The Paris of Siberia

Hey everybody,

Last time I left you we had just crossed the border from Mongolia into Russia on our way to our next stop:  Irkutsk.  The only reason we planned on stopping in Irkutsk is because it's a territory from the board game Risk, but we later found out that it's known as the "Paris of Siberia" according to Mae's guidebook.  I'm not sure how much that means... you could say that Cleveland is the "Paris of Lake Erie" considering that it's competing against Buffalo and Detroit.  Regardless, Irkutsk is the most popular stop along the Trans-Siberian railroad mostly because it's the jumping-off point for Lake Baikal, the world's oldest and deepest lake.

The train chaos continued well into Russia because this it's there that the Mongolian smugglers finally get to unload their wares.  It's at the first stop where we almost lost Mae.  Now, I should explain a bit about how the stops work.  The train is on a set schedule where it only stops at certain cities along the route.  The stops can vary anywhere from 2 to 30 minutes.  The duration of the stop is posted on the train, but it's always a good idea to check with the conductor to see how much time you have if you want to jump off and buy supplies or whatever.

Cross-border commerce in full effect

So we get to the first stop in Russia which I think was called "Slyudyanka 1" and Rich, Jeremy and I decide to get out to stretch our legs.  The Mongolian conductor lady tells us we only have two minutes and we exit the train to witness what can only be described as a flurry of commerce between the locals and the smugglers.  There were probably about 50 people involved in this two minute scrum that saw a significant offloading of Mongolian merchandise.  We hopped back on the train, back to our compartment and... no Mae.  This is when the train started moving.

The first thing that came to my mind was that I have to buy one of those elastic body harnesses that they strap on to hyperactive kids and from now on use it to tie Mae to a fixed object whenever she's going to be out of sight.  I turn around and the conductor is standing right behind us, realizing what happened, and she starts yelling at us in Mongolian.  Then one of the chubby smuggler ladies comes storming down the aisle, pointing and laying into us as well.  Since Mongolian wasn't a language that was offered at my high school, the best I can make out is that the smuggler lady saw Mae get out but wasn't going to stop her because she was busy selling pants or something.  The one thing that was clear was that both of them held the three of us personally responsible for losing a member of our party.  This is when we see Mae making her way down the aisle.

The smuggler lady sees her, starts pointing and barking, then grabs Mae, spins her around and starts spanking her.  Then she walks off to her compartment in a huff.  Apparently Mae had gotten off to buy some water and realized too late that the train was moving.  She then proceeded to fight her way through the crowd and jump onto a moving train a few cars down from ours... she does her own stunts ladies and gentlemen!  Luckily, the next stop was actually one where we were supposed to leave.

We spent a day walking around "The Paris of Siberia" mostly looking at old buildings and Russian women.  Well, at least us three guys did.  The most striking architectural feature of Irkutsk is that the downtown area is filled with old 19th and early 20th century buildings that look like something out of a Western, and it seems as though at least half of them are abandoned.  The weather wasn't that cold actually, at least nowhere near the Siberian stereotype.  The toughest part of the day was ordering food, though Rich, Jeremy and I will eat just about anything.  The challenge was for Mae, who over the course of nine days managed to butcher the Russian phrase for "I'm a vegetarian" about 457 different ways, none of them successful at communicating her dietary restrictions.  The one time it did work in Listvyanka the guy behind the counter just looked at her, put his hands over his eyes and made gesture of putting food in his mouth basically saying "close your eyes and eat it."  The locals turned out to be pretty friendly, especially after a few beers, and especially the ones that can speak some English.  We ended up at the famous Liverpool Bar until 3AM, where we met a flair bartender, the bass player for a cover band, some German guy working in the oil business, a student, and a tattooed guy wearing a wife beater who told me my ink was shit.  He was kind enough to refer me to Irkutsk's premier tattoo artist in case I wanted to get my egregious deformities corrected.  Good times.

