In front of the red and grey train cars, conductors stood checking the passenger’s passports. It said on my guidebook that on the Trans-Siberian you’ll easily make friends with the Russian compartment mates who would offer you a lot of food and vodka to enjoy a great meal time together. So I innocently believed that and only bought a few things at the super market. However the 2 Russians in my compartment spoke zero English, had no smile and even rejected the chocolate that I handed to them. It was a big difference from the Mongolian train. How fun it was with Anya. I went sulking in bed and woke up at 9pm with hunger.
When I went to look for the cafeteria, I found a foreigner standing by the window. He greeted me in Mongolian thinking I was from there. He was on this train from Ulan Bator. His name was John, an American in his early 30s. He was working in an American company in Bangkok for the past 3 years until his contract expired this summer. He decided to travel around the world until Christmas to see his family in the US. In Mongolia he became friends with a German guy and made a big tour to the Gobi desert for 2 weeks.
The German guy showed up from behind. He was tall and had a big tattoo on his arms. Valentin greeted me with a friendly smile. He was 23, working as a male nurse in Zurich until he quit his job 6 months ago to backpack around South East Asia. After this travel he flew to Mongolia and was on his way home on the Trans-Siberian. Despite of his tough looks, he was gentle mannered and had a delicate heart. He shared us interesting impressions during his travel like the one about the shower in Mongolia.
John and Valentin invited me into their compartment and offered me sandwiches, instant noodles and fresh fruits. Despite meeting each other for the first time, we hit it off well and stayed up til late chatting and laughing. That night I went to bed feeling so happy to make such good friends.
From the next morning until we arrived in Moscow in 3 days, we spent all day and night together. Usually we woke up before noon and gathered at someone’s compartment or common space to eat breakfast together. Valentin was in car 1, John in car 5 and me in car 11, so in the morning I packed everything up in my little backpack so that I didn’t need to go back until midnight. When I left something I had to open 4 really stiff doors per car (max. 44doors). Smoking was prohibited on the Trans-Siberian but I saw many people including the conductors hiding between the cars to smoke a cigarette. For breakfast I usually made a simple sandwich and puer tea using the boiling hot water from the samovar.
After breakfast we always went to the dining car. We only had 2 activities on the train; sleeping and eating. There was one cook and one waitress in the car. Usually we were the only customers. It was my first time to eat in a dining car so I loved the new experience. Prices were quite expensive for budget travelers like us. A cup of borsche soup cost 6USD and a beef steak was 12USD. They even charged 50cents for the dressing on the salad. But it was worth it. I couldn’t believe these dishes were made on the train. Our biggest joy was to drink a cup of borsche everyday.
After eating lunch, we continued to sit in the dining car to play card games. Our favorite game was Japanese poker where we put down numbers in order and guessed who was lying. One day we played from noon to 2 in the morning. We didn’t have much to do, so even just a simple game like that was enough to entertain us all day. John and Valentin always teased the unfriendly waitress so sometimes she kicked us out from the restaurant.
When we got tired of card games we used a stopover time at the station to stretch our legs and buy some snacks at a kiosk. Trans-Siberian made no announcements so we always had to be careful about the time otherwise they left us. This was also a good time to walk back to my compartment without opening those deadly doors.
In the night, we ate dinner in the compartments again. Our food was limited so all meals were same but it was always fun to eat together. After dinner we locked the compartment and played loud hip-hop from the speaker. John was great at imitating the black rappers especially Lil John. He always made us rolling on the floor laughing. We promised to hit up a hip-hop club when we arrived to Moscow on Friday night.
We also hung out with Valentin’s Mongolian compartment mates. They were cheerful and fun but sometimes crazy. One morning Valentin woke up to find 8 Mongolian guys drinking beer in his compartment. They offered him a bottle but he rejected it because he just woke up. Then they got mad at him. The longer the ride was the wilder the passengers got. In the evening I often saw many people puking on the floor after drinking so much. My plans for the Trans-Siberian was to read books and wallow in sentimentality but at the end I didn’t read one single page of the book.
3 days later when we finally arrived to Moscow, Anya picked us up at the station. I was so happy to see her again and introduced my new train mates to her. 3 of us decided to stay at the same hostel and headed to the downtown. My first impression of Moscow was elegant and sophisticated. Black shiny stones lined the sidewalks, the apartments were painted in pastel colors and decoration was detailed. On the streets, many fancy cars like Mercedes, BMW, and Ferrari were parked as long as the streets continued. Big chandeliers shined inside the apartment windows making us curious what kind of people lived there.
In our dormitory, we had another guest from Russia. Alex was a creepy guy who had the eyes like a snake. We didn’t feel comfortable being around him because we could never tell his mind. For dinner we went to eat at an Uzbek restaurant with Anya. Later at night we went clubbing. We invited a Japanese guy who we met at the hostel. Ryoichi was a 19 year old solo alpinist who worked at a mountain equipment shop in Tokyo. He climbed the Kilimanjaro and Mon Blanc by himself. A few days ago he had just climbed Mt. Elbrus, the highest mountain in all Europe and Caucasus located in the south of Russia. We had a good time partying.
