Life on the Iron Rooster

With apologies to Paul Theroux

St Petersburg - Moscow

Travel Time: 8 hours, 1 overnight

Departing St Petersburg for Moscow late on Wednesday night we were all excited to start the train journey and get a feel for what this would be like. The cabins were fantastic - certainly better than the cabin I was in from Milan to Naples on my only other overnight rail journey. Didn't sleep well, and on arrival at 8 am was a bit tired and groggy. But - we were all very positive about our facilities and thought, this won't be too bad!

Moscow - Irkutsk

Travel Time: 87 hours, 4 nights 3 days

Scratch that. As you've probably already guessed and we were far too naïve to understand, the short and frequently travelled Moscow-St Petersburg route is vastly different to travelling to Siberia over the better part of the week. The carriages are certainly several...several...decades old and not quite as, shall we say, plush, as the previous experience on the Russian rail system.

Boarding the train at 1:30 in the afternoon on Sunday the carriage was a sweltering 32 degrees (C) with absolutely no air circulation. Oh, and the window in my room wouldn't open!

The Digs & the Set Up

4 of us to compartment, and about 10 compartments to a carriage. Since there were 11 in our group, there was a spare seat for (insert new Russian friend here). There was storage under the base seats and also above the door, so at least we weren't falling over everything we brought at the same time. Linen, pillow, and a sleeping mat are provided for the duration and, really, we all slept reasonably well on the train for most of the journey.

There are 2 bathrooms on either end of the carriage - unisex - which get locked 30 minutes before and after major train stations, as well as whenever the provodnitsa (carriage attendant) chooses to punish people at her whim. No showers but, ultimately you can manage to wash with a bit of soap and improvisation.

There's also a hot water peculator (samovar) in the carriage for making tea and reconstituting various food products.

The Food

We chose to self-cater with a grocery stock-up prior to boarding the train. Only the essentials of course - vodka, bottled water, and various boil-in-bowl carbohydrates. Fresh vegetables are a thing of the past for the the next 87 hours.

Though, if we're honest, Russian cuisine isn't exactly known for its wide variety of fresh vegetable options to begin with.

Other options are buying pastries, dumplings, sweets and other delicacies (er... dried fish on a stick, anyone?) from the babushkas on the station platforms during stops, or a restaurant car. Mostly though we used these resources to purchase cold beer as a welcome alternative to our other alcoholic alternative!

And so it begins...

Sunday 1:30 pm - shot of vodka to toast the commencement of the journey

Sunday 2:00 pm - shot of vodka to toast the first of 30-ish stops along the route

Sunday 2:30 pm - shot of vodka to toast the second of 30-ish stops along the route

Sunday 3:00 pm - we acknowledge this trend is a bit unsustainable and retire to our cabins to do something else for a while

During the days on the train journey we mostly slept, read, chatted, slept, journalled, slept, read, slept. Looked for an excuse to do something like make instant mashed potatoes or porridge ("I guess it's lunchtime now..."). Wandered around for a brief bit of fresh air when the train stopped for long enough that we could get off.

One of our group members, Lucy, was given a portable ipod speaker as a going-away present and we put this to good use over the time. Michiel the Dutchman was certainly wowing us with his selection of horrendous 90s music - anyone with the Vengaboys megamix on heavy rotation deserves to be revered. Since his karaoke rendition of 'Daddy Cool' in St Petersburg, Boney M was a bit of a group favourite as well. I could pull out a few good ones thanks to my Millenium Hip Hop Party compilation and 3 CDs worth of power ballads but...no match for Michiel's powers.

The Russians

Outside of the 11 of us, the rest of the carriage passengers were Russian, hopping on and off along the way. The Russian men wander up and down the aisle of the carriage with their shirts off, staring out the window mostly, and make tea. I've certainly seen enough shirtless 65 year old Russian men to last me the rest of my life, thank you.

