Still alive! I’ve completed the first major portion of my trip and finished the famed Trans-Siberian railroad here in Moscow. The end of a super long line of trains and it must be said, I’m trained out for a bit (but only just a bit).
I arrived in glorious, uber-European, Moscow this morning after a reasonably pleasant train ride from Perm. I took the same train, No. 109, that I took from Ekaterinburg to get to Perm so I was well familiar with its departure time, a leisurely 3 PM. The train took me overnight so there wasn’t much to see but I think this last stretch was supposed to be the least interesting or varied portion of the trek anyway, much of it consisting of Moscow's suburban sprawl. My cabin mates in general were interesting ones, but all of them were solo travelers so they mainly kept to themselves. The guy next to me though (I had the bottom right bunk again, I’ve had the bottom right bunk on every single ride since Beijing, oddly enough) did try to spark a conversation which I was grateful for. He broke the ice by sharing some of his dried, salted fish that he had bought from one of the aggressive babushkas from one of the station platforms when we pulled to a stop for awhile. They were tasty. He had asked me where I was going and where I started from. He responded with a mystified, “whewfff”, slightly shaking his head in disbelief when I had told him I had taken the train from Beijing. Then he took out his laptop and tinkered with it for a while. Assuming our conversation was complete, I took out my e-reader and began to read more of “Travels in Siberia” which, by the way, I’m almost finished with and is turning out to be an excellent read, I highly recommend it. But then out of the blue he put the laptop in my lap. Startled a bit, I took the laptop and began to watch what he wanted to show me. The video was of a professor in a classroom talking to a small group of students in Russian. This looked like a recording of an actual lesson. But I didn’t understand any of the Russian and wasn’t sure why I was being shown the 45 minute long clip. His eagerness to show me waning, he reached over and with the keypad, skipped ahead 15 minutes or so and suddenly I understood what he wanted to show me. The professor had started to write English words on a chalkboard in the front of the classroom while students looked on. He made a diagram that looked like a tic-tac-toe figure and began to take an English verb and conjugate it in a different way in each of the nine squares. The students looked on and tried to repeat the words with the professor. This went on for about a half hour and I watched the entire thing, I was kind of hooked on it. To see an English lesson in Russian is a very interesting thing to watch. It’s a reminder that makes me glad (I’m reminded of this often) that I am a native English speaker. English is one weird language and a difficult one to learn, especially when your native language is so different than English, as Chinese or Russian is. I give them a lot of credit and it makes me want to try harder to learn languages as well. And I also realized, from watching this film, that I think I could never be an English teacher. It requires a lot of patience and a very thorough knowledge of how the English language is constructed, neither of which I can claim to have. When the film was finished, I thanked him for the entertainment, and then he rolled over and went to sleep.
Around midnight we pulled into a station in the city of Karov for about twenty minutes. My new friend disembarked here, two newcomers arrived, and then we were full up in the compartment. One of the new arrivals was a short man who smiled a lot. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t Russian. But I think he was smiling nervously, which I believe was a result of his not really being able to speak Russian (I could tell from his accent and his stunted responses to standard questions - some of which even sounded like English responses - yeah, sorry, etc.) and he looked and behaved a lot like I did when I took my first train and was surrounded by big Russian people. I’ve learned not to shy around these hardy, Russian train folks, to kind of plant myself down and own my territory within the compartment as certainly I have every right to do. They treat you like another compartment mate when you do that. But during my first ride in Siberia I was still a little shell shocked by how different Russian train folk are (they are indeed a different breed of folk) and by how difficult the language barrier was. But that hesitation only invited attention which made life a little uncomfortable at times. Anyway, I’m of hardy train stock now myself. This new passenger had a darker shade of skin than Russians, probably he was from central Asia somewhere and he mostly kept out of the way, clambering up into the top bunk and sleeping most of the journey. The other new arrival was an interesting fellow. He also kept to himself and was mysteriously gone from the compartment for much of the time. He was tall, very skinny, and very Russian looking. He looked like a vampire. He had sharp, crystal blue eyes and a sharp nose. And he came into the compartment wearing a very expensive looking leather coat, a gentleman’s fur hat, and wore a very fine suit made of silk with a black turtle neck under the jacket. Yeah, he was a vampire. He never said a word to anybody and after I had fallen asleep and woke up briefly around three in the morning, he was still wide awake typing on a computer in his bed. I guess he doesn’t sleep.
