Two Days On The Train

This is the longest leg of the Trans-Siberian train that I have taken yet.  It is the section from Chita to Birobidzhan, and I am spending two nights on the train. Siberia is big, and this is just a wee slice of it.

This is also the first time I have reserved an upper berth. It is really not too bad. There is a ladder that folds out of the wall to get up there, though originally I wasn't aware of that. There are also all kinds of amazing little secret nooks and crannies to keep your stuff in the upper berth, I guess to make up for the lack of space that you have otherwise. But after taking the Trans-Mongolian train and several legs of the Trans-Siberian, now I'm a train veteran. I know where the outlets are, so I can charge my device. There are only two in the car, in the hallway, and they are in high demand. Or, that is, until I discovered the secret third one by the bathroom that nobody had been competing for.  But now that everybody knows about that one from seeing me there, I bet it will be hard to use that one, too. Quite a contrast from the Trans-Mongolian, which had outlets in every compartment in the car. The provodnitsas and provodnitsas have extra outlets in their compartments, and I hear if you ask them nicely, they will let you charge your device.

I shared a compartment with Tatiana and Ariana, two lawyers from Ulan-Ude with Buryat features, and a Russian guy who wasn't very talkative, but was helpful when he could be. He got off fairly early from the train, so for the rest of the journey, there were only the the of us in the compartment. At least I didn't get put into a compartment with a bunch of vodka-crazed soccer hooligans or nationalists. Tatiana spoke a little bit of English, but her English was heavily broken (but still much better than my Russian). Between her English, my terrible Russian, a little pantomime, and Google Translate getting whipped out occasionally, we managed to communicate pretty well. Both of the lawyers were on the way to Khabarovsk to undertake some further lethal training. Unlike in the US, where lawyers have to take continuing legal education every year, they told me Russian lawyers have to undertake further study every five years. So they were on their way to do that. Tatiana told me her mother was a judge, and was retired, but there was no way she had the resources to travel around the world on the pension she had.

Tatiana asked me if I had been to any of the Buddhist temples in Ulan-Ude. I told her I hadn't.  She said I should go, because it would change my life. She said there were monks there who were herbal healers, and they were better than doctors. She told me about one monk who preserved his body so well that they say he is not dead, but in a state of perpetual meditation. She asked me if people did herbal medicine in the US, I told her that people sometimes did, but mostly on their own. She said she thought that was dangerous. I told her people sometimes consulted herbalists, but didn't often go to folk healers, but some Native Americans did.

The upper berth was really not bad at all. I would definitely prefer the lower berth, but now that I had an upper, it was OK. The only thing was that it got really hot up there. Russian trains are kept furiously hot anyway, and with heat rising to the top, it got insanely toasty up there. Luckily the window in our compartment had not been locked by the provodnik, so I was able to open the window at the top to let the gathered heat out when I needed to.

The train ride was really mesmerizing, even though it was two days long. The scenery was gorgeous, filled with Siberian taiga and steppe, with the occasional horse-riding shepherd or picturesque village filed with log houses and corrals. The restaurant car was a cool place to hang out for a change every once in a while. They didn't seem to mind if people bought anything, but it wasn't the gathering place that it had been previously when I had taken international trains. The domestic trains in Russia are mostly filled with Russians, unlike the trains that cross borders.

The train stopped often for little towns, and they would only let people off the train if they stopped for fifteen minutes or more. Some of the tiny towns only had stops of a minute to five minutes, just long enough for people to get on or off who were scheduled to do so, but there were a good amount of long stops where I was able to get off the train and run around (usually literally) the towns taking pictures, paying careful attention to the time, because the train will definitely take off without you if you aren't back by the time it is scheduled to leave. There was one time I had a little bit of a scare, because I got off the train in one town, crossed several tracks to get to the station, ran around snapping luxuries, but on my way back, another train (a freight train) arrived on one of the tracks between me and the train I needed to board. It was a REALLY long train, too. I saw Tatiana run across the tracks and beat it back to the train, but I was too far away to even consider that.  So I had to wait a long time for it to pass, and I barely hauled ass back to the train before they closed the doors. Whew.

