A chaotic journey across half the planet by train — where bad planning collides with blind luck and sheer stubbornness keeps the story moving.
Chapter Six: You’ve Been Iced
This will be our longest train journey and we are going to get it right this time. We have cups and mixers for the wonderfully pure lake Bailkal Vodka we picked up on Olkhon Island. We even have fresh lemon. We raided a supermarket before coming to the train station and grabbed what’s shaping up to be an awesome gourmand’s picnic. We have a selection of pickled fish, smoked fish, slightly salted fish; a nice hard salami; a soft cheese; crackers and bread. We have chopsticks for our instant noodles. And… wait for this…. Nutella for our breakfast! We are so proud of ourselves we spend 30 minutes rearranging our goodies for the perfect photo shoot with a glimpse of a cool Stalinist train carriage out the window in the background . We need six or eight takes to get the shot right. We hope that other passengers will walk by our intentionally open cabin door so we can watch their jaws drop as they marvel in our awesomeness. They will be so jealous. We will offer them little bits of pickled herring and the crust of our pumpernickel bread with gracious magnanimity and they will be our friends for the remainder of this long train trip. It’s almost diner time. The curious masses should be wandering past any minute now.
The first to poke his head in the door is a well dressed Russian gentlemen with a couple of binders tucked under one arm and what appears to be a table cloth draped over the other. He hands us the binders which reveal themselves to be menus and then he says in quite passable English “What like they for diner?” He looks in a purposeful sort of way from our photo spread, to the table cloth draped over his arm, then to us then back to the table, to his arm, to us…. . He seems to be saying “Will you move that crap off the table so I can properly set it for you?”
Even when we get it right, we somehow manage to get it wrong in this country. Our shopping expedition was not without some embarrassment. After we came to a consensus on what the various Cyrillic food labels might mean, Odile declared she was thirsty as we headed toward the register. She reached out and grabbed a blue plastic bottle of water from a refrigerated shelf purposefully placed for easy access by impulse shoppers. She cracks it open and downs half of it as soon as the check out girl scans the bottle. The girl gives Odile a look that is a combination of shock, annoyance and downright malice. I figure this is because we haven’t paid for anything yet. Then Odile says, “I think this is tonic water, not water”. She looks at the label. “Oh, it’s Gin and Tonic flavored. How odd!?” I look at the label, which is in English on the reverse side, and read that it’s also 8% alcohol. It’s a Russian ready-to-drink cocktail much like the controversial alco-pops teenagers scam out of 7-11s where their friends work.
This does explain the dirty looks from the check out girl. Imagine you work in a 7-11 in a remote but important city like Ames, Iowa (or Rennes, France). A Russian lady comes barreling in, grabs a bottle of Smirnoff Ice from the fridge, mumbles something incomprehensible to her scruffy, bleary-eyed husband who trails three steps behind her and then pounds half of it before she even pays a nickel (or centime). What kind of look would you give her?
Nobody ever told us to expect liveried room service on the trains. We are annoyed and delighted at the same time. We will be on this train for two nights and three days. Some variety will be welcome. It’s the nicest train we have seen yet. Very clean, well attended and there are not one but two power outlets in our cabin! The room service is delightful. On our cabin wall there is a little red button to call for service. The pictogram looks like you’ll be summoning an angry little Frankenstein conductor. Possibly his name is Igor. We wouldn’t have dared to press it if Dimitri the friendly head of the Pectopah (restaurant) car hadn’t introduced himself to us early on. We will tip him well until our cash runs out. He even brings ice cold Belarussian beer in pint glasses with every meal or ‘accidental’ pressing of the red button.
Outstanding! I’ll get down to some serious writing on this trip as the endless silver birch trees go whizzing past our picture window. Or maybe I’ll just crack open the Baikal Vodka bottle and get caught up on all the College Humor video podcasts I downloaded to my computer.