(Please back date to 2/19/13)
I left the lodge around noon yesterday. Natasha had actually left the night before because she had some matter to attend to in the city in the morning leaving the three of us, I and the two Germans, Ronny and Henrik, to ourselves. The three of us had slept in, made breakfast and drank some coffee. Then Ronny and Henrik rented the two ice bikes and headed off to the lake. I slowly packed up my things and walked down the village road to the bus stop. It was the clearest, sunniest of my days in the village and, walking towards the shore, I could see very clearly to the other side of the lake where large, snow covered mountains loomed. I hopped a minibus and made my way back to the city.
Jane was there again. She helped me in and I collected the things that I had left behind in the hostel and then I ran out to do some quick errands before heading to the train station. I was pretty productive. I found an outlet adapter for my computer (although it doesn’t work really well - I might have to find another one), picked up a Russian SIM card for my old Chinese cell phone, and bought some food for the train. I said one last goodbye to Jane and then walked my way back over the bridge to the train station.
I ran into Sean and Karen (the Aussie couple traveling the world - today marked their 200th day on the road) there in the waiting hall. They were hopping the same train as me. But I only had confirmation pages for my tickets so I had to swap them for actual tickets at the ticket office. After waiting behind several lines in order for me to talk to a station worker, I decided to have a go of it myself at the self serve kiosks. In China, the lines for tickets at the train stations are daunting. Disorderly lines of dozens of people, all trying to cut each other and shove to the front, fill the ticket booths. But the station workers are so used to such scenes, that each person is taken care of in a matter of seconds, few words ever need be exchanged. But here at the Irkutsk ticket office, each line had only one or two people in it but I sat in several of them for over twenty minutes and still the people being helped were not finished. I couldn’t tell what was taking so long. The self serve kiosks were annoyingly easy to use. I collected each ticket from here to Moscow in a grand total of 2 minutes (totaling 4 confirmation pages and 4 tickets to process). Good to know.
Our train pulled into platform one, and the three of us hopped into car 8. This was the first time I had actually traveled in a train full of Russian people. The last two trains along the Trans-Siberian line have been filled with Mongolians. So at first we seemed to blend into the crowd. But it didn’t take long for the others to notice there were foreigners in their midst as soon as we began to talk in English in the passageway. From that moment on we were the token foreigners on the train.
This train was set up exactly like the others I had taken (but this one looked a little older). I found my compartment and, walking in, the first thing I noticed was this walrus of a man sitting on the lower left bunk. He had a bald head, small squinty blue eyes, a big lower lip, and a belly as round as he was tall. This was one big guy. He started to say something to me in Russian to which I replied, “Izvenitye, ya yesho nye govoru pa-ruski,” which means, “sorry, I can’t speak much Russian yet.” He paused and then continued to tell me in Russian where my bed was (lower right, right next to his) and how to hang my coat on the hangers near the door. And then he waddled his way to the back portion of his bed and leaned back against the wall, exhaling loudly.
A short, very thin Russian guy, maybe early twenties, with blond hair and wearing a typical Russian military undershirt (wide neck, blue and white horizontal stripes) darted in from around the corner and introduced himself as Rosen saying, “Me...Rosen....you?...” pointing at me expecting me to say my name which I did. He was very drunk, the smell of beer emanating from his body. His head swayed when he spoke and talked in very good, caveman English saying other basic things like, “You....go. You.....go......where?” Krasnoyarsk, I said. “You.....go.....Krasnoyarsk. I.....go......Krasnoyarsk. Bye bye Krasnoyarsk,” calling me Krasnoyarsk. The walrus watched us as Rosen ducked out of the compartment and away. I had some time now to unpack my things a bit, stow my luggage away under the bed, and lay out some food that I had brought for dinner. I had a loaf of bread, spread cheese, and small packaged sausages. I started to rip off bits of the loaf when the walrus took from his pocket a massive, very weighty knife. I said, “spacebo” and began to cut the loaf into slices.
My nice spread was nothing in comparison to the meal the walrus was sharing with his and my compartment mates. He had laid out newspaper to cover the small table and unwrapped three, big dried fish, all their fish parts intact. Then he took out a tupperware container of sausage cut in slices and plemeni, homemade Russian potato dumplings. He began to chow down.
