Back in the USSR

N 53 11.900 E 107 20.386 - Friday 26 September - Olkhon, Nikita's Homestead.

Siberia, I've had an image of it for a long time. It was a place of exile and imprisonment. It is covered with snow and trees. It is somewhere that a comet can strike and destroy thousands of acres of forest and basically go unnoticed. In some ways, those images have stood up to the reality and some haven't. What I have seemed to find, giving away the ending before I tell the story, seems to be amazingly beautiful, extremely harsh and desolate landscapes, completely untouched and primitive, yet filled with industrial blight, covered in broken vodka bottles and tire tracks through beautiful reed marshes filled with plastic grocery bags.

When I last left you, our train had just been invaded by the Russian army on our last 36 hours before Irkutsk. Eventually that night, we made it to bed. There was a few hours of drinking beer (they had 2 1.5 liter bottles of pivo they were determined to make it through) and talking. But we were already exhausted and had already hoped to go to bed before they even arrived. C had been up in the top bunk for most of it, hoping to sleep but it being impossible and eventually moved down to be a little more social. After an hour or so, during Vladim's first smoke break, she snuck back up and put in the earplugs and tried to shut it all out, but it all kept going on despite that.

During the second smoke break a long time after that, after both bottles had been finished, Ora, who had patiently waited and only participated in the small bits of the conversation that were in Russian, she reclaimed her bottom bunk and effectively ended the party. I was then able to reclaim my bottom bunk and also finally sleep. Outside the door, we could hear the rest of the carriage carrying on late into the night.

Sleeping on the bottom bunk, with your ear right there sort of kind of on the floor, the noises are strange. Much of the track is fairly smooth but then sections of it get quite noisy. I wonder how much of the track had shifted and sunk (built on permafrost that then melts somewhat, buildings sink and crack), but parts of the track were very loud with a clacking sound quite similar to a fast beating heart. I would say that is the main sound I will take away from the journey, the sound of the Trans-Siberian. The other sound, my favorite of all of them, is the sound of the safety checks (I presume) that the engineer makes at most of the longer stops. He walks around the entire train with a metal rod (and torch if it is dark), hitting all the springs on the wheels and the brake drum covers (I am guessing), clang, ting, clang, ting. I assume if something is wrong, it makes a different sound.

However, that night, the loud clacking sounds, the ones that sound like a fast beating heart, are quite conducive to a whole series of exhausting running dreams. After a too late night, I wake up even more tired. The landscape had gotten even better here, we were going through not densely packed forests of birch, but at least a great number of them and they were mostly turning. There were seas of yellow with small patches of red and green flowing by, we were also moving through more twists and turns and up and down small hills. It was quite a nice scene to watch.

The major though, once we were up and breakfasted, got out his laptop and decided it was movie time. He had a whole big pack of dvds. It appears that the MPAA has made little headway in Russia, at least in the Russian military. None of the dvds appeared to be actual kind of copies you would buy in stores, although he did have quite a collection of fairly current films. He decided that Kung Fu Panda was just what we needed and started it it up. It seems like quite a surreal moment there to me, sitting there on a train going through Siberia, with this amazing landscape going by outside the window, sitting there watching Kung Fu Panda in Russian. Occasionally the Major would tell us a bit of the dialog, what they were saying, although the plot and the action seemed pretty straight forward. It seems that there was this panda who wanted to do kung fu.

So fine, entertaining, kind of, although I probably would have rather sat and read and stared out the window. But I guess I could still look out the window. The film didn't require a whole lot of effort or attention. About halfway through, I went to take a shower. It had been a few days. Ok, not exactly a shower. Ora had ridden the train before, many times, and knew how it worked. She had a huge mayonnaise jar and I borrowed that. Fill it with hot water and you can do fairly well with a wash cloth. The toilets have a mesh rubber floor with a drain in the bottom. It isn't the easiest thing in the world, but you can get moderately clean and wash your hair and feel a bit better about the world and a bit refreshed.

And I was back in time to see the last 1/3rd of the film. If you haven't seen it, I probably won't wreck it by saying that the panda eventually does learn kung fu, but I wasn't worried he wouldn't. Mostly I was wondering why Yoda and Darth Vader were in the film as well.

The rest of the day was quieter. We could retreat a little bit into reading, watch more of the scenery, although the other soldiers were still going, running into our room to get different translations for different words. I assume they were trying to make headway with the foreign women. Cup of soup and tomatoes and cheese and bread and sausage for lunch and I guess a sort of similar thing for dinner. It is hard to believe that it all passed so quickly, we would be in Irkutsk at 6 am the next morning. Ora was continuing on to the end of the line, a few more days on the train. She insisted that we get ourselves packed up and mostly ready to go before we went to sleep.

Nobody really slept much that night. The other soldiers were young and energetic and they kept the rest of the train up for almost the entire night. They tried a number of times to get into our room but the door was locked. It didn't help with the sleep though. And the clacking of the tracks seems so much louder in the night and I was a little worried about getting up and out in time the next morning, it being so early.

I guess I didn't need to worry so much. The provodnitsa was a bit keen, probably really wanted to unload the train so she could have a much quieter rest of the journey, woke everybody up a 5, telling us we would be there in 30 minutes, which was a bit of a fib but we were ready to go by 5.30, and sat and waited until we finally pulled into Irkutsk at 6.

