The train has been very different since Denise and Lars and several other couples disembarked in Irkutsk. Everyone on our car used to keep their compartment doors open and greet each other and talk in the aisle. The new people aboard the train keep their doors closed and don’t speak at all.

This morning I noticed a young dad playing with his toddler daughter at the end of the car. I spoke to him little later as he walked past our door.

“Do you speak English?”

“Yes. Speak English.”

“Your daughter is beautiful.”

“Thank you.”

That was the extent of our conversation. A little later they were at the end of the aisle again and I tried to get the little girl to wave to me. She wouldn’t.

Later this morning Rustam told us we would be stopping at Zabaykalsk, the next station, for seven hours. Thirty minutes before we arrived a young woman stopped at our door and asked — in a perfect British accent — if we knew anything about Zabaykalsk.

At first we both thought she was asking us for advice, but it turns out she was was offering to show us around town and take us to lunch. She was also the mother of the beautiful little girl.

The young couple, Irina and Evgeny, and their little girl, Sophie, are Russian. He’s 30, she’s 28 and Sophie is 18 months old. Irina was a teacher before Sophie was born and seemed pleased to learn that she had a British accent. Evgeny owns a company in China that sells mining equipment.

They took us out of the station and down the street to a local restaurant to treat us to an authentic Russian lunch. Jamie kept her composure, but I’m pretty sure she was freaking out on the inside and wondering if these people were really members of the Russian mafia intent on kidnapping her and selling her into a life of sex slavery. (UPDATE: Jamie just read this entry and said, “Yes, I was freaking out on the inside.)

Lunch was great. Sure, there were huge flies constantly circling and occasionally landing on our food, but this is an adventure, damn it, an adventure. We had two soups (including borscht), several salads (beet, potato, and cabbage), meat balls boiled in a doughy pastry, and tea. And, of course, we had conversation.

Irene and Eugene both grew up in Chita, Russia, which was a station we stopped at late last night. He got a degree in petrochemical engineering in Beijing and they lived there for three years, but hated the smog and congestion in the big city so they moved to a smaller town on the Yellow Sea. Now they’re on their way back home to China after taking Sophie to meet all four of her Russian grandparents for the first time.

They told us Zabaykalsk is a town full of very prosperous people, but holy freakin’ moly, it looks just like Tijuana. There’s a big project right outside the railway station and, to repeat the question Jamie asked several days ago, are they putting it up or tearing it down? Really tough to tell.

We went to the drug store with our new friends and they bought us a small bottle of tasty, healthy pomegranate drink. I think it was intended as a show of friendship, but Jamie and I are looking pretty rough after five days without showers, so they may have thought we both needed a little pick-me-up.

Lunch was delicious and they were warm and welcoming. Meeting new, interesting people really is the best part of traveling.

The counterpart of that, I guess, is that new, interesting people get to meet us. Evgeny stopped on the street to get directions from a group of people. He told us later that they had asked if we were Americans and wanted to know if they could have their photos taken with us. We would have been happy to do it had he told us at the time, but we wondered how they knew we were Americans since we hadn’t spoken. Irina laughed and said our appearance screams, “American!” She didn’t (or perhaps, wouldn’t) elaborate. We’re looking around the waiting room here at the train station trying to figure out what might set us apart and the only visual clue we can figure out is that we’re both wearing baseball caps, but no one else is. Guess this will just remain another one of those unsolved mysteries.

I’m pretty sure we have enough money to feed ourselves all the way to Beijing, but I’m a little paranoid about it. So I get off at every stop in an attempt to find an ATM.

After looking at the train schedule I realized that we were going to stop at the largest city between Moscow and Beijing at 3:00 a.m. It was a long stop, 20 minutes or thereabouts, so I determined that I should get out and scour the station for an ATM.

When the train pulled into the station I jumped up, pulled on my pants and threw on my shoes. Jamie jerked awake and mumbled, “Where are you going?” When I told her she said, “I’m going with you.”

There’s no arguing with this woman when she’s halfway awake, so I said OK.

But when we got to the end of the aisle she said, “I’m really dizzy. I think I’ll go back to bed.”

Fine, I thought. I don’t need her screaming in my ear that we’re out of time and we’re going to miss the train 30 seconds after we get off the train.

She headed back to the compartment and I took off in the other direction, running like a maniac up and down stairs and into the main station in search of an ATM that could solve our problem. I found one and it actually had an English-language option. This, I thought, is our lucky day (or night).

I slipped in my card, pushed all the right buttons and expected money to come pouring out, but instead got a message that said, “Transaction cancelled.” I tried it again. Same result.

