One of the greatest and most rewarding things about traveling in any country is being able to talk with a local person. It always a lot of fun meeting other travellers in hostels and sharing your stories and it also very rewarding, but talking with a local is a little bit different. Usually, in hostels, most everyone will speak English, or at least enough to have a decent conversation, however, when talking with locals, their English is usually nonexistent or not all that good, so you have to work a little bit harder to have a good conversation. You can meet locals in hostels, just like I did Moscow and it is just as fun, but it even more rewarding and interesting when it is unexpected and in a normal situation like for example in your sleeping compartment on the night train. Which is where I met Eleonora.

I was taking a 14 hour train from Kazan to Yekaterinburg. I wasn't really expecting anything to happen, other than trying to sleep and then getting off at some point. No big deal. However, that changed as soon as got to my sleeping compartment. I saw who I was sharing the compartment with and I was stunned. It was a very beautiful 22 year old Russian girl. She was about my height, with sandy blond hair and a thin modelesque figure. I mean, Russia is teaming with absolutely gorgeous women, but I didn't really expect an opportunity to speak with one as pretty as she was. I've seen a lot a pretty girls on the street walking around, but with my limited Russian language skills and my overly American vibe, I wasn't exactly approaching a lot of them. So, I just said hi and situated my stuff while I waited for the other two berths to be filled. This however never happened and as the train started rolling out of the station, I realized that I would be sharing this compartment with just her and only her!

I decided that I might as well try and converse with her and do my best to be charming, well at least as charming an English-speaker can be to a Russian-speaker! I smiled, pulled out my phrasebook and started talking. Not surprisingly, she didn't speak a lot of English, but she did know enough that we were able to get the point across to each other. The phrasebook helped immensely. We kept passing it back and forth between each other trying to find the the right word or phrase. It was very slow, but a lot of fun. She told me that she was student studying economics and was currently on Holiday. She was going to see her parents and her sister, who was pregnant with her second child. She told me about the Dacha, which is like a country home. She said it was something like a bathhouse, that was a normal and traditional thing for Russians. She would go there with her girlfriends and drink wine, dance and party. At one point, I decided that she should teach me a little Russian and I would teach her a little English. It was a lot of fun. She was a very sweet girl and I had a wonderful time talking to her. Eventually, we had to go to sleep, though neither one of us really wanted to, but her stop was at 3am.

Unfortunately, at about 1am, someone else came in to take one of the other berths. Then finally at 3am, she left. She gave me a hug goodbye and sadly she walked out of my life. Fortunately, I got her email address and she gave me her European version of facebook website, so I will have to try and keep in touch with her.

Unfortunately, once she left, things went really downhill from there. Hell on the night train had begun. Immediately after she left, she was replaced by an overly large Russian man, who stripped down, went straight to sleep and immediately started snoring like a chainsaw! It was some of the worst snoring I have ever heard. There were a couple of times during the night, where I swear he was about to swallow his tongue. I was afraid I would have to jump up and do something, but he always kept on snoring. Then besides the snoring, I swear someone cranked up the heat, because it got extremely hot in there. I sweated straight through my shirt and the sheets! Now, I am pretty sure I don't have to tell you, but I hardly got any sleep that night! Later on, though, some other Russian guys offer me some of there food for breakfast. They had chicken wings, potatoes and sausage. It certainly made the rest of the train ride better.

Despite it all, meeting and conversing with Eleonora definitely made up for the hellish night that occurred after she left. Hopefully, I will have more chances to meet other locals along my journey and also hopefully she and I will be able to keep in contact.