Severobaikalsk to Moscow
Many journeys seem long, are long, but when you look on a map, you can be almost disappointed at what little impression your exertions have made on it.
Not so the Severobaikalsk to Moscow journey! Crossing five time zones and a distance east to west that, on a rough look, looks the same as Sydney to Perth and most of the way back, it certainly makes a big impression, even on a map of the world!
We left Severobaikalsk at 13:30 on Wednesdy afternoon (or 08:00 Moscow time, the time universally used on all Russian train timetables and in every train station) and arrived in Moscow at 04:00 on Sunday morning, just shy of four days of travel.
For something seemingly so epic, the experience of it is quite mundane – an overnight walk down to the Blue Gum forest in the Blue Mountains would feel much more of an accomplishment!
Train is the primary mode of long-distance travel in Russia and there are well-established routines and etiquette that make travelling by train even more enjoyable than it is anyway.
Almost all travel is in four-berth compartments or the more open platz-kart (I've never seen seat-only carriages on overnight trains in Russia – see this post for more on platz-kart). Each berth has a rolled-up mattress for sleeping on the already comfortable bunks, and a pillow; after joining the train, the provodnik provides sparkling clean bedclothes and a towel. Soon after someone has joined the train, after tickets have been checked again and the train has taken off, they'll announce the need to change and, by established custom, everyone leaves the compartment and they make their bed and change into their travelling clothes. Russians usually board dressed in normal clothes, often quite smart; the travel uniform is usually tracksuit pants, a loose singlet for men, or a t-shirt; women sometimes wear a daggy loose dress. And everyone will have a pair of plastic slippers or sandals to walk around the train in.
Unlike Chinese and Vietnamese trains (the only ones, apart from the quirky one in Thailand, that we travelled overnight in), there's plenty of baggage space – the bottom bunks lift up, allowing you easily and securely to store bulky luggage, and there's more space in an alcove that sits above the corridor.
Also, unlike Chinese and Vietnamese trains, there's a much more established etiquette of sharing space – even if the person in the lower bunk is dozing, during the day it's expected that they make room for others to sit. And if people bring out food, room will be made for them to use the small table next to the window. This is as I remember from earlier times, so in China and Vietnam I was surprised at the unfriendliness; occupants of the lower berths (which are slightly more expensive) would generally yield space unwillingly. I remember getting the absolute stink eye in Vietnam in one carriage when we sat timidly at the far end of the lower bunk, precariously eating some hot food off our laps!
Each carriage also has a provodnik (kind of like a conductor or carriage attendant), or really two on rotating 12-hour shifts, who checks tickets, provides linen, answers queries, regularly cleans the toilets and the rest of the carriage and wakes you before your disembarkation station. The trains are well-built and practical (by which I don't mean they are barrenly utilitarian), many have obviously been long in service, but everything's well-maintained, in good nick and comfortable – all well-designed to make long-distance travel perfectly pleasant!
Niamh gives a tour of a Russian toilet
At each end of the carriage are toilets, regularly scrubbed and cleaned by the provodonik and, at one end, next to the provodnik's compartment, there is a titan (or water boiler) of hot water for tea, coffee or, that traveller's abomination, instant noodles. Or the provodnik can supply drinks (in the classic Russian train glasses) and snacks.
A cup of tea and a block of chocolate
I seem to remember, when here before, that the provodnik would come to each compartment and serve tea at designated times – another, more regretful, change is the demise of the restaurant car as an affordable option for most Russians. One of the delights of train travel, for me, is sitting in the dining car and having a meal or drink, book in hand, now and then gazing out the window at the passing landscape or falling into conversation with fellow passengers.
The dining cars are now leased out privately and very much run to make the greatest profit. In the Russian catering industry, the strategy to achieve this aim seems to be charge very high prices and hope you get a few customers able to pay; all the train restaurants and the majority of terrestrial restaurants had very few, if any, customers and staff with evidently very little to do. Whether this strategy – as opposed to charging prices most people can afford and having lots of customers and higher turnover – works, I don't know, but the practical effect is that the dining car is no longer the sociable and affordable place it once was, an outcome that's a great shame (not just for idle foreign travellers, but the Russian travelling public too!).
Despite these changes – and the almost complete disappearance of opening windows! – life on Russian trains is much as it was when I was here in the 1990s, with the exception that the stations, once so grimy and crowded, are in great condition, well-run and spacious.