But we all pulled into Moscow station at 10 o’clock this morning. I was met there by Yana, a friend of mine who studied with me in the same program in Chengdu last semester. I had told her I was passing through Moscow for awhile and she graciously made time to meet me and take me to a hostel that she had researched ahead of time that she thought would be suitable (she said she couldn’t take me in her apartment unfortunately because her sister, who also lives there, is contagiously ill, and Yana herself even had to relocate to her grandparents’ house). But she will be able to spend a lot of time with me while I’m here and I’m happy to have a friend around, let alone a local.
I took a much needed shower at the hostel (trains don’t have showers) and then we set off to a cafe where I ordered a mushroom and potato pie and a big, dark beer. She joined me for that. Then I took care of a much needed chore with her much needed help. My bank card expired yesterday and a new one had to be mailed to me here in Moscow. It never quite made the address so I had Fedex hold it for me at a distribution center in Moscow and we went to go pick it up, successfully. (I had attempted this before actually. My bank mailed one to me when I stayed at the hostel in the hutong in Beijing. But as I described in a much earlier post, hutongs are the worst sort of labyrinths, addresses mean little in the hutong, and I wasn’t surprised when it never made it to me.) But now I can access money, a necessary part of traveling.
Yana went off to a meeting she had at her university (Moscow State University) and I went back to the area where my hostel is. My hostel is located in an apartment in the heart of the city center in one of the oldest districts called Kitai Gorod which actually means China Town in Russian even though there is not an ounce of Chinese anything in this neighborhood. But I’m within walking distance of about a billion cafes, food markets, and the famous Red Square. So I spent the whole rest of the day walking around and checking out the neighborhood. I will do a more dedicated trip tomorrow, but I wandered through Red Square today to get a sneak peek. It’s amazing and I’ll save a more thorough description of it later when I’ve had a better chance to explore. But when you think of Russian architecture, you think of Moscow’s Red Square. Here are a few preview photos to whet your appetite.
It should also be noted that Moscow is warm (like above zero/above freezing warm). It snowed all day but it was the heavy, wet snow that one experiences in Boston around this time of year. Everywhere else I had been to in Russia was bitterly cold, streets frozen in ice. Moscow is a slushy mess right now. But this is a good sign for me and my future springtime travels.
So, Red Square and the Kremlin tomorrow. And I’m going to hit the Moscow nightlife with Yana and some of her friends as well in the evening. It should be fun.
I arrived in glorious, uber-European, Moscow this morning after a reasonably pleasant train ride from Perm. I took the same train, No. 109, that I took from Ekaterinburg to get to Perm so I was well familiar with its departure time, a leisurely 3 PM. The train took me overnight so there wasn’t much to see but I think this last stretch was supposed to be the least interesting or varied portion of the trek anyway, much of it consisting of Moscow's suburban sprawl. My cabin mates in general were interesting ones, but all of them were solo travelers so they mainly kept to themselves. The guy next to me though (I had the bottom right bunk again, I’ve had the bottom right bunk on every single ride since Beijing, oddly enough) did try to spark a conversation which I was grateful for. He broke the ice by sharing some of his dried, salted fish that he had bought from one of the aggressive babushkas from one of the station platforms when we pulled to a stop for awhile. They were tasty. He had asked me where I was going and where I started from. He responded with a mystified, “whewfff”, slightly shaking his head in disbelief when I had told him I had taken the train from Beijing. Then he took out his laptop and tinkered with it for a while. Assuming our conversation was complete, I took out my e-reader and began to read more of “Travels in Siberia” which, by the way, I’m almost finished with and is turning out to be an excellent read, I highly recommend it. But then out of the blue he put the laptop in my lap. Startled a bit, I took the laptop and began to watch what he wanted to show me. The video was of a professor in a classroom talking to a small group of students in Russian. This looked like a recording of an actual lesson. But I didn’t understand any of the Russian and wasn’t sure why I was being shown the 45 minute long clip. His eagerness to show me waning, he reached over and with the keypad, skipped ahead 15 minutes or so and suddenly I understood what he wanted to show me. The professor had started to write English words on a chalkboard in the front of the classroom while students looked on. He made a diagram that looked like a tic-tac-toe figure and began to take an English verb and conjugate it in a different way in each of the nine squares. The students looked on and tried to repeat the words with the professor. This went on for about a half hour and I watched the entire thing, I was kind of hooked on it. To see an English lesson in Russian is a very interesting thing to watch. It’s a reminder that makes me glad (I’m reminded of this often) that I am a native English speaker. English is one weird language and a difficult one to learn, especially when your native language is so different than English, as Chinese or Russian is. I give them a lot of credit and it makes me want to try harder to learn languages as well. And I also realized, from watching this film, that I think I could never be an English teacher. It requires a lot of patience and a very thorough knowledge of how the English language is constructed, neither of which I can claim to have. When the film was finished, I thanked him for the entertainment, and then he rolled over and went to sleep.