About two hours before I was supposed to get off the train, I had gone to the space at the end of the compartment, because there are windows on both sides and it is a good place to take pics. There were two guys sitting there smoking. They started taking to me in rapid-fire Russian, and all I could do was shake my head, and say, "Ni ponimayu," which means, "I don't understand." Suddenly they realized that I was a rare foreigner on the train, and they asked to take their picture with me (that happens a LOT). I complied, and let them take a bunch of selfies with me. They introduced themselves to me as Sergei and Andrei, and insisted that I accompany them to their compartment for some vodka. My spidey-sense was tingling a little, but what the hell, sure.

We went to the front of the car, and they led me into a compartment that I didn't even know was there before. It was between the provodnik's sleeping compartment and his working compartment. It only had one upper and lower bunk, rather than two of each. Sergei and Andrei were very insistent about the vodka thing. They mixed two bottles of liquid together, one clear, and one tannish, and started pouring drinks. I only drank a couple and then begged off.  But then they wanted to talk about political stuff. They asked me what American people thought about Russian people.  Honestly, I didn't know how to answer that, because I have no idea what most people think, so I told them I didn't really know. They started asking me questions about Barack Obama, to which I just answered vaguely and in a non-committal fashion. Then Sergei and Andrei told me they were both police officers.  I tried to just keep the same expression on my face that I had had before,  and started thinking, "OK, time to start figuring out the exit strategy. "

Then Sergei asked me to trade phone numbers. I was a little hesitant to do that, but did anyway. I gave him my number, one/then the area code/then the number, and he put it into his phone and tried to call me.  It didn't work. I said I really didn't know how international codes worked, and what one needed to dial to get through. He insisted that I enter his number into my phone, and then try to call HIM. So I did. This time it worked. So now he had my number.  He kept saying, "Telefon?" I said, "Da." He asked when, I said,  "Cztery dnia (four days)." Andrei told me he was a boxer, and showed me a bunch of pictures of him in martial arts uniforms and in the ring.  Then he jokingly asked me if I wanted to box and started making sparring gestures.  I smiled and said no, but he kept asking and punching the air. I tried to beg off and leave at this point, because I needed to pack my stuff to get off the train in about a half an hour, but they were very insistent I stick around a little longer. So I did, and they played me a bunch of Russian pop music, asking for my opinion. I made thumbs-up gestures. But now I had to get my stuff together to get off the train....they were getting off a few hours later, as were most on the train. I finally managed to escape back to my compartment, and furiously got my stuff ready to debark. Tatiana told me I must be very careful, because I could be arrested, and I told her, "I know." I got my stuff together, went to the front of the train to get ready to debark, and Sergei and Andrei showed up there again to chat. The provodnik didn't seem to want to have anything to do with them.  I just answered their questions politely, and then when the train stopped, I bid them, "Da Svedaniya" (goodbye), and took off into town of Birobidzhan.

Chita in the Rear View Mirror

I just used up the last of some peanuts I had bought in China in a stir-fry I just made. The brand name of the peanuts, printed in English on the package among all the Chinese writing, was "Special Legal Product." I bought was I thought was brown rice here at a grocery store in Chita, but it turned out to be buckwheat groats. No big deal, still made for a great stir-fry. All the produce here in Russia that I have found in the grocery stores (and in China and Mongolia as well) is shrink-wrapped in plastic. Even some ginger root I bought was wrapped.  But in the open markets that is often not the case. The open markets also usually have better variety in produce. Most of the grocery stores don't seem to have many fresh vegetables. I managed to round up some fresh slightly hot peppers, carrots, and celery, mix it all with a bunch of finely diced ginger, some frozen broccoli, a bit of salt and a pinch of sugar, all served over the buckwheat groats. Not as well-spiced as I would prefer, but it did the trick.

That was the first time that I had cooked a meal in Russia. I've been mostly going out for food, or just eating raw fruits and snacks.  Now I am going to have to stock up on train food, as I'm leaving Chita, and getting back on the train for my longest leg of the Trans-Siberian so far. I'll be on the train for a couple of days. And this time, I will be in kupé, or second-class, but, unlike my other train trips, I have an upper berth for the first time. Oh well, shouldn't be too bad.