I find long journeys often start with anticipation and excitement, soon replaced with a feeling of “this is going to be ages!”, some restlessness and boredom; then, as a routine develops, you settle in and don't want it to end! So it was with me on this journey; by the last day we were very comfortably lazing around, drinking tea, reading, writing, chatting, chatting, gazing out the window, cozy like on a cloudy winter's day when you've no reason to go out (I've been reading Tolstoy and Dostoevsky on the train, so forgive me, dear reader, if I'm tending towards the prolix!).
This trip was especially pleasant, as, late in the second night, our only travelling companion got off at Novosibirsk and we had the compartment to ourselves. The provodniks don't have advance notice of who will be boarding, so there was always a chance at each stop, before which we'd tidy up our compartment, that our extravagance might be rent from us, but as time went on it seemed increasingly unlikely.
Our travelling companion, like us, got on Severobaikalsk, the train's starting point; at first he cut a cold figure, impeccably dressed in a well-cut suit, talking importantly on his mobile or sitting with a serious, closed expression. Attempts at conversation didn't get far.
After we got going he made his bed and changed and when we went back in to the compartment he was, at least in appearance, a changed man, dressed in the Russian train travel uniform of trakky daks, loose singlet, with plastic sandals placed neatly on the floor.
We'd bought some cold beer to toast our farewell to Lake Baikal and I'd been apprehensive that, like many of Russia's non-drinking post-Soviet generations, he may have disapproved. As it turned out, it may have better if he had, as he soon got out his beer, a 2 litre plastic bottle – yes, you read right! - (pretty common for the price-conscious consumer in Russia) and drank it steadily away; me and Niamh settled in for an afternoon doze during which, after the beer was despatched, he polished off a generous half of a bottle of vodka. For the next many hours he was sprawled over his bed, with his limbs and head now and then dropping off the bed or wandering inconveniently about in a kind of slow-motion writhing. He told us he was head of the goods yard in Severobaikalsk, in charge of 360 employees, and always had to be available, so normally couldn't drink. Whatever the truth of that, he certainly made good use of his work trip to Novosibirsk, repeating the performance the next day.
We've come across many Russians who don't drink, or drink rarely and lightly, particularly people who became adults in the post-Soviet period (that is people under 40 or so). But there's a great many people who do – and when they do, they go hard, drinking vodka in the way your proud Aussie yobbo knocks back beer.
Our travelmate from Neryungri to Severobaikalsk was one of these; on the second afternoon of the trip, after having declined invites to share our beer (saying he only liked beer on tap and, what's more, only drank rarely, maybe once or twice a year – but when he did he would do so steadily for days!) he bought a bottle of vodka at a stop and convinced us to have a drink with him.
Of course, there's a rule that you can't only have one shot, another that you only drink two shots if someone's passed away and, as these were 50ml nips, after the third drink there was only enough left for one more round, and there is another rule that you can't leave just a little, so we had to have a fourth. And so that was 500ml of vodka gone in half an hour.
Later we went to the dining car, where he joined us for dinner, and, despite his best efforts to convince us otherwise, avoided drinking more vodka. As a thank-you for the bottle he'd bought, we discreetly paid the dinner bill but, when we told him, he took great – and tenacious – offence at this and, despite our lengthy explanations that this was the right thing to do in our culture (among a few tacks we took), he remained petulant and continued to bring it up throughout the evening – the extra 200-300ml he'd drunk since the first bottle was finished didn't help either!
This poisoned what had otherwise been a very warm interaction and I was very glad to leave the compartment early the next morning, bidding him a hurried and slightly awkward farewell as he woke as we were leaving.
These awkward moments were, however, but a minor part of the journey, which overall had a lovely rhythm, dominated by that most comforting of experiences, the clickety-clack of train on track and the gentle rocking of the carriage as, sitting or lying, country passes by.
From the straight, spindly, short, dense forests of the northern taiga, with their wide, rolling hills and abundant, clear, quick-flowing rivers, to the mountain country east of Baikal, to the more gentle country further west, the forests taller, generally more spaced out, the villages dominated by wooden houses and neat food gardens, the towns and the cities, the railway stations where we often had time to get out at and wander around, Russia has been passing us by, in the most enjoyable manner!