« I do not like trains » (Dr Rajesh Koothrappali) – Transsiberian train Part 1: Moscow to Irkutsk
05:08 | 
Publié par
Benoit |
« Don't be silly… Of course you do! » (Dr Sheldon Cooper)
And one more time, Sheldon illuminates us with a simple fact: you have got to like trains (For those who do not understand, check out The Big Bang Theory). These magnificent beasts of steel, capable of pulling hundreds of tons of raw materials, commodities and of course humans have always been my favorite way of discovering countries (that and walking randomly in the streets, but we will come back to that later, probably in Beijing).
In long distance trains, it feels like time stops for a while. One can cross so many different cities, beautiful landscapes and weather conditions that you feel like living a few stories within a couple of days only. Taking a train is also an opportunity to meet people. Have you ever noticed that you would very rarely speak to your neighbor in a plane, whereas in trains conversation would often engage? (Well at least outside Europe, I could not say the same thing in France for example and in any case in France the recurrent topic would be the strikes…). It is the best chance you will ever have to actually meet some local people and not only run into them. You can share a lunch together, try to communicate, laugh ( a lot) or simply admire the landscapes. If you do not feel comfortable in your sit, you always have the opportunity to go and walk a bit around, or even to stretch or work out a little bit. You have time to catch up on your readings, to dream a little bit watching through the window, or simply take advantage of a sit and contemplate the country you are visiting.
In the transsiberian train from Moscow to Irkutsk we had all of this. We decided to travel in the so called third class (called platskartny). I could not describe it better than a couple of pictures, so please check them out below. Two adorable Babushkas took care of us very gently during the whole trip. As I said above: lots of laughs (they did not speak a remote word of English of course), huge amounts of tea and dozens of soups. Something I forgot to mention about Russia so far is their love for tea (chai). They drink tea ALL THE TIME. In the train you would find a big fountain of boiled water available at all time for tea and dehydrated soups (mainly noodle soups).
Everyone (including us, but not enough, of course) brings incredible amounts of food to share in the train. We heard a lot about vodka drinking in the train… beside a couple of drunken, I must confess that I was quite disappointed. We allowed ourselves once to eat in the quite comfortable but not foreigners compliant restaurant wagon (no menu in English and no English speaker in the staff) where we had a better than usual dinner (soups only so far). Nothing extraordinary though… We decided then to buy food at one of the numerous stops in the local train stations to refill our stomachs (we got some delicious kind of breads stuffed with potatoes).
Other things to mention: the train is absolutely f***ing warm. We remained at all times in our pair of shorts, covered with a T-shirt only and a pair of flip flops. Every 12 hours roughly, the train is reloaded with coal which seems to be our heating commodity. Without shower in the train I can let you imagine the feeling after 4 days and nights in there…
Pictures and movies are not really allowed in the train, and therefore we had to trick a bit the provodnista (stewardess who is responsible for one entire wagon – you really do not want to mess with her as she can make your trip a nightmare) to make these few shots.
The last funny thing that needs to be pointed out is the time issue. As the train crosses 5 time zones between Moscow and Irkutsk, no one seems to know what the actual time is. Some people keep their watches at Moscow time; some others try to adjust to local time which creates a big confusion. As a result, everybody sleeps when it feels like sleeping. Days start early and seem to finish very early as the sun goes down every day a little bit earlier. If you add that up to the feeling of being in a sauna and the fact that the so called mattresses are everything but comfortable, you almost necessarily end up tired (I slept well the first night, worse the second one, badly the third one and barely slept the last one… I could feel pain in basically all positions I tried). But that is the charm of this train… We remained stuck in the same train station for roughly one day because the train before us overturned. That is yet another occasion to meet more people and talk…
We are still stuck currently as I am writing this post… and we are supposed to arrive at destination in 2 hours where our host is supposed to wait for us. Jeez, I have no idea if and where we are going to sleep tonight…
Benoit
PS: Update, we made it to Irkutsk. Thought we would sleep in the train station as we arrived around 1.30 am and no internet working around. Fortunately we received some help after one hour and managed to reach Anastasia's place around 3 am. Anastasia THANK YOU !! (I like trains but trains stations not so much...)
Libellés :
Last days in Moscow
Brief overview of our three last days in Moscow:
Friday: Alexei and his friend Dima were kind enough to show us the city with a mean of transport we would never have thought of using in Moscow: a bike! So here we are on the roads of Moscow, riding a bike which is far too small for Yann and has only a front break which barely works for me. We discover on the way yet another way of making fraud. Train station this time. As you would get controlled when you exit the station for the local trains, the trick is to get off the line, jump down from your platform (yes, you are on the rails at this stage), cross the few railways that separate you from the station, jump to the platform and exit the station by another door. We have done it with daylight and it is already a bit dangerous, but we also seen people during this during night time in a curve. The funny part is that once again, no one seems to care (controllers/police) about people not paying for their tickets.
Beside the visit of the city (and the closed office of where we were supposed to register our visa… but that is another story), the real discovery of this day was the discovery of a different way of riding bikes: fixed gear biking. I guess most of you have seen these keirin races on TV with these strange bikes with only one gear and no break (you have to go backward to break).
Well these guys decided one day their brakes were useless and started turning their bikes into fixed gear bikes and since then only ride such kind of bikes in Moscow. Alexei and Dima (thanks again for taking us on this great tour guys! We have not seen a single bike in the whole day except for ours as riding in Moscow is to the least dangerous as cars do not consider you as being part of the traffic) are huge fans and even participate to special races (which was the case on Friday). (Learn more on http://www.fixedgearmoscow.ru – yes it is in Russian, but I am sure Wikipedia knows for the general concept) We went to the starting point and the finishing point of the race and ended up discussing with the first guy who brought this into Moscow. Very interesting evening were we got to meet a few more nice people, including our guide for the next day: Yura!
