We had some lunch at a My-My restaurant, a kind of Russian fast-food, canteen style affair, decorated like a cow. Feeling a little adventurous (and having recovered from my earlier woes) we had borsch, pastry filled with cabbage, Russian salad, a beef patty and an omelet with some kind of pork schnitzel inside. It was pretty good, Russian food gets a bad press but this was perfectly edible.
After some further hours spent littering around the hostel, packing and repackaging, trying to guess what we'd need at the top of our bags, we decided to catch a taxi to the Station. It was a little embarrassing when Gemma walked past the taxi and began filling the boot of a random Russian's car with her bag, but we did eventually get to Yaroslavsky station.
Being such a miserable, damp evening we jumped straight on the train when it was called. We found our cabin easily enough, it was already occupied by two passengers, a young mother called Olga and her son Stasic. We hid our bags into every crevice we could find, made our beds and sat down (it was 11.55pm by this point). I attempted a little phrase book Russian - nothing fancy just "what's your name?" and "where are you going to?" and then discovered that those were the only two useful phrases in the book. Every other question required a more detailed answer than I would have understood.
The first night passed peacefully enough. After settling into our bunks Olga opened her laptop and put on a movie for everyone. Seeing our bemused faces she turned the screen so we could see better. But it wasn't the sight so much as the sound that caused our mirth. Honestly, you've really not seen Winnie the Pooh unless you've watched the Spanish one (Buenos Dias Eeyore) with severe Russian accent narrating over the top. Fortunately the gentle rocking motion sent me to sleep pretty quickly, not waking until midday.
Sometime after I got up we stopped at a station. Observing from a window I watched as a few old women, all haggard and brittle looking, descended upon the stairwells where a mixture of confident Russians and a few confused tourists (easy to spot - the Russians aren't peering at everything through a viewfinder) climbed down onto the platform. And then the bargaining began. I understood very little, but having been through a few stops now I can confidently say that nobody has bought anything that is not either very tacky or (pardon my French) utter shit - In some cases both, I'm thinking of Olga's new whicker lampshade.
Our guidebook is a little out of date. We brought Bryn Thomas' Trans-Siberian Handbook, which came highly recommended - but was published in 2007. For example he recommends not getting out your laptop as it will make you conspicuous. On the contrary, we are the only non-Russians in our carriage, and are the only one's without a laptop (ok, so we have a touchpad, but that's a different beast). All the charging points (located in the hallway rather than rooms) are constantly in use.
We ventured down to the trains restaurant car on more than one occasion. It was a relief to find some English translations, albeit rather rustic. I opted for the "mixed meat soup", a brave gamble if ever there was one. Actually the Solyanka was perfectly edible, even though it was never going to win any Michelin stars. We also ordered a side plate of potatoes which arrived buried under a field of dill. It seems that you cannot have potatoes (no matter whether fried or boiled) without them arriving smothered in dill, and I haven't the foggiest idea why!
Back in our carriage Olga was eating her dried noodles, cooked in hot water from the Samovar (a scary looking contraption that simply delivers hot water). Very few Russians seemed to eat in the restaurant carriage, preferring to bed down in their cabins and tuck in to dried noodles, Lays crisps and biscuits. Certainly the food on the train was no more expensive than Moscow, so it's a little surprising. Maybe they know something we don't - is it time to double check our immodium supplies!
Later in the evening we began to climb, presumably in the Urals (ooh matron). The scenery, at least during daylight hours, has changed very little. Sometimes the forests are situated in hills, more usually on huge great plains. Whilst very beautiful to hike in, the lack of variation soon becomes monotonous. A small event like passing through a ramshackle town draws me to the window as if something amazing is about to happen. It hasn't yet, which is probably why I've managed to read the first book of War & Peace already.
During our second night on the train we twist and turn. Our heads by the windows, when the train turns left it feels like our necks are crumpling, our faces buried in the pillows. When we turn right it feels like someone is pulling our feet. I begin to understand how a poor accordion must feel, and fall asleep dreaming of forming the Accordion Liberation Army.
Stasic had a rough night, which in a four bed cabin meant we all had a rough night. Several times he woke up screaming, the noise was something to behold. Olga tried her best to comfort him, but it hardly stops him, and she already looks older than when we first met her just 30 hours ago. My dream of forming the Accordion Liberation Army swiftly develops into one in which I'm dangling a small boy out of a train window.
By midday on the 3rd day the cabin reeks of mushroom crisps, dried noodles and an unidentifiable pate. The sun shines brightly, warming the cabin and exacerbating the smells, human and food, so I pack away my notebook and go to apply a liberal helping of deodorant.
The rest of the train ride passed in much the same way as before. The scenery varied only very little, with the exception of 50km of rolling hills covered in trees which would not be out of place in a brochure for the fall in New England. Everyone I've discussed this with since has agreed, we all expected a few more sights along the way. I've looked forward to this for so long, either I've built this up too much in my head, or else there really is a lack of stunning vistas and points of interest.
In the cabin, the little one's lack of sleeping prevented us from getting much rest, his nighttime cries really hampering our attempts to readjust to the five time zones we've passed through since Moscow.And of course the cabin smell began to get me down. Four unshowered humans obviously didn't help matters, but food was the real cause. I'll grant that our freeze dried meals (vegetable korma, chili con carne) probably smelt very alien to Olga. But her purchases from the station vendors really did stink. The pine cones (from which she extracted the pine nuts manually) weren't too bad, the cheese puffs (which Stasic trod into the carpet) were pretty rough, but the piece de resistance was the smoked fish. Of course, polite, kind Olga offered some to us, but I felt that on this occasions Anglo-Russian relations should be put aside for my own wellbeing. Honestly the smell was atrocious, I pulled my bedsheets over my head, stuck a four day old sock in my nose and considered snorting some ammonia bite cream then fell asleep.
And so, at 2.57am Moscow time (which it felt like), 7.57am local time, we pulled into Irkutsk, Siberia.
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