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, local 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.

 

I took 6000 rubles out of the ATM machine at the Moscow Marriott, 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?

 

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 aren’t like boards, they 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. I suspect that it’s 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.

We board the train for Siberia and Beijing tonight at 11:45. I asked the concierge at the Marriott if the train had internet and he laughed.

He called the hotel’s travel agent and asked her if the train had internet. She laughed.

If we come to a station in the middle of Siberia that has an internet signal, I’ll post whatever updates I can. If not, this is the last update you’ll get from JimandJamie.com until September 7.

Dos vadanya, druz’ya.

Russia’s subway stations are spectacular. No, really. If you’ve ever ridden a subway in any other city spectacular is probably the last word you’d ever apply to a subway station, but it’s fitting in this case.

They were built as works of art back in the 1930s. It’s one thing the Communists were apparently good at.

The concierge at the hotel recommended that we go off to see four or five of the more dazzling ones. We did, but not because we wanted to.

We started off on one side of Moscow, looked at the subway map and got immediately confused. “You’re on the brown line, so you take the blue line to the green line.” Yeah, sure, sounds easy but it wasn’t.

I’ve ridden on quite a few subways in my life and I’ve never been more confused. The cars aren’t numbered, they don’t have LEDs up front to tell you the destination, and instead of having big, bold names written on the station walls when trains come pulling in, the Moscow stations have nothing on the walls. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, DAMN IT!

We went to the blue line, but couldn’t find the green line and ended up on the red line. Or did we find the green line, but couldn’t find the red line and ended up on the blue line? Don’t really know, don’t really care. Whatever, we got completely lost. It took us 90 minutes to get where we should have gotten in 15 minutes. But we did get a very nice, but unscheduled tours of some incredible stations.

Luckily, we ran into some very helpful Russians. One woman who was leading a tour group in the subway stations showed us where to go. Then a group of teenage boys told us where to get off the train. Then a young man took us right to the proper train. And finally, a nice young woman told us when to get off. Luckily, the station is right across the street from our hotel.

But back to the subway stations: They’re art deco architectural wonders, filled with paintings and intricate mosaics.

I’d like to claim we got lost in the art, but the simpler truth is that we were just plain lost.

For God’s sake, man, will someone please teach the Russians how to sell tickets efficiently? How the hell can people this screwed up possibly put men into space?

Everyone’s heard of the Kremlin, the glorious old fortress that sits in the middle of downtown Moscow. It’s part of the larger Red Square complex that includes the famous domes of St Basil’s Cathedral (shown above), Lenin’s Tomb, the GUM Department Store (which is now a shopping center that’s somewhere between Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills and South Coast Plaza in Orange County). It contains a few other notable things that I’m leaving out because they don’t pertain to this story.

There were only three things that were must-sees as far as Jamie was concerned — the Kremlin complex itself, the Fabrege eggs in the Armory Museum, and the crown jewels in the Diamond Stock museum.

The concierge at the hotel said, “You have to buy three different tickets, one for each museum.” The Kremlin opens at 10 a.m. so we arrived at 9:45 to buy our tickets.

The woman behind the glass said, “No, you can only buy Kremlin tickets now. Armory tours only happen at the times shown on that sign. Come back and buy them then. And you can only buy Diamond Stock tickets at the Diamond Stock, not here.”

This was very confusing. I had to write it down. We had about an hour to kill before we could come back and buy the tickets for the noon tour at the Armory. So we went out and took the photo above. Since we were in the area, we stopped at the Diamond Stock and found out it’s closed between one and two pm.

It’s a very long hike into the Kremlin. It’s a very long hike back to the ticket booth. When we got there the lines were long. Very long. We stood in line and got our tickets and hiked back into the Kremlin, around the outer edge to the Armory and took the tour.

Crazy us. We thought the Fabrege eggs were such a great attraction that they would be prominently featured. Probably have a huge display of their own. Wrong. They were just lumped into a case with a bunch of other very pretty items. We looked at the rest of the jewelry and the costumes and the suits of armor. Blah, blah, blah.

It was one pm when we finished and the Diamond Stock was closed for lunch, so we hiked back around the edge of the Kremlin and out to find lunch.

Lunch over, we hiked back inside the Kremlin to the Diamond Stock to purchase our tickets.

“One thousand rubles,” the woman said.

I handed her a credit card and she said, “Cash only.”

Un-freakin-believable. They accept credit cards for every other museum in the Kremlin complex, but only cash at this one? I had started the day with 1000 rubles, but we bought a few things along the way and only had 800 rubles. I couldn’t imagine hiking back out to an ATM and back into the Kremlin again.

I pulled out all the change in my pocket and the nice Russian guy behind me in line started counting it out and I had 220 rubles. We got our tickets.

Seriously, what is wrong with these people? You may recall the story of our ticket problems at the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. Now we have a situation where there are three museums in the same Kremlin complex (two of them, the Armory and the Diamond Stock, are in the same building), but we have to buy them all at separate times and in separate places and pay by credit card for some and with cash for others. It’s insane.

Nevertheless, all the pain and all the hiking was worth it, because the crown jewels are spectacular. Jamie was mesmerized and I thought she’d never leave.

I can’t explain why, but one of the things Jamie wanted to do most in Russia was to have her photo taken with a babushka, a little old Russian lady.

We’ve been told that we’ll see them at all the train stations along the route of the Trans-Siberian Express. Apparently, they sit on the platforms and wait for the trains to arrive so they can sell their wares to tourists.

We took a walk down Arbat, a very nice but touristy street, while our wash was being done at the Moscow laundromat. Lo and behold, there was a sweet little old Russian babushka playing a balalaika.

Jamie said, “Can I have my photo taken with you?” And the sweet little old lady motioned to the collection cup sitting in the street in front of her.

We gave her about 200 kopeks and Jamie got her photo with a babushka (but please don’t make the mistake of thinking this will be her last one.)

The huge celebration in Red Square this weekend is sponsored by Baskin-Robbins. The company’s signage is everywhere.

An American ice cream company sponsoring a Russian army event in Red Square. Twenty years ago that was absolutely impossible. Couldn’t happen. You could have made a fortune betting on it in Vegas.

This must boggle the mind of anyone who lived through the Cold War.