The Baikal part 2
Trip Start
Jan 24, 2004
1
8
31
Trip End
Apr 01, 2004
Novosibirsk,
Russian Federation
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
10th February 2004
We crossed the Urals last night which means that we are still confused , but confused in Asia. This is the beginning of Siberia . We have checked out of Europe. Thus we spring-clean the compartment and tuck into another breakfast of bread , cheese, salami and pickles. The scenery is snow and birch trees , few people or vehicles , just the occasional settlement of gingerbread houses . Kazakhstan is due south . I have a 'shower' in the wash room and quickly feel like I need another one. The train is centrally heated and we bask in the heat wearing tee shirts and pyjamas. Flip flops and bemused smiles. Smoking is permitted , but only in the join between carriages . Where there is no heating
Inside the Baikal
. It's like entering an arctic blizzard with snow and ice well and truly stuck to the insides of the doors and the steel floor . Thus a fag break involves getting dressed for winter. When the train arrives at a station and pulls to a stop , the female carriage attendant - the Provodnitsa , breaks chunks of ice away from the brake assemblies with a large stick. Our Provodnitsa is called Ina and she is lovely. Sometimes there is some carriage shunting performed during the night. So that yesterday you were three carriages from the restaurant car. Now perhaps its five. The mind finds it difficult to comprehend. There's a new engine , a flat-faced red one with a large soviet star around its one eye - its powerful headlamp. But surely the engine was Green ? Blue you say ? And the outside world doesn't seem to change at all. Our jovial Alaskan companion has brought with him some tins of salmon which he's wood-smoked at home . Never travels without it . It is quite delicious in the extreme. Drinking sessions occupy the day although the time of day is still a mystery to us all. There is 'trolley-Mike' , the cheery Russian fellow who has the pleasure of dispensing cans of beer and snacks during the journey . Backwards and forwards the length of the railway time after time with his trolley of much happiness. He has stocks of Baltika number 5 . Your mid strength lager. And the scale of alcohol goes up in increments from there. Baltika number 11 is thick and deadly strong . I try it only once . Mike always stops in for several beers and off he goes again . For his next appointment . Vodka is the order of the day , or night , in the lively restaurant car and it ranges from cheap and rough to the more sophisticated and pure . But I have to admit it all tastes the same to me . A fire in the belly and a loss of balance inevitable when attempting to find the door to your compartment . Which most probably is not in the same place it was this morning . Russian soldiers are loud and permanently intoxicated . Aggressive and friendly at the same time. The army use the railway to move troops. The troops use the railway as a vodka holiday binge . All foreigners are fair game . Andrei and Lena are a couple of young sweethearts travelling east for work , I think. Their English is painfully slow and each broken sentence is celebrated with a round of vodka shots . There seems no end to it.
Tammy and I have by now groped our way across hundreds nay thousands of miles of this moving circus . And decided that we must seal it in our permanent memory by completing the job . By going the whole hog and making love like in the movies . On a train ride across Russia , undeniably romantic and daring . Sadly , on the day in question , I don't remember leaving the restaurant car.
The fried fish and the warming Borsch soup is a bloody good effort given the confined galley space. Vladimir is a bear of a man with a great appetite for humour and camaraderie. He also offers a money changing service. To supplement the restaurant menu, we punctuate our journey with the gathering of little delicacies like perodski, tea bags and cigarettes. During scheduled stops. And so we roll into Irkutsk station five days and 5,153 kilometres later. We have whistled through cities with awe-inspiring names like Nizhny Novogrod, Omsk and Novosibirsk. But seen so little of them. Perhaps because it was in the dead of night. Perhaps a degree of nonchalance at another industrial landscape. The real pleasure was being on that train in its own time zone and sealed against the horrors of the outside temperature. Our destination was Irkutsk. I know of no other friend nor acquaintance, present company excluded, who has been there.
Next ; Irkutsk , Ice capital.
