Trans-Siberian Picnic Part 4: From Irkutsk to Novosibirsk

Trans-Siberian Picnic – Part 4

Train from Irkutsk to Novosibirsk

The train itself was on its way west to Europe with a collection of different wagons painted and outfitted differently depending on their home/destination: Warsaw, Berlin, Minsk, etc.

I was in a “new” platzcar wagon on its way to Minsk...it was a little rolling piece of hell. The “new” windows were triple paned, which is probably great for the -50C winter weather, but when they don't open and the car is beat down by the sun 18 hrs a day they facilitate a convection-oven effect.

In fact, only a few windows in the entire car opened, and even then only the top 6 inches folded back a crack. Barely enough to squeeze one's hand through and definitely not enough to create any breeze. It was miserable.

But the picnic continued and the hospitality of my neighbors was just as warm. First there was Victor, a retired engineer happy to meet a “real American” and even happier to have a captive audience for his stories, wit and wisdom. Unfortunately, he thought it'd be a good idea for us to have a warm beer in our hot cabin, and surprised me by buying two from the conductor. Him being of modest means and the culture making it nearly impossible to refuse, I drank it and felt rummy for the rest of the day.

After a few hours of stories and round of “idiot”, Victor exited and three generations of a family entered: Vanya (2 yr. old boy), Tanya (mom), Olga (grandma).

The Ruben-esque proportions of the women and the three bags of food the lugged on gave me comfort I would be eating well while sweating away. Vanya ate like a golden retriever, never letting a minute pass without shoving something in his mouth and Olga had a Mary Poppins-carpetbag which never ran out of food. The charming side effect of this supply and demand equation was that little Vanya was constantly filling up his little plastic kiddy toilette. It sat on the floor and its contents would slap around till the meal was finished or the WC was free.

But they easily bought my tolerance with their good food and jovial nature. There were Russians from a little radio-active city in KZ called Semipolytinsk, so we passed the time talking about the old country. This is how hundreds and hundreds of kilometers of Siberian Taiga passed.

In the late afternoon of the second day the train inexplicably stopped and cooked in the sun for two hours. What little draft there was disappeared and I could do nothing more than wiggle my hand out the window and work my Korean hand fan overtime.

This mysterious delay divested was of any 10-20 minute stops we had scheduled until Novosibirsk still hours away. Claustrophobia and the early signs of heat-stroke had me inconsolably cranky and had I not been able to escape at Novosibirsk this happy tail would have had a hellish conclusion.

Cooking along with the passengers was a black poodle puppy traveling in the wagon attached to a guy about my age named Alexander. A port inspector in Vladivostok, he knows a bit of English and thought he would entertain himself by practicing it with me. I pet the puppy, nodded, agreed, asked “why?” a lot, and did my best not to get annoyed.

All the while the train rolled along the “Russian Iron Roads”, through the unimaginably large treed landscapes. “Click-click, clack-clack” tens of thousands of times over the seems of the tracks.