On the rails again, or the #10 Baikal to Irkutsk
Trip Start
Aug 02, 2007
1
27
62
Trip End
Oct 05, 2007
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Ekaterinburg,
Russia
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Yaroslavskii Station at 22:45pm was a teeming, seething mass of people going hither and yon. We staked-out a pillar and Ho-Ki corralled our bags while I went to see if our train was waiting at the platform. In most stations, trains generally only pull up, stay for a few minutes, then depart. This was going to be different because the #10 'Baikal' originated at Yaroslavskii. Sure enough, there it stood at platform 4, all decked out in its signature blue and white colors. We were in luck, we wouldn't have to wait in the station. We could grab our bags and board, settle in and get some sleep.
The first trick was to find our carriage (wagon). It was #2 and it was either going to be at the front or the back of the train. As luck would have it, the first carriage we came to was #16. Damn, we were in for a long walk down the platform. Here's an absolutely unscientific opinion/observation on my part, Russian passenger trains are exceeded in length only by American freight trains. By the time we reached carriage #2, the station was no longer visible.
We handed our tickets and passports to the uniformed young lady guarding the door to our carriage, and after a couple of minutes examining the documents, she did something that is almost unheard of in Russian, she smiled and said OK, motioning to the door with her free hand.
Provodnitsa Marina
She gave us our passports back, but kept the tickets. Our second homeless stay in Moscow at an end. We hauled our bags onto the train and started our search for berths 9, 10, 11 & 12. Yep, we booked an entire 2nd class compartment for ourselves (1st class was sold out), and later, after seeing how other passengers were packed like sardines, four to a compartment, we were mighty glad we did. We spent several minutes surveying the room, extracted key essentials from the bags, then stowed them under the lower berths. Our provisions went on the top berths. This was to be our home for the next 77 hours (4 nights).Our first thoughts were one of disappointment. This was the smallest compartment of any train we'd used so far, and it was nothing like the very well appointed 2nd class cars of the #2 'Rossiya' that appear in the virtual tour on The Man in Seat 61's Trans-Siberian webpage. We were a bit bummed, we couldn't figure out how RealRussia failed to get us 1st class berths when they had our train reservation requests AND credit card info months before the Russian rail system opened 27th August up for reservations, and they weren't even able to get us in 2nd class on the 'Rossiya'. No time for moaning and groaning though, after tromping around Moscow all day we were tired, so we made up the two bottom berths, and sacked out. We had no sooner settled down than we felt a slight nudge forward, then a slow, but ever increasing gentle pull - the train was now on its way east across two-thirds the breadth of Mother Russia carrying two old geezers on the adventure of their lives.
The #10 Baikal - Carriage #2
We were due to make stops in the old city of Vladimir then Nizny Novgorod during the night, but I was totally unaware of anything.I can't speak for Ho-Ki, but I slept the sleep of one who was totally exhausted that night and waking up was providing to be a bit difficult as well. As the fog cleared from my brain, I could faintly hear someone speaking over a loudspeaker in the distance. My watch read 10:33, and I assumed it was in the AM, and the train was definitely stopped. I pulled up the curtain and was greeted with good news, we were in fact in a station (Kotelnich, I think) and there was brilliant blue sky and sunshine without a trace of clouds. As a bonus, the compartments in our carriage were on the shady side of the train, so we wouldn't roast with the sun blazing through our compartment window for the next few days.
We still weren't thrilled with our compartment, but on the bright side, we had both gotten a good-nights sleep, and most importantly our very first experience with the dreaded provodnitsa (compartment attendant) had been an overwhelmingly good one. Maybe things were going to be just fine.
At the next stop, we joined the throngs of people getting off the train to do their shopping. A real market economy exists at every train station in Russia. Locals bring their goods to the platform, and passengers flock around them striking up whatever deals can be made. While foodstuffs predominate, you can find stuffed animals, CD's, DVD's, and clothing. Our mission was to get lunch though. We bought beer, some cottage cheese stuffed blinis, tomatoes and apples. Those things combined with our food shopping in Moscow the previous night were going to provide us with the veritable feast while we watched the countryside roll by.
While we were getting back on the train we met our other provodnik, this one a young man. It is one of their key duties to make sure they don't lose or leave behind any of the 40 passengers charged to their care (not to be confused with their primary duty of keeping the samovar filled with boiling water for tea and soup). As he shepherded us back onboard the train, we heard a smattering of languages other than Russian, so we instantly knew that we were not the only "foreigners" in our carriage, but as we were starving we'd leave introductions to later. We spread our feast out over the table and settled down to our first of many nice in-room meals. Things were going to be just fine indeed...