Around midnight we pulled into a station in the city of Karov for about twenty minutes. My new friend disembarked here, two newcomers arrived, and then we were full up in the compartment. One of the new arrivals was a short man who smiled a lot. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t Russian. But I think he was smiling nervously, which I believe was a result of his not really being able to speak Russian (I could tell from his accent and his stunted responses to standard questions - some of which even sounded like English responses - yeah, sorry, etc.) and he looked and behaved a lot like I did when I took my first train and was surrounded by big Russian people. I’ve learned not to shy around these hardy, Russian train folks, to kind of plant myself down and own my territory within the compartment as certainly I have every right to do. They treat you like another compartment mate when you do that. But during my first ride in Siberia I was still a little shell shocked by how different Russian train folk are (they are indeed a different breed of folk) and by how difficult the language barrier was. But that hesitation only invited attention which made life a little uncomfortable at times. Anyway, I’m of hardy train stock now myself. This new passenger had a darker shade of skin than Russians, probably he was from central Asia somewhere and he mostly kept out of the way, clambering up into the top bunk and sleeping most of the journey. The other new arrival was an interesting fellow. He also kept to himself and was mysteriously gone from the compartment for much of the time. He was tall, very skinny, and very Russian looking. He looked like a vampire. He had sharp, crystal blue eyes and a sharp nose. And he came into the compartment wearing a very expensive looking leather coat, a gentleman’s fur hat, and wore a very fine suit made of silk with a black turtle neck under the jacket. Yeah, he was a vampire. He never said a word to anybody and after I had fallen asleep and woke up briefly around three in the morning, he was still wide awake typing on a computer in his bed. I guess he doesn’t sleep.
But we all pulled into Moscow station at 10 o’clock this morning. I was met there by Yana, a friend of mine who studied with me in the same program in Chengdu last semester. I had told her I was passing through Moscow for awhile and she graciously made time to meet me and take me to a hostel that she had researched ahead of time that she thought would be suitable (she said she couldn’t take me in her apartment unfortunately because her sister, who also lives there, is contagiously ill, and Yana herself even had to relocate to her grandparents’ house). But she will be able to spend a lot of time with me while I’m here and I’m happy to have a friend around, let alone a local.
I took a much needed shower at the hostel (trains don’t have showers) and then we set off to a cafe where I ordered a mushroom and potato pie and a big, dark beer. She joined me for that. Then I took care of a much needed chore with her much needed help. My bank card expired yesterday and a new one had to be mailed to me here in Moscow. It never quite made the address so I had Fedex hold it for me at a distribution center in Moscow and we went to go pick it up, successfully. (I had attempted this before actually. My bank mailed one to me when I stayed at the hostel in the hutong in Beijing. But as I described in a much earlier post, hutongs are the worst sort of labyrinths, addresses mean little in the hutong, and I wasn’t surprised when it never made it to me.) But now I can access money, a necessary part of traveling.
Yana went off to a meeting she had at her university (Moscow State University) and I went back to the area where my hostel is. My hostel is located in an apartment in the heart of the city center in one of the oldest districts called Kitai Gorod which actually means China Town in Russian even though there is not an ounce of Chinese anything in this neighborhood. But I’m within walking distance of about a billion cafes, food markets, and the famous Red Square. So I spent the whole rest of the day walking around and checking out the neighborhood. I will do a more dedicated trip tomorrow, but I wandered through Red Square today to get a sneak peek. It’s amazing and I’ll save a more thorough description of it later when I’ve had a better chance to explore. But when you think of Russian architecture, you think of Moscow’s Red Square. Here are a few preview photos to whet your appetite.
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| St. Basil's Cathedral, east side of Red Square |
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| DJ throwing down Russian club music in a public ice rink in the middle of Red Square |
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| The State Kremlin Palace in the west end of Red Square |
So, Red Square and the Kremlin tomorrow. And I’m going to hit the Moscow nightlife with Yana and some of her friends as well in the evening. It should be fun.
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