Towards the end of the meal another Russian man, tall and thin, with a very thick black mustache, also wearing a Russian military undershirt, sat down and began talking to the walrus. He said something to him, tapped him on the shoulder and began to laugh. The walrus just wheezed. Then the man turned to me and asked, “kak vas selvut” (what is your name). I told him, “Minya selvut Stephen.” He told me his name was Sergei. When he talked, a large vein sprung up from out of his thin neck. He had a long, thin face and a big grin. He looked a lot like Daniel Day Lewis’s character in Gangs of New York (a rather frightening character, actually). We tried to communicate over various topics and every once in a while he would lean into me while speaking, pause, and then say, “humor”, while grinning wide and tracing his grin with his fingers. He was probably kidding around with me through most of our conversation but I don’t have the linguistic skill to pick these things up. The walrus and Rosen were enjoying themselves though. Sergei congratulated me on my choice of beer, “vosem (8) percent, very good!” Then he looked at Rosen, pointed at him and cocked his head in a weird way, then looked back at me, pointing to his head and flicked his finger up and away indicating that Rosen was drunk. “Humor,” he said. After about an hour of such conversation and making fun of Rosen’s worsening English skills, Sergei began to tell me that he was a soldier (a Ranger he called it) in the Russian army and had fought in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation in a city called Jelalibad. He was proud of it, clearly, by his serious expression, and the other cabin mates got quiet too. I turned to Rosen, looking at his shirt and asked if he was a soldier too. “No, no, no, no, no...” he said quickly, as if embarrassed to have appeared to have been a soldier like Sergei. Then Sergei asked me if I smoke by gesturing his pack of cigarettes towards me. I said no and then he said, “Good!” while making a hand gesture of a cigarette, putting to his throat, then lifting it, made an exaggerated smoker’s cough and then burst into laughter while tapping the walrus on the shoulder. He started to leave and then turned to me, pointed at the walrus and said, “Boss.” Rosen nodded in agreement and then both Rosen and Sergei left. It was only then that I noticed that walrus had some interesting tattoos in Russian above his hands and that he was missing a thumb. The boss looked at me with his big lower lip covering his upper lip, then rolled over and started to sleep.
I was wiped out from the earlier conversation so I too rolled over and tried to sleep. But I couldn’t. In fact, I couldn’t sleep for most of the night. The boss was so big, that as he slept, his snoring was so loud that it kept me awake. But it wasn’t really snoring. It was an epic battle for his unconscious, sleeping body just to keep him alive. It sounded like he was drowning. And the volume changed in waves. He would snore quietly for a few seconds then he would briefly go silent, and then he would let out three, very loud groans, more like shouts, and sometimes the shouts were in Russian words. It was very creepy for me. I was sleeping only two feet away beside him in the adjacent bed. And every time I opened my eyes, all I could see was his huge belly, spilling out from under his shirt, over the side of the bed, towards me. If I tried to get up and use the bathroom, I had to be extra careful not to brush up against his exposed belly. It was a long night.
The walrus boss left early the next morning leaving me, Rosen, and another more quiet Russian guy with a fading CCCP tattoo on his left shoulder who stayed up late reading a Russian sci-fi book. I slept in as long as possible to make up for the lost sleep the night before, and the rest of the train ride was relatively uneventful. Rosen slept away his hangover.
We pulled into Krasnoyarsk around noon and I wandered up to the cheapest hotel I could find (I only recently found out that there is one hostel in the city - I’m moving there in the morning). The hotel I’m in now is similar to the digs I had in Jiayuguan - “no toilet, no duche,” as the Russian lady behind the counter described it to me. The hotel is called Hotel Sever and is a very traditional, old Soviet style hotel with high wooden paneling and little charm. I haven’t had much time to explore the hotel yet and I only briefly walked around the city, but it seems like an agreeable place so far. The highlights, so I’ve read, are the local ski resort where I hope to do a day of snowboarding, and the local nature reserve, a protected section of forest just south of the huge Yenesei River in the south part of the city.
