor's dad's birthday and so after a late wake up from the late night mosquito blood bath and vodka drinking session, we get up and have breakfast, wish him a happy birthday and drink some water!

We also have a walk to the shops with Igor's older brother Dimitri and between the three of us buy his dad a new fishing rod for his birthday, which he is very pleased about.
I also attempt to have a conversation with Igor's little brother Nikolaj, my Russian now consists of about 10 words so the conversation goes no where fast and we resort to the universal form of made up sign language.

I also get talking to Igor's dad today and he shows me his wounds from a grenade in Afghanistan and bullet wounds in his leg from another time. It turns out he was in the Russian version of the SAS and was a Colonel I think. He had his own men and was known to never lose anyone on missions. His knowledge of survival is astounding and he values his training highly, he now teaches survival at the local school. I'm guessing it's similar to having classes at school which are like being taught at the scouts except a lot more in depth and by an SAS Colonel.

Day 5 - Novosibirsk

27.07.09
The train network throughout Russia runs on Moscow time which means when we get off our train at 7am it immediately becomes 3 hours later and is Novosibirsk time. We get off the train and are greeted by Igor's dad waiting at the platform, him and his son both having a smile ear to ear for seeing each other for the first time in 9 years. We grab a lift to his flat in Berdsk, which is about 30mins or so across the river from Novosibirsk. We have what we have both been eagerly waiting for for 3 days, a shower!

After some food and a chat all in Russian so Igor is once again translating, we head to the beach on the river, which is only 10mins walk away. So we are well into Siberia and there isn't a bit of snow in sight. It's hotter than UK, you need sunglasses it's so bright and there isn't a cloud in the sky. We go swimming in the river and drink beer and Vodka on the beach. It's a lovely way to end 55 hours sat and doing all your activities in an area less than the size of a single bed. As the sun sets we drink away and some of Igor's dad's friends come and join us and play guitar and sing songs on the beach. A great night, the only downside is that I didn't think Siberia would be prone to mosquitoes so I left all my repellent in the bag at the flat. The next day I look like I have chicken pox on my arms and have fed about 50,000 flying blood suckers.

Day 3,4&5 - 3335km on a train

25.07.09


So we got on the train last night at a station in Moscow. On Russian sleeper trains there are 4 different classes: 1st class or SV, which is the top and compartments of 2 beds; 2nd class , tourist or Kupe, which has compartments of 4; Plaskartny, which is essentially 3rd and is a wagon of open plan beds; and the bottom one which is just unreserved seating. All the guide books and internet basically say the same thing, go for SV if you can or Kupe should be good enough, don't do Plaskartny for anything longer than a day and if your a tourist then avoid it. We obviously went for the Plaskartny for our 3 night journey.

The train wasn't actually that bad at all. It was open plan with bunks of two running across the train and then a corridor at the foot of the bed with bunks of two running down the length of the train. It was clean when we got on, quite cosy and I couldn't lie outstretched on the bed or my feet stuck out into the corridor. It was interesting as a lot of people seemed to have this problem and as the top bunk was at my head height, moving the carriage later in the evening meant dodging bare feet or getting them in the face.

We were stocked up on fruit, noodles, porridge, bread and enough food to last us to Novosibirsk and back. Usually having porridge for breakfast, bread and soup for lunch and maybe noodles for dinner or buckwheat porridge. I was also given some traditional Russian food to try by some older guys on the train.


We made friends with the people who slept opposite us, one getting off the night before us and one taking the train to its final destination. Pacha and Inya, they were really nice and gave us food to try and we ended up sharing all our food together mostly. They didn't speak any English, so found my Russian attempts amusing and also tried to help me out with my learning.




Opposite us and spread throughout the carriage were around 6 old men who got together every meal time and made a communal salad or a dish called okroshka, which is a salad made of vegetables and dill, sour cream and then turned sort of a cold soup, by adding a brewed drink called kvas. They chatted away to Igor about a whole host of subjects, one of them an engineer and one was an academic and had lots of information to convey.



It was quite weird being on a train for so long and totally messed with the UK conception of a train journey, which if your going very far might last for 8 or 9 hours. This one on the other hand was about 55 hours, and people lived their lives and they daily routines. As Igor put it, it was a stationary microcosm of people living and eating, sleeping and doing their daily business, but on a platform that was hurtling at probably over 100km in the middle of no where. There were the family dramas and incidents in some cars with people arguing and so many stories. On the final night we were having a midnight cup of tea in the restaurant car with a girl who worked the car and she was explaining the situation's history, when right before our eyes it played out, the classic 'man loves a woman but she doesn't like him and goes off with someone else in front of his eyes'.

It was definitely a train journey to remember, but I wasn't even half way to Vladivostok