The next day we headed to Listvyanka which is a small town on the edge of Lake Baikal.  The lake itself is spectacular; the part where we stayed was completely frozen over and, being there on a Sunday afternoon, we saw families walking around on the lake, hovercraft, snowmobiles, and cars driving on the lake dragging kids in innertubes behind them.  Honestly, I can't do the lake justice; I could've easily sat and stared at it for hours.  We ended up at a shack/cafe in a parking lot facing the lake and eating smoked fish.  The lady who ran our guesthouse hooked us up with a banya, which is a Russian sauna of an extremely high temperature during which you're supposed to whack each other on the back with wet pine branches.  I don't ask questions in these situations, plus I'm pretty sure it's not considered S&M if the pine branches are fresh.  I do know that we got to wear some awesome wool hats.

The following day marked the beginning of our longest stretch on the train:  3 1/2 days.  I know what you're thinking... surely after the migrant laborers and the smugglers, this next bit must be where the romance of the Trans-Siberian really begins!  Well, if your idea of romance features a dozen shirtless Russian guys roaming the aisles of your 100 degree train car then you would be in heaven.  Combine that with no showers for over three days and the nocturnal sound sensation known as Jeremy "The Chainsaw" Gilmore and you have the perfect recipe for a pleasure ride.

To be honest, the time passes by more quickly than you expect.  You're in a train compartment with three close friends chatting, drinking, and playing cards.  Jeremy had a dream where he was directing a telenovela so every once in a while he'd look at Rich and say "Ricardo... mas emocion!"  You make friends with the provodnista (conductor) because she can get you beer more cheaply than on the train platforms.  You watch Rich as he frets over the next text message he's going to send to/receive from his girlfriend, and then you laugh at him when he loses signal.  You watch the Siberian scenery going by, which embodies what must be meant by the phrase "stark beauty."  From Irkutsk almost all the way to Moscow the path was lined with endless forests of beautiful white birch trees broken up by the odd village here and there.  Looking at the construction of some of those shacks you wonder how anybody could survive a cold Siberian winter living in those things.  Even though the scenery is repetitive, it isn't boring in any way, in fact it's strangely mesmerizing.  By the way, if you were wondering what the perfect train journey music is, it's any early John Lee Hooker or Muddy Waters.  Trust me on this.

We mostly bought food at the various train stops from these tiny shops on the platforms typically manned by old Russian ladies.  You can also buy beer from them, but vodka is illegal to sell on the platforms... apparently Russia has a problem with alcoholism!  Shhh... don't tell anybody.  Anyway, if you do end up eating on the train rather than getting food from the platforms, make sure you actually *go* to the dining car instead of letting the sexy librarian dining attendant talk you into receiving dinner in your compartment.   How can she talk you into it if you don't speak any Russian, you may ask?  Good question... the strategy is, when she sees that you don't understand, to speak Russian louder and faster than before, as if the sheer volume and intensity of her command of the language will force its knowledge into your brain.  What actually happens is that you just nod at everything she says and the three of you end up spending a hundred bucks on pork chops.

We did manage to meet a couple of people along the way.  Leila was on her way to London to work front of the house at one of Joel Robuchon's restaurants and she taught us more about caviar than we would've thought possible.  Mae, desperate for a fourth to play Shanghai Rummy, roped in a guy named Ivan who turned out to be a soldier stationed on the Russia/China border that was going home to get married.  He spent most of his time hanging out in our compartment trying to hide from the provodnik who was flirting with him.  Like I said, three days went by quickly, and my greatest personal achievement was putting one of the train car's toilets permanently out of order.

I feel confident in saying
this photo isn't taken very often

Once we finally reached Moscow, also known as "The Paris of Europe," we were badly in need of a strong dose of the three S's.  We split up since Mae went to meet her friend Sef who had flown in from London and only ended up seeing each other sparingly for the rest of the weekend.  We had four days in Moscow and spent most of our time simply walking around and getting to know the city.  The Kremlin was by far the most impressive thing we saw in our time in Moscow.  It's much larger than I anticipated and it's obvious that a lot of resources go into maintaining the structure and it's surroundings.  To be honest, I expected Moscow to be a little more... I dunno... Soviet.  Maybe I thought I'd see a bunch of factories with no windows billowing smoke, or big boxy gray apartment buildings, or monolithic government buildings with giant imposing statues of communist leaders filling the city.  From what we saw, though, the town center looks pretty much like a modern metropolis.  It's obvious that there is a lot of money in Moscow.  The city is plastered with either new construction or buildings undergoing renovation.  Seeing any of the old Soviet-era Lada cars is a rarity since most of what you'll see driving down the street are late-model SUVs, BMWs or Mercedes.  Jeremy said he'd never seen so many Bentleys in one day.  Moscow was ranked 15th most expensive city in the world last year, ahead of Paris and New York, which explains why we couldn't find a beer for under $6.  On the bright side, the city does contain 13 TGI Friday's restaurants.  The best part was how everyone we met, including the Russians, told us we should've gone to St. Petersburg instead.