Train food consists, first of all, of anything I can make with the boiling water from the samovars on the train. A lot of people bring ramen noodles, I've done that too. Also I like to bring dried fruit and nuts, maybe some cookies or biscuits. Also I need to make sure that I have plenty of water, though if I run out, I can at least cool down some of the boiling water from the train. Most of the tap water is not safe to drink, but the good news is that it is mostly organisms in the water, rather than heavy metals or other contaminants (at least not in huge amounts, those things are probably everywhere to some degree), so boiling the water for a bit will sterilize it. I also have some water purification tabs that I have occasionally used. I'll also bring the leftovers of today's stir-fry; I've probably still got a couple meals left of that. And I have some instant coffee and some liquid stevia that I brought from Austin (of course, there is always the "Breaking Bad stevia scenario", but at least it is my private stash). Maybe I'll have enough food so I don't have to go to the restaurant car, or buy anything from the vendors at the stops.  But I probably will hit the restaurant car anyway, just for the experience.

Cheap Living, Austin Karma, and a Russian Bear Hugger from Hell in Chita

I've planted myself in Chita, Zabaykalsky Krai, Russia, for a few days. It's not a huge tourist destination (at least not for foreigners, though some traveling on the Trans-Siberian Railroad do stay here), but I'm enjoying my stay in this exotic Northern outpost. Chita is pretty big; it has over 300,000 people. There is plenty to see wandering around the city and I've been doing my best to see as much of it as I can. I had never even heard of this place a few months ago, and now, here I am.

There are a lot of really cheap hostels in Chita.  Many of them are half the price, or less, of the place I am staying. But none of them advertise on any of the big hostel booking sites. I suspect that this is because they can't afford the commissions that these Internet sites charge for advertisement and booking. So if you have the stones to just show up in some Russian town without a place booked at all, despite the language barrier, you could probably get a super-cheap deal. If I hadn't already booked my trains, I would definitely extend my stay and move to one of the cheaper places for a while. They all look OK, at least from the outside...they look clean and hospitable.  You would probably have to choose a city that is relatively large, rather than a one-horse town. And it would be a gamble. But I can tell you for certain, that if you come to Chita, the places are there. I can't tell you whether they would all be booked during high tourist season, which starts around late June, and runs through August.

The first night I was in the hostel, I had the whole room to myself. The room is pretty nice; there are only three beds in the room and they are not bunk beds. It looks a lot like a hotel room rather than a hostel suite, though it is a bit small, and there are no windows, which is a little bit weird, because there are no clues as to what time it is.

The next morning, there was a knock on the door, and the desk clerk was there with a guy named Jesse who would be my suitemate for a couple of nights. I think up to this point, I had been the only foreigner in the hostel. But it was a really strange coincidence that Jesse had been living in Austin for the last three years, not far from where I lived in East Austin! He was originally from Pennsylvania, and was traveling for a while before he planned to teach English in Moscow. Not only that, he was another long-haired guy. How strange to travel so far around the world, and find a suitemate from my same city here in the middle of Siberia!

There was this big, gregarious, Russian guy who befriended me in the lobby. He smelled strongly of vodka, and kept giving me bear hugs and firm, clasping handshakes after everything he said, with a deep, booming laugh and constant thumbs-up gestures.  We had difficulty communicating, but finally I got out my phone and just let him talk into Google Translate, which worked most of the time, but he kept using these idiomatic phrases that Google just translated literally, and came out as nonsense. It was mostly him talking and me reacting. He kept hugging and jostling me, was a very physical guy. He said he had been in Special Forces in Bosnia in the 1990s, and wanted to talk about war stuff a lot. He wanted to know about the military service of most of my male ancestors, and regaled me with his family military history. He insisted on giving me an orange, which I accepted. He said it was a tradition to give something sour on Founders Day (which was a big holiday the day before), even though oranges aren't really sour. Somehow the conversation began turning dark. He started asking me why I was weak, why Americans were not strong; at this point I started looking for an exit strategy.  Then he scolded me about the 27 million Russians who died in World War II, including his grandfather, and asked why I didn't help. Well, I wasn't born yet, so there wasn't much I could do, but I didn't say that; I was mostly trying to keep him from getting more agitated. Why didn't the Americans do anything, he persisted. Why was I of no use in the war in which so many were killed, even though he had given me an orange, he insistently wanted to know. This was really starting to get out there. Luckily at this point, one of his friends showed up, whereupon they bearhugged each other and gave each other copious salutations, and I was able to slink away.

