From Russia with Love

I left Vladimir in the afternoon to go on a train for 46 hours, a train that would take me from Europe to Asia. You’ll ask what there is to do on a train for such a long time. Well, there’s actually a lot to do, like having one-word conversations with Russians you’re sharing your cabin with, going to the first carriage, coming back to the last carriage, getting off at stations on the way and seeing what people are selling, sleeping, reading, writing, and – I almost forgot – looking out of the window. Time goes quickly and I didn’t even listen to music or read the book I brought – that was because on one of my trips to the last carriage I bumped into a couple of provadnitzas who said something and when I couldn’t reply they asked in English and that’s when the fun started.

These two provadnitzas invited me to come in and chat, drink tea and spend time with them. They were very nice and very funny. One of them spoke a bit of English, but the other one only very little, but even still I spent the afternoon with them, laughing and talking a bit about everything. They were really young and came from from a city called Severobaikalsk at the north of Lake Baikal. They were working on the train for the summer and then they were going to start university in September. Interestingly, they have never been to Moscow or many other parts of Russia. At one point they said to me ‘we are village girls’ and burst out laughing. Well actually they have been to Moscow but they were working on the train so didn’t get out of the station. They both had Buryat characteristics (Buryat are the native peoples of Central and Eastern Asia) and told me that in that part of Russia everyone was very mixed so there was no discrimination. These two girls, Alesva and Karina, were the provadnitzas in a third class carriage and they kept slagging off the passengers. After a while I understood why so many had the reputation that they have and it’s because the passengers are hard work. They showed me photos of their friends and family on the phone and I showed them photos. They also listened to loud music in their cabin and turned the passengers’ lights out so they’d go to sleep :)

When I woke up the next day I remembered that the train had already passed through the Ural Mountains and I was officially in Asia, although I didn’t see the mountains because we passed them at night. Then I went to say hi to Alesva and Karina but one was sleeping (the one that had the night shift) and the other one was really busy so I went back to my cabin to eat, read and pass the time. At 4 I heard a knock on my cabin and it was those two crazy girls, and they abducted me back to their carriage and we carried on laughing, chatting, making jokes and messing around. When we got to their carriage they told me they had a present for me and they gave it to me with such honesty and modesty that I felt strange. It was a huge melon that they bought. The only two fruits I don’t like are melon and pineapple but this melon was really good and we enjoyed eating it.

On the third day I finished my train trip and arrived in a city called Novosibirsk which according to a friend is worth seeing to remember how ugly a Soviet city can be. With that description in mind, I decided not to stay there that night but instead leave immediately on another night train towards the Altai region to check out the mountains and Teletskoe Lake. I regretfully said goodbye to my new friends and promised to send them photos that we took together. Unfortunately neither of them has email so I’ll have to rely on the normal post :S

After that I met Eva, another couchsurfer that gave me a mini tour of the city and helped me to buy the tickets, and once again I found myself on another night train for 10 hours. From spending so many hours on trains, travellers start competing with each other. Each one shows off about how much time he/she has spent on the train and how much vodka he/she has drunk. The record is held by a Swiss guy: 106 hours on the train from Moscow to Irkutsk.

I arranged my trip to the village of Artibash on the corner of lake Telektskoe. While I was walking around to try to find a house along the shore, a couple of women asked me something and then we started talking. It was a mother and her daughter from Novosibirsk that were in Altai for the same time period as me. The daughter spoke English as she lived in Israel for a long time and I ended up being half adopted by the family. I stayed in the same hotel and we did different things together for the next two days. We rode horses together, went on a boat on the lake, went to a café to eat (where they translated the menu for me), we watched TV in Russian :S. One day it rained all day, so we decided to cook something so we wouldn’t get so wet. Strangely when we got out of the shop it stopped raining completely, but anyway we still had to cook. I made another Colombian rice which turned out to be nothing special. I blame the rice and cooker but these two women enjoyed it and then had seconds. I also managed to satisfy my curiosity of Soviet times as Rina, the daughter, talked about many different things from that era.

We went back to Novosibirsk, past a village called Bisk where we looked around. In Novosibirsk I met up with Eva again and she lent me her shower :) and then a couple of German girls arrived and we all walked around the city together.

In the evening we went to a bar where one of the waitresses had a badge that said рита. I read it in Spanish and burst into hysterics (as puta means whore). Then Eva read it in Russian to avoid any misunderstandings about the type of bar we’d come to (it said Rita). Rina and I exchanged photos and then she accompanied me to the station. From there I took a train to Irkutsk, my final destination in Russia, in the heart of Siberia, 80km from Lake Baikal.

I am liking Russia more and more, especially the people. I’m falling in love with this place even though it’s a bit difficult to travel around. My experience with the provadnitzas was amazing. I really didn’t expect so much hospitality and simplicity, also from the family that adopted me, with whom I immediately felt comfortable, reading, speaking or just admiring the beauty of the lake.