We did luck out by meeting a couple of university students, Lisa from Belarus and Alice from Moldova, that volunteered to take us around the city and show us a couple of spots where tourists typically don't end up.  They took us to a huge square commemorating the fallen of World War II that's punctuated by an obelisk that looks about 10 stories high.  Russians are big on the WWII memorials and it's common for newlyweds to visit a memorial on their wedding day and place flowers there.  We visited an exhibition park that included exhibit halls from different parts of the former Soviet Union and then on to an amusement park where we rode some go-karts that the local Russian guys treat as their version of Death Race 2000.  We ended up eating dinner at Elki-Palki, which was great only because I enjoy saying Elki-Palki and listening to Alice try to explain what it means.  It was nice to have a couple of natives there to translate the menu since it normally took me half an hour to slowly mouth the literal sounds from the Cyrillic alphabet before realizing that I still don't know what "mrsa" means.

Russian ladies' casual wear

Before I go, I'd like to make a special mention of the Russian ladies, from Irkutsk to Moscow, which Jeremy, Rich and I agreed have to rank in the top five worldwide.  If you enjoy six-inch stripper heels, which apparently are a required accessory, then bump them up a couple of ranks.  That being said, where are the women over 45?  They are nowhere to be found.  It's like a real-life version of Logan's Run.  Also... let's talk about Russian guys for a second.  A large percentage of them look like their face was caught in a bear trap somewhere around age 7.  They accentuate their natural looks with a haircut that is a combination of Moe from The Three Stooges in the front and a ferocious mullet in the back:  The Moeullet.  Along with the track pants, it's understandable how this combination would be irresistible to Russian women.  Seriously... we don't understand, someone please explain.  We had to come up with a term for it, pulling a Sputnik, when we saw a particularly egregious example of a mismatch, mostly because the word Sputnik is cool (yes, that's the best we could do after 9 days).  To be fair, not all of them suffered from these conditions, but it was enough to notice.  Also, I expected Russian guys to be bigger.  Not that they were small, they were normal, but I guess when you grow up with Ivan Drago and Nikolai Volkoff, you expect more.

Well, that's it for now.  I won't be going anywhere for a while, so hopefully you enjoy these pics (just click the image below).  Again, they were mostly poached from the rest of the crew since whenever I try to take a beautiful still shot something like an electrical pole or other such object inevitably jumps into my frame.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/4rSEeAYbMjpixT1t9

Take 'er easy,
Dave

Everyone Loves a Panda

Hey everybody,

I wrote this bit on the train about a day and a half out from Moscow on the journey across Siberia.  We’d been on that portion of the ride two days since we left Irkutsk and no one had tried to throw us off the train, though Mae really did her best to make this happen.  My travel beard had grown ferocious and wild... it could not be contained and visibly frightened children and small animals.  I wish I could say the same about my travel hairline. 

This all started because Rich has been on the road for the last year or so but is due back in England in April for the annual scan to make sure he still has a brain.  Though anecdotal evidence suggests otherwise, the NHS insists on thoroughness.  Rich wanted to mark the Trans-Siberian (I guess Trans-Mongolian technically) off his life checklist.  The call went out... who would be dumb enough to join Rich in this quest spanning 6 days and 7000 Km in one train compartment? 

Mae, Jeremy and I flew to Beijing where we met Rich for three days in the Chinese capitol; a city where where Mae is considered tall and if the air were a crayon it would be burnt sienna.  Apparently our visit coincided with a holiday and everywhere we went was packed with Chinese tourists.  As we wandered through the narrow hutongs where our hostel was located we were reassured that we were indeed among civilized people by the sight of a conveniently placed Starbucks across the street from Tiananmen Square.