Jesse, my suitemate from Austin, and I met up at a bar around the corner called Plan B after I had done my daily wanderings. I was pretty tired, so I didn't stay long, but he stuck around there until the wee hours of the night and ended up going to the top of a mountain on the outskirts of town with some Russian friends he met there. He told me that some of the Russians in the bar were curious about me, and were asking him some questions. He said the bar owner, who was familiar with American culture (the bar is American-themed and serves a lot of American food) tried to explain to some of the locals the concept of "hippie", but they were all puzzled. Finally one of them said, "You mean he is happy?" whereupon he gave up. The next night Jesse and I wandered down to Plan B again, and there was a really rambunctious atmosphere. I met the head bartender, Victor, a friendly guy with a real steam punk look, who had a few facial piercings and some tats, a bowler hat, and long, braided hair. He kept serving up vodka shots, and some of the locals kept buying vodka and whiskey, and Victor and the other bartenders were all doing shots with us, making toasts, and slamming the glasses down. Me being the lightweight drinker I am, I had to stagger the hell out of there around one or two in the morning and make my way back to the hostel. But Jesse stayed out until nine in the morning, and got back to the hostel just in time to get booted out because it was checkout time. They told him he could stay, but it would be 100 rubles an hour, and his train out wasn't until 7 at night. So he chose to split rather than pay the 100 rubles an hour to stick around. But we were supposed to meet up with Victor the bartender at 2 in the afternoon outside the hostel, as Victor was going to do our hair in dreadlock-slash-braids.

Jesse rolled back to the hostel at 2, and I met him outside. The poor guy looked ragged after not having slept all night and having carried his full pack around town. I actually booked another day at the hostel and paid for it, even though I won't spend the night tomorrow, because I am potentially going to be in the same boat the next day, getting booted in the morning, but having to take the same train in the evening. If the hostel knew I was leaving that day, they would only offer me the 100 rubles an hour to hold over, rather than an extra day, which is tons cheaper. Anyway, Victor never showed up to braid our hair (probably was dead crashed after partying into the wee hours of the morning), so Jesse and I went to a Mongolian-themed restaurant and tea house to get some tea and grub. I left a couple hours before Jesse had to catch his train, and bade him farewell and safe travels.

Taking the Trans-Siberian from Ulan-Ude

I had spent a week in Ulan-Ude. Two of those days, I was stuck mostly in bed with some intestinal bug from hell. Luckily, it didn't last long. I extended my stay because of the time I spent in bed, and I planned out the rest of my stay in Russia...at least the rest of my stay in Russia THIS time. I hope to return in a month or two. I made all the rest of my hostel and train reservations.

But now it was time to move on.  In planning the next phase of my trip, the first train out was going to be at around 6:30 in the morning. The weird thing is that all the Russian trains are on Moscow time, no matter where you are in Russia. And Ulan-Ude is five hours later than Moscow time, so I had to account for that when booking my train reservations. The next bookings I made on the Trans-Siberian were the first bookings I had made myself. This whole trip, I had had an agency book my trains on the Trans-Mongolian, because it was a necessary component of my Chinese visa that I have an itinerary and that I leave the country (before I even got there), and it was a necessary part of my Russian visa that I at least arrange the first stop. So I had planned that far ahead. But now I was on my own.

So I got up at 4:30 in the morning, to give myself a couple of hours to walk to the train station and be there at least an hour early, in case there were any glitches. I had already gone to the train station and printed out my boarding pass a couple of days before. Strangely enough, a boarding pass was necessary for this first leg, but none are required for the rest of the journey; the e-tickets are enough (even though the next leg is on the same train at a later time).

Russian trains have four classes. There is spalny wagon, which is first class, and the most expensive. Then there is kupé, which is second class, and what I booked most of the next legs on. This is the equivalent of what I traveled on the Trans-Mongolian, though it wasn't called that. It has two lower and two upper berths that can be used for sleeping, and a compartment that closes. Also the lower seats lift up, and underneath there is a compartment for storing luggage.  If you have an upper berth, there is an open space next to the need to store luggage. I was issued sheets even though it is a day trip; that worked out because I did nap some. It is really quite comfortable; I can't see the need to pay nearly twice as much for first class.  Then there is third class, or platskarny. I booked a later leg or two on this. It differs in that it has open compartments, and six berths rather than four. There are four on one side of the train that are like kupé, but without doors, and then two on the other side of the aisle. There is a fourth class; I can't remember what it is called  (it starts with an "o"), and it only has seats rather than sleeper berths. The seats are much like the berths but they pack three people into each one.  I think they are phasing out this class, and I didn't see any fourth-class seats for sale on any of the trains I booked.

