Moscow to Tomsk

annette, amanda, and gleb (the guy annette had been drinking heavily with during the overnight trip from st. petersburg to moscow) were standing on the station platform, heads down, obviously all of them feeling the effects of the night before by the time i caught up to them after getting off the overnight train friday morning at moscow's yaraslovsky station. it had been a great eight-hour trip from st. petersburg to moscow, but now we had seven hours or so to kill before beginning our trans-mongolian trip eastward at half past one in the afternoon.

it was a long time to sit in a station, all of us on three hours' sleep apiece. i'd like to say it flew by, but that was not the case. time dragged. we went into an open bar in the station's grand, lavish lobby (complete with lenin statue -- as seen everywhere in russia) and found some chairs in which we could collapse for awhile. people were already drinking (as seen everywhere in russia)...we took turns walking around, one of us always remaining with our large collection of backpacks, rolling suitcases, etc...at nine-ish we went up to the station's internet cafe, where i typed the entry from the other day about the trip from st. petersburg to moscow. i should go back and see if i wrote anything libelous or scandalous, as i was in quite a haze while i was typing. we all remarked that we were in no condition to be blogging, lest the wrong things come out. i actually fell asleep at my computer a few times (annette nudged me before the snoring got too loud), just like back when i worked at the county!

we got going on the train at half past one, right on schedule, and we all feel asleep. we had a four-person room, with two bunks on each side. the bunks were actually long enough for me to stretch out and wide enough for me to not fall off of...annette slept across from me, amanda slept above me, and a russian girl who looked chinese, from the far-off outpost town of ulan-ude, russia, slept above annette. i apparently started snoring right away, since i am known to be able to fall asleep anywhere. annette told me that the ulan-ude girl was looking at me, wide-eyed, as the guttural sounds eminated from my throat or nose or mouth or wherever. my bad. later in the trip, i tried to apologize to her, but there's no entry in the phrasebook for "sorry my snoring kept you up/reminded you of a hibernating bear"...i ended up pantomiming my apology to her, much to ulan-ude girl's amusement.

woke up at sixish. the sun was up until almost eleven p.m. it was wicked hot and sticky inside the compartment. lots of people spent good parts of the trip leaning out the windows along the narrow hallway corridor on the left-hand side of each sleeper car. the hallway was very narrow so each time i'd go by on my way to wherever, people would sneak back into their sleeping compartment. they were very nice.

the next few days on the train were all the same, but were all great...spent time in the dining car reading, talking to people, staring out the window at the scenery going by: drab russian industrial towns, birch forests, pine forests that blew a nice scent through the open windows, little towns, old ancient graveyards, churches in the distance, rivers, lakes, long bridges...we just went on and and on, never stopping, heading eastward. in some places you could hear and feel the click-clack of the wheels on the old rails; in other parts they'd laid new track and the train rolled along smoothly and silently.

the three of us were very popular on the train. people would come by our compartment, stick their heads on, talk to us in russian, whatever...this adorable little blonde girl named leera from the compartment next door took a liking to me and spent the better part of the last two days in our compartment, playing patty-cake with annette and amanda, and a game with me where i'd lay my hand, palm-down, on her hand, palm-up, and try to take mine away before she could slap it...stupid slow reflexes! i'd often lose!

in these ways we passed the miles, or kilometers, as it were. it was great. we'd stop every few hours, sometimes for a minute or two, sometimes for twenty in a larger town. on those times, i'd get out and stretch my legs and see what people were selling (ice cream, entire nasty-looking cooked fish, cool fur hats) on the platform. i'd never stray too far from my car, though, as getting stranded as the train pulled away (with my passport in my luggage aboard the train and only the clothes on my back ot my name) would not be my cup of tea.

i tried to buy a fur hat when we stopped for half an hour in yekaterinburg, but they didn't have any that would fit my big-ass head. then, as if the hat selling lady wasn't aghast enough at me nearly ripping her ware while trying to get it on my noggin, i proceeded to drop said hat on the dirty train platform....she just shook her head and gave me a disapproving look. i hurried back to the train and hid, out of her sight, until we started our eastward journey again.