Coming soon to the Folsom Street Fair

The square itself is fairly vast and surrounded by imposing government buildings and museums.  With all the Chinese tourists around there was one thing in particular that stood out:  The popularity of asscrack pants for kids.  I don't know what else to call them... they're regular pants with the part over the crack completely open, and the deluxe model even has an opening in the front.  They look like tiny chaps except they're made from cotton and worn by a Chinese toddler. 

Tiananmen Square faces directly on to the Forbidden Palace which, judging by the amount of time we had to wait in line to get in, uses a very liberal definition of the word "forbidden."  Once inside we noticed that, while the first few buildings were nicely restored, the further you walk into the grounds, the more run-down it gets.  Honestly, the two things that stood out about the Forbidden Palace were that it has a basketball court (no joke) and the garden on the north end is fairly well-kept.  Oh yeah, and while waiting in line we bought these mystery flavored popsicles that were made out of some kind of space-age substance that wouldn’t melt even after a half hour in the sun.

Panda Reservoir Dogs

We wandered north through a series of hutongs on our way to the lake district, during which Rich had the genius idea of buying a panda hat at one of Beijing’s many panda-themed stores. Three white guys wearing panda hats instantly became the most popular attraction around Beihai Park.  People kept stopping us to take pictures, or asking us to take pictures with them, or simply pointing and laughing.  The only logical step at this point was to rent a three-man bicycle and ride a lap around the two lakes which, I have to admit, was one of the most fun things I've ever done.  Apparently the sight of a triple-threat panda bike is quite rare.  We were celebrities for a day; I have no idea how many pictures were taken of us since the ones that we took are only a fraction.  We even crashed a modeling photo shoot.  It was like “Anchorman”… I don’t know if you know this, but we’re kind of a big deal in Beijing.  Not to overestimate the impact, but the three of us may be responsible for the single greatest achievement in Sino-Western international relations of the last 20 years.  Which… apparently didn't extend as far as the cab drivers because at the end of the night no one would stop to pick up three giant pandas and a bunny.

The next day Jeremy and Rich had... uh... a little trouble waking up (they’ll say otherwise but they are liars, drunks, and probably sodomites) so Mae and I ended up taking a trip to the Great Wall on our own.  The bus ride was over three hours during which we were treated to a hearty breakfast featuring the Chinese staples of Sausage McMuffins and coffee, then handed identification tags to wear around our necks because our guide candidly admitted to the group that all foreigners look alike to her and if we wanted lunch we’d better wear our tags. 

The portion of the wall that we visited was at Jinshianling which luckily was not very crowded.  The Great Wall itself is a remarkable achievement in construction and they've performed some diligent work to restore a good portion of it.  I have to admit though that I didn't feel the same sense of history walking along the wall that I've felt at other ancient sites I've visited.  Maybe what dampened my enthusiasm was the fact that the surrounding landscape at the end of winter is brown and the air is hazy so that the wall itself seems to blend into its environment.  I'm glad we saw the wall but I'm not sure I'd sit through another 7+ hours of bus rides for a return trip.

At 7:30 AM the next morning began the first leg of our train journey which spanned a day and a half from Beijing to Ulan Bator.  The allure of the train journey has long been a topic of writers over the years, wistfully dreaming about the possibilities such a trip may afford.  Well any romantic ideas about the ride tend to disappear when you enter a train car filled with migrant laborers that smells like cigarette smoke and b.o.  This marked the beginning of Mae’s multinational one-woman campaign to rid Chinese and Mongolian trains of unauthorized smoking, or, as the rest of us liked to call it, the campaign to get our asses kicked in a foreign country.  Actually, Mae had multiple one-woman campaigns along our journey that fit under the same umbrella, but this was the one that came closest to success (not for the smoking, for the ass-kicking).

