Irkutsk to Moscow (Cameron)

Prologue:

"Well the good news is that my back doesn't hurt anymore," said Andrew, returning after a 30 minute sojourn in the dining car, "but the bad news is that I'm really drunk." Without further explination, he climbed into his bunk and passed out for four hours.

Irkutsk to Moscow:

We went to the market in Irkutsk and bought enough vegetables to supply our "5 to 10 a day" for the 4 day train trip to Moscow. But sufficiency of vitamins alone does not a healthy trip make, and unhealthy it was. Which reminds me: dedicated readers may recall that we're both often quite tired. We have arrived at a possible explanation: lack of sleep. Extremes of temperature and humidity, tiny beds and mattresses that simply cannot have been so uncomfortable unintentionally, power snorers, late nights, drunken roommates (our 8 bed dorm was full last night, but at 4:00am I was the only one home!), etc...

(NB: If you are on a Russian train and ask someone for the time, there are four possible answers: the time where you are coming from, the time where you are going, the time where you are, and Moscow time. All Russian trains run on Moscow time.)

We shared our compartment with "Grandma" and "Gramps" (no relation) (alternatively: Mr. and Mrs. Clause; or the moldy oldies). Very early on, Grandma developed a habit of speaking to us in Russian, often and at length. Typically this was with an angry and disapproving tone, but it was occasionally punctured by bouts of good-natured laughter. Grandma also plied us with food, primarily carbohydrates. The powdered mashed potatoes she gave me one afternoon were excellent. Andrew informs me that she would wake him up early each morning by tapping his foot with stale bread (I don't know why I was excluded). On the last morning, she became quite agitated when we slept late and didn't jump down to consume large bags tasteless biscuits and bread, and yogurt that had been left out in the heat for three days.

We had the top bunks, and a certain territoriality quickly developed such that we didn't sit on the bottom bunks, which would have allowed us to use our compartment's table. Thus we spent nearly the entirety of the trip sitting on our beds or standing in the hallway (where we ate and prepared nearly all our meals). Our boredom on the first couple days is probably best illustrated by the following exchange "I'm pretty hungry." "I'm really hungry." "Should we eat?" "No. ... Being hungry is something to do."

But things soon picked up. And not only because Andrew discovered he could use instant noodle bowls to wash his hair. At a late night stop, several women sold dried Omul on the platform. (Omul is a fish that is endemic to Lake Bakial and is eaten a lot in the surrounding areas; based on the way one draws out the "u" when pronouncing the name, we suspect that the Omuuul look something like this.) Two of them (the women, not the Omul) got into a viscious argument which attracted a lot of attention. My Russian is not yet fluent, but as best I can tell, the disagreement was over who had the greatest dried Omul in all of Russia. A mulleted teen looked at me with a sly smile and said "Velcome to Rush-a."

On the second day, I made friends with a middle aged Buryat (related to Mongolian) man, who was very enthusiastic about trying out the little English he knew. He was a coal mining engineer from Northern Siberia, and was wealthy, based the pictures he showed me of his family vacation to Cypress and his Subaru Impreza with rally-car tweaks. He gave me tea, and we ate many spoonfulls of jam made by his mother. He bought us beers and pine nuts from the platform, and when Andrew joined us for lunch, he gave us bread, sausages, vegetables, and homemade salsa. He was very interested in prices of things in Canada and the USA. He showed me videos of him hunting with a Kalashnikov and pictures of him fishing with some sort of fishing-gun (and goggles and a snorkel).

Because most of our time was spent sitting on a small bed or standing in the hallway, by day three we had both developed a bit of back strain. Andrew decided to remedy this by going to the (expensive) dining car to drink a beer and read Jane Austin. We had been to the dining car twice before, and though the food was okay (the borscht was excellent; I haven't had any non-awesome borscht), the service was a bit unusual (the waiter and waitress didn't have uniforms, and mostly sat around smoking and watching DVDs; there were almost no customers).

I found it a bit mysterious when Andrew returned inebriated, and I only got the full story when he woke up several hours later. Apparently he was peer pressured into a rapid succession of vodka toasts by a trio of Siberian coal miners. I'm still not clear on the details, but he was told an exciting tale about a recent fight with a grizzly bear, armed only with a pitchfork (the miner, not the bear). A choking demonstration went a bit far, but other than that it sounds like it was pretty good natured, though things may have taken a turn for the worse after Andrew gave them the slip, based upon circumstantial evidence discovered later.

As Andrew slept I took a walk down the car and noticed that two compartments down a shirtless man lay unconscious on his bed. This was not out of the ordinary, but the large stain around his groin and the fresh blood that drenched his pillow was. Andrew later confirmed that this was one of his mining friends.

Awhile later, one of the miners came and insisted that Andrew and I go back to the dining car. We did, though it took awhile to get in because the door was looked and it took several minutes of knocking and yelling before a fleshy, buxom blond with heavy bags under her eyes let us in.

This situation had deteriorated since Andrew had been there. The restaurant was closed, even though it was 18:00 (Moscow time), and it was still a couple of hours until sunset (local time). Two of the booths had been converted into makeshift beds. Two shirtless miners sat drinking with waiter, waitress (his wife, we learned), and blondy. One of the bottles of vodka was covered in blood, as was the table.

We drank with them for several hours. Miner 2 (they may also have been mechanics or computer programmers or radio transmitter repairmen... we aren't sure) was very keen on calling us his friends, and Miner 1 would occasionally call his wife to help find the English word he needed (while simultaneously groping blondy). Waiter was very inebriated and passed out early on, but Waitress sipped beer and chain-smoked and looked unhappy.

(Fun Fact: Some menthol cigarettes contain a small vial of menthol within the filter which has to be crushed just before the cigarette is smoked to release the delicious menthol flavour/sensation.)

We went to bed at midnight, but were woken at 3:00am (Moscow time, and pitch black local time) when Grandma and Gramps awoke to tell secrets and ghost stories (we can only assume). I got up much later and went back to the dining car to retrieve my shirt. The place was trashed: broken glass, empty bottles, pornography DVDs, blankets, and coins littered the floor. The lights were off and the shades were drawn. It was definitely not open for business. But waiter was diligently guzzling vodka, and aggressively peer-pressured me into an inadvisedly large glass before I could leave. He tracked me down in the hallway 20 minutes later, demanding that I return, and were it not for his very rough state it would have been difficult to resist.

We rolled into Moscow in the early afternoon. Grandma graciously accepted one of our better "British Columbia" pins, but returned minutes later to press a 50 roubles note into my hand.