Crap. Even I knew I was running out of time at this point, so I ran back to the train covered in sweat and remembering with great regret that it had no showers, and slipped into our compartment where I found Jamie on the floor gasping for air as if she’d lost our passports again.

She said she had passed out just as I ran off the train and had crawled down the aisle to our compartment. She was drenched in even more sweat than I was. I got her sweaty clothes off of her, got her some water and put her back into bed.

All I could think was, what the hell do we do if this turns out to be a medical emergency and we have no money out here in the middle of Siberia? Luckily, she slept through the night and felt absolutely fine this morning except for a scrape on her knee from falling in the aisle.

Whew. That was a close one.

UPDATE: I think I’ve figured out the problem with my ATM card. The maximum withdrawal at the Marriott Grand’s ATM machine was 3000 rubles. I made the maximum withdrawal twice, one right after the other in rapid order. I’m not sure if I notified Wells Fargo that we were going to be out of the country, so my theory is that they saw two maximum withdrawals within two minutes in Russia and some computer screamed, “Fraud alert! Fraud alert!” If that’s the case, I won’t be able to fix this until we get to Beijing.

The train stops four or five or six times every day. Some of the stops are in tiny, horrid villages and some are in relatively modern, major cities. No matter where it stops, people are on the platforms selling food from card tables or carts.

We’re buying food at each stop. Freeze-dried noodles, freeze-dried mashed potatoes, yogurt, a lot of things we’ve never seen before, and two of the items Jamie is eating in the photo above.

She was making absolutely no progress in her conversation with the shop owner because she was speaking English exclusively and he was speaking Russian exclusively. Jamie seems to believe that if she repeats something often enough in English the language will miraculously become intelligible to people who have never before comprehended it.

A nice young guy in line behind Jamie overheard the two one-way conversations and began translating. I think he was eager to help because he was next in line and if Jamie’s sale didn’t get consummated quickly, he wouldn’t have time to make his purchase before the train left.

She wanted to buy some donuts. Or at least what she thought were donuts. The volunteer translator seemed to understand that she was confused and said, “Those are potatoes.” I knew she didn’t hear him so I repeated, “Those are potatoes.” She didn’t hear me, either.

As we were walking away she proudly announced, “I bought us some donuts.”

“Are you aware that those are potatoes, not donuts?”

She gave me a completely baffled look and I recounted the conversation she never heard.

She now refers to them as her potato donuts.

I have to admit that they taste much better than one would expect of potato donuts.

 

Perhaps we misread seat61.com. That’s where we saw the photos of the elegant Trans-Siberian dining experience. The dining cars looked like something out of Imperial Russia, with thick red draperies and finery fit for a czar. It also said that each first class car would have a samovar full of hot water for tea.

Ahhh, a life of wealth and leisure would surely be ours. We pictured ourselves lounging in our luxurious first class compartment, leaving only at meal time to sup in a fashion befitting Catherine the Great. Between meals, we’d wander down the wide, spacious aisle, chatting with the other worldly, genteel sophisticates residing in the neighboring luxurious first class compartments. Between meals, we’d slowly wend our way down to the samovar to draw ourselves large helpings of steaming hot water so we could enjoy a selection of outstanding teas from around the world sipped from fine china produced by the most talented of artisans.

Slam on the brakes. Let’s get back to reality.

Our dining car is not as elegant as the online photos. It and the ones we saw online do not appear to be from the same company nor even the same era and maybe not even the same planet. It looks a little like the dining cars you find on American commuter trains and a lot like my mother’s kitchen in 1958. I’m pretty sure they have the same linoleum. Oh, sure, the menu is more varied than what you’d find in American dining cars and as an added bonus it even has English translations, but please believe me when I tell you that no czar would come within a mile of it.

All I wanted for breakfast was a yogurt but there was none on board because it hadn’t been delivered on time the night before. My second choice was cream of wheat but they wouldn’t serve it to me because it’s reserved for children. Our third choice was acceptable to everyone involved — coffee for Jamie, tea for me, and we split a ham and egg omelet and thin Russian pancakes with peach jam. (Actually, the last part is in dispute: Jamie thinks it was peach jam but I think it was orange marmalade.)

Let there be no dispute about the fact that our breakfast was delicious, but it cost 440 rubles which is more than 10% rubles we brought aboard the train.

Now let’s move on to that samovar of hot water. We expected the samovar itself to be an ornate work of art fit for the Hermitage. In reality, it looks like a Rube Goldberg contraption with pipes wrapping around it in every direction. The good news is that it’s constantly full of hot water. The bad news is that the train doesn’t offer that selection of fine teas from around the world that I had anticipated. In fact, it doesn’t offer any tea. None. Nary a bag. Luckily, Jamie also stocked up on teas bags in Moscow, so I can have all the Lipton I want, but nothing more exotic than that. The train also offers no cups, so instead of fine bone china I’m chugging my tea out of an empty polyurethane noodle cup.