Creepy Chinese Waldo

Sure we made friends, like the creepy guy who looked like a Chinese version of Where's Waldo blessed/cursed with Kathleen Turner's “Jessica Rabbit” voice.  He wandered around our train car, opening the door to our compartment and asking the same questions over and over like "Are you American?" and "Do you like China?" and “Do you like spicy food?” then walking off.  The highlight was when he opened up our compartment door and asked "Do you sleep at night?" then rubbed his hands and walked away.  We started locking our door after that.

There's not much countryside to speak of from Beijing all the way to the border… it's all cities and factories that are difficult to distinguish through the smoky air.  We saw some power plants, which was exciting.  The laborers exited the train at a town about 50 miles from the Mongolian border.

You are only allowed to import items
valued at less than 100 dollars!

Let me ask this question… why do border guards have to dress like they were officers from The Empire in Star Wars?  When did this become the official outfit?  You’re half asleep, filling out forms that are either in a foreign language or written in third-grade English, this guy walks in and you’re somehow expecting Darth Vader to follow him through the door asking you what you’ve done with the plans for the Death Star.  Between midnight and 2AM someone stormed into our compartment approximately 847 times.  The only one of us that was immune to the hassle was Jeremy, passed out on the upper bunk, wearing a panda hat.

We awoke to the sights of the Mongolian plains outside our windows, endless stretches of rolling hills occasionally dotted with villages of round huts called gers or with packs of wild horses running free.  Occasionally the solemnity of the Gobi desert would be broken by a factory or some kind of refinery but the landscape remained fairly barren until we began to reach the outskirts of Ulan Bator.  We went from seeing one car every hundred miles to full-fledged traffic jams as we motored toward the center of the city.  UB immediately strikes you as a place that doesn't fit with the rest of the Mongolia that we saw through the compartment window.  There are newly constructed highrises and office buildings through the center of town, and the roads are jammed with late model cars and SUVs.

After spending a day in the city I wouldn't say that Ulan Bator should be a destination in itself.  I think most travelers who visit Mongolia go there to experience a trip to a village to live in a ger for a few days, using UB as a stopping point on the way there and back.  It has the requisite giant main square surrounded by government buildings and museums with statues of great Mongolians.  The people are tall, they seem to take great care to dress stylishly, and the consensus among the three guys was that Mongolian women are surprisingly hot.  We had a couple of great meals where I ate some of the best lamb in my life and the Mongolian yogurt was fantastic.  The one reminder of the nearby desert is the constant grit in your teeth from the dust blown into the city.

The next leg of the rail trip can only be referred to as... chaos.  As soon as we boarded there was a flurry of activity all up and down not only our car but the entire length of the train.  Mongolians with bags full of clothes, bags, shoes and other stuff were running up and down into each others' compartments then coming out with a whole different set of stuff.  A couple of people popped their heads through our door speaking Mongolian and wanting to hand us bags and clothes to store in the bins under our seats or overhead.  One guy who stank of vodka and was clearly off his face barged in and tried to force a couple of his bags in the bin under where Mae was sitting, so we had to physically kick the dude out.  He showed up again a few hours later, stumbled into our compartment, grabbed his junk, pointed at me and yelled "peesta!" then left.

I felt like we were somehow stowaways on a 10-car smuggling vessel.  The motion up and down the aisles was almost constant for the hours until we reached the Mongolian border with Russia.  This is when things started to get really interesting.  Once the Mongolians figured out that they couldn't get some items through the border, they'd bundle them up and throw them out the window to some friends they had waiting outside the train for just such an emergency.  The Mongolian border guards went easy on us, but we could hear all sorts of ruckus going on in the compartments nearby as they turned them upside down.  They were nothing though compared to the Russians, who went as far as to open up the light fixtures in the compartments and the aisles to make sure nobody was trying to smuggle drugs.  In spite of all this a large chunk of merchandise made it through, though I don't know how you could not spot it when a guy is wearing 10 sweaters.  There's no way that happens without the conductors and some of the officials getting a cut of the action.  Remarkably, we got through cleanly with no one wearing a panda hat.

Next time... Russia.  For now, enjoy these pics from China and Mongolia, most of which I blatantly poached off my travel mates...

https://photos.app.goo.gl/ttmeynDd2AmdwhjK6

Take 'er easy,

Dave