When we came back to the hostel at 3am, we found Alex in bed with a naked girl. We freaked out and later found out the surprising truth about the hostel. From the outside it looked like a clean and modern hostel but at the night club downstairs, prostitutes waited for customers and did their business upstairs. We were shocked that we were actually staying at a brothel. Alex continued to disturb me by asking very personal questions and suddenly showing up in the dark hallway at night.
The next day I went to see the Red Square with John. I was happy to see the onion heads of Saint Basil’s Cathedral in real life. It looked surreal, like the castles in Disneyland.
The Red Square was fascinating, but what impressed me most in Moscow were the metros. Each metro station in Moscow had different designs decorated with marbles and chandeliers. It was not only luxurious but unique. For example they lined the fluorescent lamps radially to enhance the power of light which also gave a little twist to the flamboyant interior. They used red and black marble stones instead of only the white ones. I loved the aesthetics of the Soviet era.
Although Moscow was a modern 21st century city, I saw many aspects of the communism in the city. At the metro station, people still bought tickets from the booths instead of the ticket machines. There were few machines too, but usually it was out of order. When going to the platform, people had to take the mile long escalators transporting passengers in full speed. There were always someone stationed in a box at the top and bottom of these escalators watching out for accidents. In the small laundry room of the hostel, a lady collected money for the washing machine instead of taking a coin laundry style. It seemed to me that Soviet tried to make labor opportunity by stationing people at every machine possible and that this custom was still alive until this day.
Despite the fact that it was still August, Moscow was already quite cold. I couldn’t walk outside without a down jacket. Most people in Moscow spoke no English. They probably didn’t need it. Majority of the foreigners I saw on the streets were from the former Soviet countries like Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazafstan, and Turkmenistan, the kind of nationality I’ve never met before. The common language was Russian. For the countries in the region, it still seemed like Russia was the centre of the world.
The next day I went to see the Tretyakov State Gallery with Valentin. Later in the same day both Valentin and John left Moscow to Germany. I still remember the story Valentin shared to us the previous evening while drinking beer. He said that people are like rivers. We always think that we never change, but in fact we change all the time like the water that flows in the river is never the same. Flows could be fast or slow depending on the mood of the person, the surrounding things such as the rocks or the trees can change the shape of the river, sometimes it meets up with another river and separates again, it looks like it has a certain shape but it changes every moment. There is no certainness at all. I forgot why he told this to us, but I won’t forget how moved I was to hear that. It certainly tells some truth about the human beings.
Left alone in Moscow, I visited the Pushkin Museum and the All Russia Exhibition Centre. Pushkin Museum was empty compared to the Tretyakov State Gallery. I had the famous paintings of Picasso, Matisse, Renoir and Gauging all to myself. I was happy to see Renoir’s beautiful portrait of Jeanne Samary, as I missed the exhibition in Tokyo a several years ago. The alluring eyes of the actress caught my heart so strong that I couldn’t leave there for more than 20 mintutes.
The All Russia Exhibition Centre was originally an agricultural exhibition centre in the Soviet times. There I saw many pavilions of the former Soviet countries and many Stalinist architecture, a style to project the power of the Soviet Union. There was even a tower to commemorate the completion of missiles during the cold war. I felt nostalgic after visiting these places.
Not everything was great in Moscow though. I had a few troubles.
In Irkutsk, I bought a SIM card for Russia but couldn’t activate it so I brought it to the same telephone company’s office in Moscow. There they refused to help me claiming that if it was bought in Irkutsk, there was no responsibility in Moscow. I really needed the SIM card so I begged for help but they brushed my hand away. I went to 4 different offices in the city but no one helped me so I had to flush 50USD down the drain. I tried to threaten them by saying things like “I will call your manager if you refuse support for your own products” but no one cared.
On the same day I went to Moscow station to buy a ticket to St. Petersburg. Ticket prices differed each day, so I wrote down 2 dates and asked for a price on a piece of paper. I circled the cheaper option and requested for 1 ticket. However the lady misunderstood and issued 2 different tickets. When I told her that I only needed 1, she bursted into anger yelling that there is no ticket to sell me and threw my passport back at me. I was astounded. I couldn’t believe that she could refuse me with her personal feelings.
“Please wait!” I cringed to the booth but she totally ignored me and took other customers. After my desperate search for English speakers, a kind lady helped me by calling her daughter on the phone. I was finally able to buy a ticket after 40 mins. I thanked the kind lady many times. As I walked outside the station, tears came out unconsciously. I was so disappointed about the incredibly poor customer service I had today. “Why do I need to go through of all this?” It was my decision to travel to a non-English speaking country and there was no one to blame, but at night the cold looks of the cell phone clerk and ticket booth lady filled up my mind making me difficult to go to sleep.
When I look back at the great memories in Russia, this was such a small thing but it left a very bad impression about the country. After that whenever friends asked me about the impression of Russia, I had to think twice before I said something.
