Friday we ate a quick lunch, but of course not without the usual debarcle of the restaurant not having the food we ordered, or being able to use Visa, MasterCard or American Express to pay. Got to love the Mongolians. Finally at 2pm we boarded our train destined for Moscow, Russia. Back into a carriage with a 4 bed berth and little room to move, to be called home for 4 days and 4 nights, 101 hours to be exact.
Luckily we were invited on board by much nicer train attendants who we laughed and joked with for the entire trip - Socka and Anna - who couldn't speak a word of English apart from 'thank you' which they giggled about each time they used it. They spent much of the trip looking in our travel guides for translations on things they wanted to tell us. They didn't expect us to pay for hot water this time, nor cake on their make up or wear long knee high black boots. They did however, expect us to help smuggle jeans across the border for them. This soon became common amongst the other Mongolian travellers, and we ended up being dumped with jeans, blankets and large dried sausages being stowed in our carriage or hanging from the roof. As soon as we crossed the border on Friday night into Russia, the woman who had helped herself to hanging dried meat from the roof of our berth, helped herself to standing on our food table while we were asleep to remove it and take it back to her cabin. The next day the blankets were removed, and the jeans were turned in the right way and returned to their plastic packaging. All the others on the tour were expected to hide the same things as us, and we realised a few days later that there was much other merchandise stowed in compartments in the floor of the train, which wasn't to be declared at the border crossing. For the next 3 days we witnessed Mongolians jumping off at each train stop to sell jeans, shoes, blankets, bags, food, shirts...the list went on. And the Russians were waiting at each stop to buy the products on offer. It was crazy.
We were expecting a 12 hour border crossing into Russia, without use of toilets, but it only ended up being a 6 hour stop where again we had to fill out numerous offical documents, hand over our passport to be returned hours later. The Russian official that collected and checked our visa's asked me to stand up and pull up the bottom beds to show him what was in the compartments underneath. Being 2am I was rather sleepy and as I got out of bed I bumped my head quite hard on the top bunk and fell back. The Russian, who definitely smelled of booze, was trying his hardest not to laugh, took one look at the compartment then moved on to the next carriage before he burst out laughing. He wasn't as kind to our fellow travel mates - he made them remove the contents of their packs and compartments which took ages. I'll have to remember the bumping of the head trick. There was a large woman official who walked past the cabin a few times who worried us as she was wearing leather gloves and carrying a rather large metal probe! No idea what she was using that for!
The next day we woke up to heavy snow outside the window. The mountains were covered in snow, the cattle were covered and the sheets were being laid thick and fast. It was an amazing sight and the 5 Aussies were glued to the window in utter awe. Our travelling companions didn't have our excitement, being from Holland, Denmark, Scotland and England. After 20 minutes of this, it stopped and we were back to blue skies and sun. What an experience!
The following morning we were well and truely in Russia (although had been since early hours of Saturday morning) when the train attendant came into our berth to pull up our blind to show us a beautiful view of a massive lake. It turned out we were looking at Lake Baikal which is the deepest lake in the world. After much time we passed the lake to a landscape of tall dense forest, much different to the vast plains with distant mountains we were used to.
Monday 14 May was my birthday. One peice of bread and jam for breakfast as I couldn't possibly stomach any more bread or dehydrated food. Yuk! The girls surprised me with a bottle of French wine (which we drank out of our thermos cups) and a lunch in the train dining cart. That was an experience in itself with a cart filled with smoking, smelly Mongolians (the cart had 2 No Smoking signs clearly visible)and a Russian waiter that couldn't handle taking more than 2 orders at the one time. Again we had to order about 4 times before we found something that was actually available on the menu, and ended up with crepes and meat that tasted like homemade sausage rolls and were fairly palatable and fried potatoes that were more like an oil/potato soup. That was my birthday lunch.
On returning to our carriage, I opened the door to our berth, to be suprised by our 10 tour companions crammed on the bunk beds. They had decorated the berth with streamers and link chains made from plastic shopping bags, balloons (condoms) and Happy Birthday signs made from various bits of paper. The little table was filled with chocolates, lollies and a birthday cake which was actually a large jam tart. I was blown away it was so thoughtful. They had apparently been glad of a birthday and spent the previous day busying themselves with making the decorations. Everyone sang Happy Birthday while I blew out the two lit matchsticks that were candles. I received presents of: a small pot of Tiger Balm, a She-pee (don't ask), a travel toothbrush from one of the guys and he'd realised he was almost at the end of the trip and hadn't had any luck on the girl front so chucked in his last two condoms, a packet of 2 minute noodles, a box of chocolates and a homemade card. The two train attendants had also made me a card with a cutout motif of a man and woman embracing face to face, on the front. They wrote a message in Mongolian (which I think meant Happy Birthday) on the back. There was plenty of Vodka to go around but seeing we'd all had a big night the previous night, no one was really interested. Another birthday comes and goes, but i'll never forget the one on a train travelling through Russia.
Tuesday 2.30pm, after 101 hours on the train, we finally reach Moscow and jump for joy when we depart. Showers, real beds and the end of dehydrated food. Yippee!
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