Saturday: We agreed to meet Yura around 1pm for an express visit of places we did not know in Moscow. We have randomly seen an old TV tower in Moscow, a couple of great churches (I am amazed by the decoration and style of the orthodox churches), Moscow city (which is the new business center of Moscow –absolutely no interest from my point of view), and we ended up in the evening at the State University of Moscow, which is not only a HUGE piece of building but a beautiful one. From there we had an incredible view of the city by night.
We then headed to our meeting with our first entrepreneur (summary of the interview to be published soon as it is currently being validated. All we can say right now that it was a very pleasant meeting !). After that (remember we still have no phone) we struggled to find Yura. Some friends of him that we met 2 hours earlier walked 45 minutes in the cold night to take us to Yura's apartment. We were immediately offered to stay there for the night and have a few beers. We were both very pleased and very surprised that during the last 3 days, so many people that we did not know at all spent hours and hours showing us their cities, taking care of us and inviting us. We would have plenty of examples, but overall we would like to thank all these people who have been so kind to prove us all the extent of the Russian hospitality. Guys you are all welcome home when (if?) we go back to France! On this night I also discovered another sport: slackline! Yura is a huge fan as you can see on this video http://vimeo.com/15953363. It comes from France, but I had to find about it in Russia…
Sunday: Nothing extraordinary except we woke up very early to see a military parade for which we had no invitation and visited the National Art Gallery. We did see a lot of Russian people making a demonstration in the main street of Moscow.
That's all folks! Tomorrow evening we take the Transsiberian train for the next 4 days. Next post on next Saturday to the best then!
Benoit
PS: This post was prepared before we actually left Moscow but the internet connexion of Alexei's neighbor decided we could not post on that day ;-)
First day in Moscow
We withdrew our first thousands Rubles and were then ready to get the shuttle bus to the closest metro station where we were supposed to meet our Couchsurfing host for the next 5 nights. As planned we waited in the closest McDonalds. Good news: a Big Mac is called a Big Mac in Russia. Bad news: even ordering a Big Mac is complicated as no one seems to speak a word of English…
Alexey finally showed up after 2 hours as he had to work later than forecasted (which is actually cool as we had time to credit our Skype account as we do not have a Russian sim card so far) an there we went a yet another not-public-but-not-private-bus in which the person who is sitting behind the driver becomes his personal assistant. The bus is doing his usual tour, except there is no actual stop. Just waive and the bus driver will drop you off immediately. To finish with the transports in Moscow, we took the metro on the next day. It is a pretty normal metro that you can expect in any capital, except for one thing: fraud is a national sport. There is a guard at every entrance, and an alarm rings every time someone jumps over the fence. The guard would then whistle and… that is it. No running, no calling for someone… only whistling. Strange (after a small discussion with Alexey while I am writing this, the guard HAS to whistle otherwise she will get fined because she did not call the police…)
Our first priority was to find a transsiberian train ticket to Irkutsk. After we realized we could not make international purchase with our credit card without a phone, we went to the train station were Alexei kindly helped us to purchase them for a decent price in 3rd class (75 EUR each for a 4 days trip). Departure is planned on Monday 8 around midnight.
We then took a metro to the Kremlin where we discovered that both the Red Square and the Saint Basil’s church were closed (the whole Kremlin area actually). We therefore decided to walk to the first ring of Moscow (there are 4 rings in Moscow) and make a small tour. I have no idea if actually make it to the first ring or to the second ring, but one thing is for sure we did walk a lot this afternoon (around 7 hours). We ended up visiting the amazing cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Lots of gold in this very recently fully rebuilt cathedral (2000), and a different way of praying to discover (I need to find out where the Hell they hide the chairs, as they were none in the whole room).
The night felt down as we ended up our visit, and as the rain had almost stopped (I forgot to mention that it was raining all day long) we headed back to the Kremlin which was finally opened. Even though the church was still closed, we were able to go through the Red square which happens to be one of the most beautiful square I have seen so far (if anyone from Nancy is reading: yes, it is better than the place Stanislas).
To conclude: a huge thank you to our host and guide Alexey for helping us !
That’s all for the day… Talk to you later, we need to sleep
Benoit
PS: By the way, the time difference with Paris is 2 hours.
Welcome ! Bonjour à tous !
It is a pleasure to welcome you on the blog of "Un monde à entreprendre". We will try to post as regularly as possible in order to share our adventure with you. You will find here short stories, pictures, videos (thanks to the extended Crew ;-)) and of course summaries of interviews performed.
We hope you will enjoy it ! Do not hesitate to leave comments on what you would like to see here and we will see what we can do...
As a starter, our planned route for the next 18 months !
Benoit & Yann
Bonjour à tous,
C'est avec un grand plaisr que nous vous accueillons sur le blog d'"Un monde à entreprendre". Nous allons essayer de poster le plus souvent possible ici afin de partager au mieux notre aventure avec vous. Vous trouverez ici des récits de voyage, des photos, des videos (un grande merci à The extended Crew)et bien évidemment les résumés de nos rencontres avec les entrepreneurs.
Nous espérons que cela vous plaira et que vous profiterez vous aussi du voyage ! N'hésitez pas à nous écrire pour nous dire ce que vous voudriez voir sur cette plateforme et nous ferons en sorte d'y remédier...
A très bientôt sur la route !
Benoit & Yann