As I was in the car of 3, Rachel, Michiel and I had a series of Russian guests staying in our compartment - Sergei, Albert and Nikolai. Sergei didn't say much and left early Monday morning so we didn't have too much to do with him.

Albert on the other hand...

Albert was a construction worker and was travelling with 3 other mates in the compartment next to ours. He was a reasonably stocky individual and we knew things could get interesting when, on glancing at his hand luggage for the 2 nights he was on the train, we spotted 5 litres of vodka. I think it was Michiel who first made Albert's acquaintance and by about 6pm we were invited to share in his vodka. More and more of us piled into our 4 person compartment till we had...oh...at least 14 in there at peak. (Did I mention the window didn't open??)

Up to this point our 'shots' of vodka were essentially 15 or 20 ml token efforts because, let's face it - who actually wants to drink straight vodka?! Particularly Russian vodka, just quietly. But Albert & friends decided to change that with the 'standard' 50 ml shot. Or, more accurately, probably about 75 ml.

The beginning of the end of my relationship with vodka, one could say.

For a while anyway it was quite funny and I remember shaking my head at how bizarre the experience was. Albert and friends were passing around and insisting we had food with each drink - sensible to be sure but not exactly appealing when their offering was a Russian salad of mayonnaise, cream, egg, red capsium, shredded cheese and ham. No one understood anyone but with my Russian phrasebook and a few shots of vodka we were all semi-fluent by evening's end.

Albert & friends were also big fans of 'Daddy Cool' as we all sang it together until the provodnitsa (She Who Must Not Be Pissed Off) suggested we would perhaps prefer to turn off the music and go to sleep.

(This is how I prefer to think of it - similar to the Simpson's episode where Lisa gets lost in Little Russia and overhears a mad, frantic, gesture-filled harsh Russian screaming match after a chess game, in which the board is angrily overturned but is subtitled something like "Congratulations on winning, you were certainly the better player" and "Thank you for the game. Would you like another?")

Day 3 on the train for me thus went

sleep

…

…

…

wake up at 4pm

read for 30 minutes

sleep

…

…

And I didn't drink alcohol for 4 days. And it will be a very long time before I can stomach vodka again.

Albert on the other hand was back on the stuff from noon the next day and was completely comatose by 10pm. (I don't want to stereotype but...Russians and vodka...) Much of the carriage reeked of cigarette smoke, pickled herring, smoked fish of some description, and drunk Russian construction worker. It was probably about this point that the novelty of the Trans-Mongolian train ride started wearing off!

The last day on the train we had our final guest, Nikolai, who was perhaps in his mid 40s and had very neatly ironed pajamas. He invited me to share in his dinner of roasted chicken, smoked fish and sunflower seeds, but I had already bought some potato dumplings (basically Polish pirogi but the Russians call them pelemi) and so declined his offer. But sat down and thought, well, I'll attempt conversation here. He spoke to me in Russian, I looked at him blankly, after about 3 minutes we had established each others' names and that we were both going to Irkutsk. I got the Russian phrasebook out again and he started to point to words ("job?") so that made it a bit easier. Then he pointed to "you" "beautiful" and I thought...oh man, here we go again (and also - are you serious?!?! I haven't showered in 4 days!) The Russians and the Turks share the same taste in women I guess.

Sharing with the Russians was an experience I'm glad I had, but I'm also glad I was with a tour group for this part of the journey - dealing with 1 construction worker was bad enough, I shudder at visions of travelling by myself and getting stuck with Albert and his 2 mates for a few days. There were few, if any, Russian women travelling alone so my chances of sharing the compartment with 3 men would have been high.

Having said that, like anything that is unfamiliar and new - you get used to how things work and how to get around. The country becomes immediately less intimidating after you pass through customs and work out one or two Cyrillic letters at least. I would feel very confident in my ability to get myself independently from Moscow across Siberia on the train now...

...just so long as Albert and co stay at home!