By the way, just to remind you, it doesn’t really matter that dining car has a wide and varied menu complete with English translations because we can’t afford to eat there until we get more money.

Holy crap.

 

Remember the I Love Lucy episodes where Lucy and Ricky and Fred and Ethyl went west on the train and each couple had their own luxurious first class compartment?

I was very specific when making our reservations: We wanted a first class cabin for two. You see, they offer first class cabins for two, but also for four. Jamie was very afraid that we’d somehow end up sharing a cabin for four with Boris and Igor, two fat, drunken Russians reeking of vodka, sweat and cabbage farts.

We had seen photos of first class cabins for two online and they looked remarkably luxurious. We were ready to be treated like kings. Or a king and a queen, as the case may be.

Hah!

First the good news: Boris and Igor are out of luck because our first class compartment really is for two. It would fit one far more comfortably than two, but we can’t complain. Two padded benches, one on each side of the compartment, fold upside down into beds, each one exactly two feet wide and seven feet long. The beds are like boards with very thin mattresses on top. No, that’s not quite accurate. The beds are boards. Particle boards, to be exact. Our suitcases fit snugly under the beds and our backpacks and sweaters hang from hooks on each side of the door. There’s a full length mirror on the inside of the door and a fold-down table between the beds. There’s also a television above the door, but it doesn’t even appear to work. It may be one of those phony TVs they put in model homes.

On the other hand, we have two attendants — Rostram, who is apparently the boss, and his anonymous, surly Russian chick subordinate — who take care of our car. They clean the bathroom several times a day, vacuum out our compartment, make sure we get back on the train at all the stops, and try to sell us souvenirs. I’d buy some if I had any money.

This ain’t the Marriott Grand in Moscow, but it’s cozy. And for god’s sake, it’s an adventure, damn it, a once in a lifetime adventure.

Jamie’s being a real trooper.

I took 6000 rubles out of the ATM machine at the hotel, which should have been plenty of money for our six day trip across Siberia and into Beijing. I didn’t expect to need much Russian currency because I have hundreds of American dollars, a wallet full of credit cards, a debit card, and an ATM card.

Unfortunately, we went to the grocery store and picked up a lot of snack items for the train. The credit card we’ve been using for everything was declined, as were all our other credit cards, so we spent 2000 of our rubles on food. We also expected to pay for our taxi from the hotel to the train station by credit card, but it was again declined. Poof! There went another 700 rubles.

So counting all our spare change, we have about 4300 rubles to stretch out over six days. But, hey, no problem, because the concierge said we could pay for our meals aboard the train with credit cards or American dollars.

Turns out they take neither.

I’m an idiot. Many months ago we found a great website called seat61.com that details everything you need to know about traveling by train around the world. In the section on the Trans-Siberian train, it very clearly, says, “Bring your own food.” Jamie remind me of this a couple days ago but I said, “Nah, we’re in first class. They’ll have plenty of food.”

I was correct about that. They do have plenty of food, but they want to charge us for it and we don’t have enough cash to pay for all our meals between here and Beijing.

Well, this should be interesting.

I’m happy to report that the mystery of the unheated Marriott has been solved.

We had time to kill while waiting for our 11:45 pm train to Beijing, so we walked across the street to Starbucks. Sitting at the next table was Roman (ro-mahn’), our concierge from the Marriott, who had just gotten off duty.

We talked to him about lots of different subjects (he’s a huge fan of Jimmy Kimmel and George Carlin) and I finally asked why the Marriott has air conditioning, but no heating.

“Because in Moscow you have a choice of using the city heating system or installing no heating at all,” he said. “Those are your only choices. If you use the city heating system, they control the temperature. They decide when it should be turned on and when it should be turned off. They won’t turn it on until the outside temperature stays consistently at -10 degrees Celsius or below. Then they set it at the same temperature for everyone in the city and it can’t be adjusted by individuals.”

This was mind-boggling to us.

“What if a guest is cold and wants to heat their room,” I asked.

“Marriott decided it was better to provide guests with portable heaters upon request,” he said, “instead of depending on bureaucrats to decide what the proper temperature should be.”

Far be it from me to swerve into politics on this travel blog, but can you say ObamaCare?

 

This was one very unusual day. The most unusual day of our trip. It started horribly, got strange and delightful, and ended nicely.

Let me explain.

We’re boarding the Trans-Siberian Express tonight and will be aboard for the next seven nights. We brought along seven changes of clothing, so that means we needed to wash our clothes today.

