70 Hour Train

Our last day in Irkutsk we spent trying to see the sights. However we turned left instead of right out of the hostel and the sights consisted of one church and a box of kittens. Which was enough for me. The church was Orthodox and was the first Orthodox one I’ve been in. The walls were stuffed with paintings that looked like they used to belong to other churches that got destroyed and the paintings were saved and kept in this one. There was a service going on or something. A woman asked me a question in Russian and I was so surprised at not being recognised as obviously foreign, I gawped back. She took this as a yes and seemed content.

That was something to get used to- to being asked questions by Russians about if I knew where such and such was. For the past year, I have been obviously a foreigner and therefore dumb.

The kittens were very cute. Their mum looked a bit stressed but the church seemed to be feeding her. I picked one kitten up and it was adorable. I’m a sucker for baby animals.

Eventually we had another go at sight seeing and wandered down

Karl Marx street

which was rather nice. We found a square to sit in and I read a book by Christopher Hitchens called “Letters to a Young Contrarian” which I’d found in the hostel. I am a great admirer of Hitchens, and indeed have a not insubstantial amount of respect for his younger brother Peter Hitchens, so I rather enjoyed it.

A fat Russian woman came over and tried to sit in the small gap between me and someone else which involved sitting on me. Which annoyed me.

Russian women are very tall, slim and beautiful until they marry and then they turn into short, fat crones. An interesting phenomenon.

The main conundrum of Irkutsk was in fact the time. We were west of Beijing but oddly the local time was one hour ahead, as if we were to the east. Eventually we discovered that Russia is now on permanent summer time.

We found a café and sat outside. I was very taken with the Europeaness of it all. I had Siberian tea which was basically tea with cranberry juice. I like tea and I like cranberry juice but I wasn’t sure they went well together. At one point the local Navy regiment passed by. It was around 2pm but they were already rather drunk and caroused past waving bottles and shouting. They were all wearing sailor berets and stripy vests. If this hadn’t been Irkutsk, I’d have thought it was a Gay Pride march.

Getting to the train station was a tad hairy but my coolheadedness combined with some inventive miming by Mum meant we got there. We pulled away in the Siberian dusk.

I’m writing this on the train as we pull out of Yekaterinburg, after 2 days on the train. Mum has just braved nipping off the train to buy peanuts and twixes. I’m not going to lie; food has occupied the vast majority of my thoughts recently. Our rations consist of jam sandwiches and some eeked out snacks, as well as an excellent supply of teabags. After 2 days of stale jam sandwiches, I crave pretty much anything else.

We had a foray to the restaurant cart which did not disappoint our expectations of expensive prices. We had some weird chopped ham and tomato mixed into fried egg on a hot plate thing. Not bad. In fact, positively ambrosia at this point. But expensive.

Our berth is rather snazzy. There are two beds either side which fold up to form the back of a cabin length chair. There are several handy compartments and even coat hangers. The toilets, at the end of the carriage, are rather scary and when they flush, make my ears pop. They are slightly better than the last train’s one though- you could see the track under the train every time you flushed the contents out…

This train ride is a rather meaningless existence. The landscape has consisted of mostly trees. We have watched the two films on my computer and are listening to Around the World in 100 Objects, which can be a bit wearying when heard all at once. I have played many games of chess against the computer on the easiest setting and won once, drawn once. (The last one I had two knights and the computer had nothing but the king and I still managed to draw…)

We keep seeing the Beijing-Moscow train and alternate being ahead and behind. Our train originally came from Vladivostok, on the Pacific coast.

I came across some pictures on my ipod of tuna sashimi and teppanyaki. Tasty steak and onions. I can’t stop thinking of pork crackling, with roast pork, carrots, peas, roast potatoes, mash potato, Yorkshire pudding, gravy and apple sauce. Or chicken and mushroom pie. Or ploughman’s sandwiches. Or Korean BBQ. Or, sweet Jesus, a McChicken sandwich and fries.

24 hours to go.