And tonight I’m headed to a cafe that advertises wifi. I haven’t been able to post in a long time - hopefully you will be able to read this shorty!
I left the lodge around noon yesterday. Natasha had actually left the night before because she had some matter to attend to in the city in the morning leaving the three of us, I and the two Germans, Ronny and Henrik, to ourselves. The three of us had slept in, made breakfast and drank some coffee. Then Ronny and Henrik rented the two ice bikes and headed off to the lake. I slowly packed up my things and walked down the village road to the bus stop. It was the clearest, sunniest of my days in the village and, walking towards the shore, I could see very clearly to the other side of the lake where large, snow covered mountains loomed. I hopped a minibus and made my way back to the city.
Jane was there again. She helped me in and I collected the things that I had left behind in the hostel and then I ran out to do some quick errands before heading to the train station. I was pretty productive. I found an outlet adapter for my computer (although it doesn’t work really well - I might have to find another one), picked up a Russian SIM card for my old Chinese cell phone, and bought some food for the train. I said one last goodbye to Jane and then walked my way back over the bridge to the train station.
I ran into Sean and Karen (the Aussie couple traveling the world - today marked their 200th day on the road) there in the waiting hall. They were hopping the same train as me. But I only had confirmation pages for my tickets so I had to swap them for actual tickets at the ticket office. After waiting behind several lines in order for me to talk to a station worker, I decided to have a go of it myself at the self serve kiosks. In China, the lines for tickets at the train stations are daunting. Disorderly lines of dozens of people, all trying to cut each other and shove to the front, fill the ticket booths. But the station workers are so used to such scenes, that each person is taken care of in a matter of seconds, few words ever need be exchanged. But here at the Irkutsk ticket office, each line had only one or two people in it but I sat in several of them for over twenty minutes and still the people being helped were not finished. I couldn’t tell what was taking so long. The self serve kiosks were annoyingly easy to use. I collected each ticket from here to Moscow in a grand total of 2 minutes (totaling 4 confirmation pages and 4 tickets to process). Good to know.
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| Irkutsk Station |
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| Platform one where my train awaits |
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| My train, No.349, on the Blagovyeshchyensk-Moscow line |
This train was set up exactly like the others I had taken (but this one looked a little older). I found my compartment and, walking in, the first thing I noticed was this walrus of a man sitting on the lower left bunk. He had a bald head, small squinty blue eyes, a big lower lip, and a belly as round as he was tall. This was one big guy. He started to say something to me in Russian to which I replied, “Izvenitye, ya yesho nye govoru pa-ruski,” which means, “sorry, I can’t speak much Russian yet.” He paused and then continued to tell me in Russian where my bed was (lower right, right next to his) and how to hang my coat on the hangers near the door. And then he waddled his way to the back portion of his bed and leaned back against the wall, exhaling loudly.
A short, very thin Russian guy, maybe early twenties, with blond hair and wearing a typical Russian military undershirt (wide neck, blue and white horizontal stripes) darted in from around the corner and introduced himself as Rosen saying, “Me...Rosen....you?...” pointing at me expecting me to say my name which I did. He was very drunk, the smell of beer emanating from his body. His head swayed when he spoke and talked in very good, caveman English saying other basic things like, “You....go. You.....go......where?” Krasnoyarsk, I said. “You.....go.....Krasnoyarsk. I.....go......Krasnoyarsk. Bye bye Krasnoyarsk,” calling me Krasnoyarsk. The walrus watched us as Rosen ducked out of the compartment and away. I had some time now to unpack my things a bit, stow my luggage away under the bed, and lay out some food that I had brought for dinner. I had a loaf of bread, spread cheese, and small packaged sausages. I started to rip off bits of the loaf when the walrus took from his pocket a massive, very weighty knife. I said, “spacebo” and began to cut the loaf into slices.
My nice spread was nothing in comparison to the meal the walrus was sharing with his and my compartment mates. He had laid out newspaper to cover the small table and unwrapped three, big dried fish, all their fish parts intact. Then he took out a tupperware container of sausage cut in slices and plemeni, homemade Russian potato dumplings. He began to chow down.