I got to the station early after walking through just-above-freezing temperatures right before dawn. I had to walk across a huge, crumbling pedestrian bridge over the street to get to the train station, and there were gaping holes in the concrete where I could see below (sort of like on the Tappan Zee or George Washington bridges).

There was a railroad worker at the station waiting to start up his shift, and we struck up a conversation in halting English and Russian. His name was Sergei, and he was talkative and friendly, even given the linguistic difficulties we had. He asked me if I had any American coins to give his daughter; I did, but they were packed away somewhere deep in my backpack.  But I had a few dollar bills in a decoy wallet I had in my pocket, so I gave him one. He was really, really impressed with it, and inspected it for quite a while in wonder. Note to self: next time I travel, I want to bring about twenty dollars in ones just to hand out as souvenirs to people I meet along the way. He told me I was on the wrong platform, but rather than walk up to the pedestrian bridge again and take the right set of stairs down, I could just walk across some tracks to get there. He told me it would be the second train to arrive, so once it arrived, I just puttered across the tracks to get there.

I came up to the train as it was boarding, and there was a young provodnitsa (car attendant) taking boarding passes. She took my boarding pass and passport, and made a mock shocked face when she saw my passport pic with short hair and no beard. She was really warm and friendly to me throughout the journey, unlike the dour provodnitsa on the last leg of the Trans-Mongolian. She was even maybe a little flirtatious. She got replaced in the middle of the trip by the other provodnitsa on a shift change, who was also nice and friendly, though I didn't have as much of a rapport with her.

I shared my compartment with an elderly Russian woman, who was very chatty only in Russian even though it was apparent much of what she was saying to me was not getting through. She was highly insistent that I make my bed and set up the sleeping pad on the seat, though I would have been perfectly content to just sit and lay on the plain seat. She kept chatting on and on about stuff, and I probably only caught less than a tenth of what she said;  I would either just smile and nod, or say, "I don't understand," if I had no idea what she said and it seemed to require an answer. But that didn't seem to deter her from keeping her stream of conversation going. 

Unlike the Trans-Mongolian, where there were a large number of foreigners and English-speakers, I think I was the only foreigner and English speaker on the train, and the object of much attention from everyone. Every time I told somebody something about myself by communicating in halting Russian, English and pantomime, it got around to EVERYONE on the train through the gossip circuit. I didn't mind; it was interesting to be the center of attention. Now I know how British guys feel when they come to the US...with the exception that they can communicate.

There were a number of elementary school-age kids at the other end of the car, and for a while, they were just looking at me in amazement, whispering and giggling. Then they all formally formed a line to come up to me and say, "Hello, my name is ________," in slow English. So I shook each of their hands,  and told them my name too. After this, the boys didn't seem too interested in me any more. But the little girls kept shyly coming up to me in groups of two, after painstakingly rehearsing a sentence or two in English, and presenting their well-practiced few words to me formally, whereupon I would answer, and try to throw in as much Russian as I could. Then they would go back, practice another question to ask me, or a statement to tell me, and I would reply, and they would run off triumphantly. Sometimes the little girls would conspire with the provodnitsa in formulating questions for me. One of the girls asked me if I liked apples, and I said, "Yablki, da." (I just happened to know the word for apples in Russian). And then she shyly brought me an apple and said, "Apple, for you." I said thank you very much in English and Russian as she blushed and left, and I ate the apple.  It was delicious. Then another little girl brought me an apple, and I said,  "No thanks, I just had one." And I immediately felt bad. She seemed embarrassed, and said, "Spasiba" (thank you in Russian) as she backed away.  Aaack, my faux pas.

Everybody on the train was very friendly and curious. Most did not talk to me, but they all seemed to catch the last thing I had said to somebody else on the whisper circuit. This whole experience was not anything I would have necessarily expected on a Russian train.

The train arrived in Chita, which is in Zabaykalsky Krai, Siberia...the next administrative region over from Buryatia. We got in about 6:30 in the evening after traveling for 12 hours from Ulan-Ude. This is probably not a huge tourist destination for Europeans and Americans, and many guidebooks recommend avoiding it. But it seems like a really vibrant city to me, and I'm really glad I stopped here. The hostel was about a kilometer and a half from the bus station, but it was very easy for me to find walking there. I'm looking forward to exploring this place.