the bathrooms on the train were nothing that you'd find in home and gardens magazine...maybe they'd get consideration in "places where you might just want to hold it" magazine, but there was no other choice on the train for so long. the carriage attendants locked the bathrooms from five minutes before each station until five minutes after departure because the toilets -- while thankfully western style instead of the squat-style that is so painful to my knees -- open directly to the tracks below. this provides men, if they are standing while doing their business, a lovely view of a water show below as the drops splish and splash on the train track zipping rapidly by below. these bathrooms haven't seen a mopping in many a year, and they make airline bathrooms seem roomy by comparison, so i made it a goal to use them as infrequenlty as possible from thursday night, when our voyage started on the train in st. petersburg, to this morning, when we arrived in the town of tomsk, about halfway across russia. number one wasn't that big of a problem, although i found aiming to be quite a chore if the train was jostling back and forth a lot...number two was out of the question for the four days, so i started a crash diet right there and then in st. petersburg on thursday night, and i am happy to report that i made it all the way to our hotel this morning, even though i did a few stupid things along the way on the train. i tried to eat as little as possible to avoid, um, building up bulk, but the things i did eat, at some points, seemed to be the exact WRONG things: big container of fruit juice? don't mind if i do! chocolate bar? bring it on! delicious, juicy russian peach? i was most of the way through it before it dawned on me that it might not be helpful to my cause. but i made it, nonetheless, and without any real abdominal dissention to speak of.

It was a long, long train journey to get to novisibirisk, the city to which we'd bought our first trans-mangolian tickets, but we slowed down and started approaching the station at a bit after midnight last night. the schedule on board the train said we'd arrive at 9:15, but that's because for some reason they run ALL the trains, all the way across russia, on MOSCOW TIME...so it said 9:15 as we stepped off the train, on the platform clock, but then 12:15 a.m. once we got outside into the town center. silly communists!

the hotel right across from the station cost 100 bucks for a single and 120 for a double (three times the price listed in the lonely planet book), so we decided that -- since we weren't staying in novisibirisk anyways, we'd head out right away for tomsk. tomsk is an old wooden siberian town, 79 km north of the trans-siberian mainline and 270 km northeast of novisibirisk. instead of overpaying for a hotel for a few hours in novisibirisk, we opted for a cab ride here to tomsk...

the cab ride cost about $150 for the three of us, which wasn't that bad of a deal. it was 1:30 by the time we left, but the driver drove very fast (even through the fog and encroaching forests) so we got here at about 4 a.m...we didn't know where to go, so the driver's rolling down his window to ask other drivers, then asking hookers, and the hookers directed us to an hourly hotel right around the corner from where we were, but we didn't want to stay there, but the satisfactory hotel that the nice lady at the hourly hotel called for us said there wouldnt' be any rooms ready until noon...we had the driver drive us over to the (satisfactory hotel) hotel sputnik and they somehow found rooms for us, so we checked in at 5:30 a.m. and slept all day after showering for the first time since thursday morning (i was ripe, as was annette...amanda, well, not so much)...

i just haven't been able to get it going today. i wanted to walk around and see this town, but i slept until three and i've just been lollygagging it around since then (half past eight p.m. now)...at least we got to check in at 6 a.m. monday morning and stay until noon tuesday for one night's rate...

it was so beautiful and as we were driving in the cab, which had all four windows partially down -- either to keep the driver awake or (i suspect) to try to freeze out the stench. there was a huge full moon hanging over the horizon in one direction and then the sun started coming up at about half past three on the other side of the horizon...neither amanda, annette, nor i slept a wink on the taxi ride...it was crazy "peter and the wolf" country out there...i could imagine the wolves and bears and siberian tigers lurching just out of sight...even though we were all tired (after four days on the train), i half-hoped for a flat tire out there in the siberian forest just so i could hear wolves howling -- provided i could hear that from the safety of the cab...

we'll be here in tomsk for another day tomorrow, and then back on the trans-siberian tuesday night for another few days and then we'll be in mongolia for about ten days...