It is funny, after 4 days on the train, I barely explored much of it. I went a few coaches back and one ahead, but never ended up making it to the dining car (apparently not even a small loss) and didn't really engage much with the rest of the English speaking passengers (the tourists). But then I ended up doing much more of that during that first day in Irkutsk. We got off the train, wondering what to do next. We couldn't get our room at the home-stay until 9 so had a few hours. Wandering around Irkutsk in the pre-dawn hours, interesting and all, actually it seemed to present the town in the best light, but the backpacks were heavy and it was a bit cold. There was supposed to be some 24 hour internet cafe, but we never found it and ended up outside the 24 hour pizza cafe with three just graduated Oxford students.

Open 24 hours of course means they close from 7 to 7.30, so we had to wait outside for 30 minutes until they opened, but at least it was somewhere and we had company. Pizza and blinies for breakfast and a nice chat with some English kids and finally we were able to head down to the hostel to have them set us up with our room. Later that day, I picked up a book of matches from the restaurant we ate in, so many times people on the street asked me if I had a light (or at least made that universal sign language of needing a match), I figured at least once I could just give them the entire box of matches. Have I mentioned yet that all of Russia seems to be a smoker's paradise. Tobacco companies seem to even have done very well with rather young children. I have found the smoke to be a bit much at times but do miss actual non-smoking areas.

Our home-stay lady seems pretty nice and the room is good, although another of my list of questions about Russia is what is the obsession with absolutely gigantic pillows? How does one sleep on a pillow that the size of your head and of a great deal of your upper chest? We had a nice conversation and tea with her but it also was one of the conversations that led me to wondering about travel and being a foreigner in a foreign land.

My main accomplishment though, I was rather pleased with how I handled it and what I learned, was repairing the computer. Somehow, maybe the outlets on the train, the power adapter was no longer working. I had asked where some computer stores might be, or better yet, stores with lots of cables and thing who might not mind repairing things. I thought my chances of finding a replacement were pretty slim, maybe there was something similar or could somehow hack something together. It was one of the bigger cities in Siberia, but it is still Siberia.

There was learning about Russian retail too. There are lots of big stores along main streets, disappointingly mostly chains of stores that are all over the world. Does there really need to be a United Colors of Bennington in every town in the world? I kind of think not. Sad about local color ending up being the same boring color as everywhere else in the world. But a lot of the action seems to be in plain buildings, on 2nd and 3rd floors, down hallways with 20-30 doors. If you can't read the signs out front, or especially the signs at the end of the hallway, you would have no idea anything was there.

I was given some vague locations, this street, somewhere on a 2nd floor. The first place, a store just out on the main street, a small one though, I started out in English. The store actually sells Asus too. He speaks pretty decent English and he can't help, but is nice enough to walk me around the block to the service center, where they can't help either. They say they can order one, might take a few weeks, but by that time, I'll be in Mongolia or China or somewhere. Then he walks me down a few blocks to another computer store, another small one. He was very nice I have to say.

That store, I also start out in English. The guy sort of understands, not so much though. It sounds like they also have a service center. Somewhere, I can't understand where and the guy doesn't know how to tell me. He asks the guy at the desk, begs a bit, finally he relents and tells me where it is. He seems extremely annoyed that he has to speak English, which he seems to pretty well. I guess I understand but also kind of don't. Maybe he is tired of being the go to English guy, or maybe he had a bad day, I don't know. But the service center, just around the corner again, they have nothing, but he is nice enough to recommend some other place and prints out a map of how to get there, a few blocks away.

This is one I never would have found on my own, up some back stairway, down a hallway, through one of the dozens of doors. This one looks promising though, very geeky, lots of parts and wires and people standing in line having written down part numbers where a very busy woman types stuff on her computer and sends two people behind her scurrying to get the parts out of some drawer from the back. This might be it. And I've finally planned ahead. I stand in line practicing slomanni (broken), pacheeneet (repair), pahoji (similar). That and pointing at the voltage and all that, she seems to get it, but they have nothing. She can order one, be there Tuesday, which is our last day there, so not great but at least it is something.

Then on the next block, hey, that's the store the home-stay lady recommended, looks like a big proper computer shop. Might as well try there. I've got the routine down, I practice my words again, and although they get hung up on the fact that I had taken the UK adapter off, I come up with eemyet (have) and go back through broken and all that. Ahh, I am saved, after a few people try to help, a proper looking geek comes out and after I also throw in paryes(cut), to cut off the old connector and wire it to something new, then he brings out a voltage meter and start plugging it into a socket and measuring things. Yes, this is much better now. Yep, it isn't working, he confirms that and he has an idea.

He finds an old power cable in back, the right voltage and through somebody else, an 18 year old woman who works there, who is going to school to learn English and is quite keen to translate and practice, he says yes he can try to reconnect things if we can wait a few minutes. Of course, then I won't have to wait days or months, I have a few minutes. When he comes back, after we chat with this woman for a while (seems to be in love with some 25 year old artist from New York, wants to go there, all that), my connector is spliced to this other adapter and it works and I'm so happy. She says then, this man would like you to pay him 500 rubles. We are in the middle of a large chain type computer store, lots of clerks had come over during the whole process until he finally took over. But yeah, if he wants to make a bit of extra money on the side during working hours, when in Rome, I guess. I'm happy, I have a working power supply again (about £11 worth) and the woman was happy (got to practice her English, while she was at work) and the guy was happy (an interesting technical challenge as well as a nice bit of cash). Quest over though, back to normal life, seeing things and writing about them.