Towards the end of the meal another Russian man, tall and thin, with a very thick black mustache, also wearing a Russian military undershirt, sat down and began talking to the walrus. He said something to him, tapped him on the shoulder and began to laugh. The walrus just wheezed. Then the man turned to me and asked, “kak vas selvut” (what is your name). I told him, “Minya selvut Stephen.” He told me his name was Sergei. When he talked, a large vein sprung up from out of his thin neck. He had a long, thin face and a big grin. He looked a lot like Daniel Day Lewis’s character in Gangs of New York (a rather frightening character, actually). We tried to communicate over various topics and every once in a while he would lean into me while speaking, pause, and then say, “humor”, while grinning wide and tracing his grin with his fingers. He was probably kidding around with me through most of our conversation but I don’t have the linguistic skill to pick these things up. The walrus and Rosen were enjoying themselves though. Sergei congratulated me on my choice of beer, “vosem (8) percent, very good!” Then he looked at Rosen, pointed at him and cocked his head in a weird way, then looked back at me, pointing to his head and flicked his finger up and away indicating that Rosen was drunk. “Humor,” he said. After about an hour of such conversation and making fun of Rosen’s worsening English skills, Sergei began to tell me that he was a soldier (a Ranger he called it) in the Russian army and had fought in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation in a city called Jelalibad. He was proud of it, clearly, by his serious expression, and the other cabin mates got quiet too. I turned to Rosen, looking at his shirt and asked if he was a soldier too. “No, no, no, no, no...” he said quickly, as if embarrassed to have appeared to have been a soldier like Sergei. Then Sergei asked me if I smoke by gesturing his pack of cigarettes towards me. I said no and then he said, “Good!” while making a hand gesture of a cigarette, putting to his throat, then lifting it, made an exaggerated smoker’s cough and then burst into laughter while tapping the walrus on the shoulder. He started to leave and then turned to me, pointed at the walrus and said, “Boss.” Rosen nodded in agreement and then both Rosen and Sergei left. It was only then that I noticed that walrus had some interesting tattoos in Russian above his hands and that he was missing a thumb. The boss looked at me with his big lower lip covering his upper lip, then rolled over and started to sleep.
I was wiped out from the earlier conversation so I too rolled over and tried to sleep. But I couldn’t. In fact, I couldn’t sleep for most of the night. The boss was so big, that as he slept, his snoring was so loud that it kept me awake. But it wasn’t really snoring. It was an epic battle for his unconscious, sleeping body just to keep him alive. It sounded like he was drowning. And the volume changed in waves. He would snore quietly for a few seconds then he would briefly go silent, and then he would let out three, very loud groans, more like shouts, and sometimes the shouts were in Russian words. It was very creepy for me. I was sleeping only two feet away beside him in the adjacent bed. And every time I opened my eyes, all I could see was his huge belly, spilling out from under his shirt, over the side of the bed, towards me. If I tried to get up and use the bathroom, I had to be extra careful not to brush up against his exposed belly. It was a long night.
The walrus boss left early the next morning leaving me, Rosen, and another more quiet Russian guy with a fading CCCP tattoo on his left shoulder who stayed up late reading a Russian sci-fi book. I slept in as long as possible to make up for the lost sleep the night before, and the rest of the train ride was relatively uneventful. Rosen slept away his hangover.
We pulled into Krasnoyarsk around noon and I wandered up to the cheapest hotel I could find (I only recently found out that there is one hostel in the city - I’m moving there in the morning). The hotel I’m in now is similar to the digs I had in Jiayuguan - “no toilet, no duche,” as the Russian lady behind the counter described it to me. The hotel is called Hotel Sever and is a very traditional, old Soviet style hotel with high wooden paneling and little charm. I haven’t had much time to explore the hotel yet and I only briefly walked around the city, but it seems like an agreeable place so far. The highlights, so I’ve read, are the local ski resort where I hope to do a day of snowboarding, and the local nature reserve, a protected section of forest just south of the huge Yenesei River in the south part of the city.
And tonight I’m headed to a cafe that advertises wifi. I haven’t been able to post in a long time - hopefully you will be able to read this shorty!
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