Okay. I meant snacks. Hehe

Russian trains have numbers. Number 1 (The Red Arrow) is the deluxe top of the line. Even numbers leave Moscow, odd ones go back. I guess 500ish would be a freight train. Most travellers end up on trains in the 10 to 50 range. Our train was number 340! It wasn’t actually too bad, just old and slow, and they stopped a LOT!

We boarded to find a Russian couple sharing our 2m x 1.8m four birth compartment (one step up from the cabinless bunks in 3rd class). Natasha and Yeni were polite and friendly but we all turned in early – a sleepless hot and sweaty night without aircon. The romantic notion of slumbing to the clickity-clack of the lines does not apply to these trains – its more of a jarring clunkity-whack 🙂 By the morning our buddies had been replaced by another polite couple (becomming a trend).

The cabins are clean and basic but unfortunatley no power outlet. With 3 nights onboard I had to ration myself with podcasts and iPhone activity. That was until the powers that be (haha) forgot to turn off the sockets in the corridor after vacuum cleaning, it felt like Eskom had just stopped load shedding! Power to the people, I say.

The toilets are very basic and drop straight to the track – I’ll never walk on a train line again Mom, I promise. The problem with stopping so often at stations is that the drop toilets are locked for obvious reasons so you need to plan ahead. Best to go as soon as the train starts moving… not fun when the train stops for 40mins.

The landscape flashing by was at times almost African but mostly trees and more trees. Into Siberia it changed to trees and marshes. Pulling into a stop at dusk meant jumping to close the window to prevent the plague of mozzies from draining a safa for sups.

Meals on the train were very boring. The dining cars are known for being expensive and bad, but each coach has a samovar so most people (including us) have instant noodles or rice. The rice containers doubled as tea cups creating a hearty brew of rasberry tea with hints of chicken and rice – blaghh! By the second day I was missing my milk and got off the train to find some. Once again I ended up with what I thought was off milk. On further inspection we discovered it was a drinking yogurt, doh ! So no milky tea, but at least some dairy.

The couple in the cabin with us (Boris and Oxanna) kept very much to themselves but it is hard to ignore people that are 50cm from you 24hrs a day. They had purchased some dried fish at one of the stops which made me nervous – if they offered it would be impolite to refuse. Thankfully they offered a pine cone. At least an hour of entertainment figuring out how to eat the seeds! Woolies is easier. Apparently you can get really good food at the stops – but honestly we did not see much that would be pallatable.

It turned out that Boris (a mechanic) and Oxanna (a doctor/student doctor or therapist – hard to understand) were heading for a holiday spot north of our destination which gave us the cabin to ourselves for some of the last night. Good thing too as V was starting to get a little ‘cabin fever’ – she had spent the entire day reading – that would have put me in a ferocious mood 🙂

– Posted from my iPhone