Of course, we could have had the hotel send them to their laundry, but the price sheet said that washing one pair of socks costs $9. And that’s the cheapest thing on the price sheet. I am, after all, the son of a Dutch dairy farmer and I wouldn’t pay $9 to wash a pair of socks if I had a billion dollars in the bank.

So I got online and found the only laundromat in Moscow. It’s about a ten minute bus ride away. We went to the concierge and he told us where to catch the bus and even marked it on a map for us.

We then wandered around Moscow like Moses in the desert. Of course, he was lost for 40 years and we only were only lost for 40 minutes or so before we found the bus stop, but you understand what I mean.

When we finally found the bus stop and got aboard, the bus just sat there. I pushed a handful of rubles toward the driver, but he pushed them back, shaking his head and saying something unintelligible in Russian. This sequence of events was repeated several times.

Finally a woman came over and in very broken English said, “This bus isn’t going anywhere because we’re filming.” We looked around and, sure enough, the area around the bus was taped off and a film crew was hard at work. The woman told us to get off the bus and go to the next bus stop.

While we were looking at our map and trying to figure out what to do next, she came over and said, “Where are you going? We’ll take you there.”

At first we thought we had misinterpreted her broken English, but no. She said the shoot was done at this location and if we got aboard the bus they would take us right to our destination.

We got aboard only to find a singer and a guitar player sitting in the front of the bus facing the passengers. Those passengers all began waving little flags, the guitar player began playing, the singer began singing, and the bus began rolling down Moscow’s Golden Circle drive. They handed us flags to wave, and we started singing along to a Russian song we’d never heard before. A man wearing a sash got up and made a speech that made everyone cheer. A woman came down the aisle and handed everyone — us included — caviar in little pastry cups.

The cameras were rolling and they kept taking shots of us and the whole thing was very odd.

I turned to Jamie and said, “I think we’re on the Russian version of Candid Camera.”

Ten minutes later the bus pulled over at our destination and the nice woman who had invited us aboard said, “This is your stop.” She expected us to get off the bus, but the camera man and the interviewer had different ideas.

“We’re from Russian television,” he said in pretty damn good English. “Can we interview you?”

“Sure.”

Where are you from? What are your names? How long have you been here? How do you like it? How have you been treated? Etc, etc, etc.

When he finished, the man in the sash handed me his business card and said, “Send me an email. I’ll send you photos.”

The crowd on the bus cheered and waved their flags as we climbed down out of the bus. We got to the sidewalk, the bus pulled away and Jamie said, “Do you have any idea what that was all about?”

“None,” I said. “But we’re going to be on Russian television.”

UPDATE: I saved the printed materials that the people gave me and showed them to the concierge here at the hotel. He laughed and said, “How did you get hooked up with this guy? He’s Vladimir Pecheny and he’s a candidate for mayor of Moscow.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Yes. We got all our clothes washed at the laundromat for $17 which is what it would have cost for 2 pairs of socks. And as an added bonus, Russian laundromats don’t work like American ones. We simply dropped the clothes off and a nice woman washed and dried them for us.

Let me quote what Wikipedia has to say about Moscow’s weather just so you understand where I’m coming from:

Typical high temperatures in the warm months of June, July and August are around 23 °C (73 °F), but during heat waves, which can occur anytime from May to September, daytime temperature highs often top 30 °C (86 °F) for sometimes one or two weeks. In the winter, temperatures normally drop to approximately −10 °C (14 °F), though there can be periods of warmth with temperatures rising above 0 °C (32 °F).

Got that? Pretty mild in the summer, but bitterly cold in the winter.

We’re staying at the Marriott Grand Hotel on Moscow’s nicest street, just down the road from the Kremlin, Red Square, Lenin’s Tomb. It’s a hoity toity place, with a guy playing a grand piano in the lobby, a full concierge staff, and breakfasts that go for $50 each. It’s Russia and we were a little nervous, so we splurged a little and stayed here because it’s a really nice place.

So considering the weather I noted above and the quality of the hotel, how do you explain the fact that our room is air conditioned, but not heated. There’s a note in the room that says — and I paraphrase — “If you need a heater, call the staff and request one.”

This is a mystery to me.

We were sitting in a ritzy cafe overlooking Lenin’s tomb watching the Russian Army Equestrian Team when they began performing to Pink Floyd’s “Hey, you”.

Never did I think I’d visit Lenin’s tomb. Never did I think I’d be sipping tea in a ritzy cafe next to Lenin’s tomb. Never did I think I’d hear Pink Floyd while sipping tea in a ritzy cafe next to Lenin’s tomb.

What planet is this?