Five years ago, after a brutal 14-hour train ride from Vladivostok to Khabarovsk in Russia's Far East, and still enchanted by the surreal nature of being in a country that for the great majority of his life had been locked behind the politics of the Cold War, Boyd I. Hoggan turned to his traveling compadre and said, "Eldest grandson, before I die, I wish to journey by train all the way across Russia." Grandson numero uno knew not whether this was a flippant request in a moment of excitement, or a heartfelt realization that one should not die completely satisfied with his life if he had not experienced the Trans-Siberian in its entirety, but, knowing his grandfather's adventurous tendencies, he guessed it was closer to the latter. From this moment, grandson began planning the epic journey with grandpa. This Spring, it finally happened.
Let me note first and foremost that preparations for this trip were not at all easy. Turns out, this trip is in no way for the half-hearted traveller. It takes absolute dedication, from the minute you begin your visa application to the moment you realize you're stuck in a 6x6 cell for seven days. I had never had such a hassle trying to get a visa to any other country, and that includes Ghana (Ghanaian visa: 5 years, multiple-entry = $80; Russian visa: 1 month, single-entry = $200 + invitation) and Transnistria, a country that won't allow anyone with a US diplomatic passport through the border and still waves hammers and sickles over entry points. Several Russians have kindly explained to me that the US makes it extremely difficult for Russians to get visas and, therefore, Russia responds with like treatment. Hey, fair is fair, but maybe not so smart economically for a country that could still benefit from an increase in tourism, business, and investment. But what do I know. I still think a free press is healthy and that a single-party system is awfully reminiscent of autocratic rule. And apparently I've been proven wrong. Nonetheless, we made it to customs and immigration control in the Moscow airport with snazzy visas crudely stapled into our passports. And I still think a $200 visa should come with a personal Russian tour guide that appears like Obi-Wan Kenobi in a 3D hologram beamed from the passport page.
Upon our arrival in Moscow, grampa and I slept for a day and wandered the streets for two days before boarding the plane to Vladivostok. In Vlad it was more of the same, and before we knew it, it was time to board the train. We showed up eight hours early for our train, not realizing that all train schedules are according to Moscow time (seven time zones away). But when we were finally allowed inside to explore our car, marvel at the narrow size of our quarters, and admire the makeshift Russian drapes in our first class coupe, we could not have been more excited. And when we realized that it was not possible to open the windows to allow fresh air into our hot, stuffy compartment, and, in the process of trying, the Russian drapes fell on on our beds and refused to stay up again, we were not discouraged.
Needless to say, grampa and I were the first to board the train (and ten days later we were sure to be the first off the train as well) and, aside from a couple of staff, the car was completely empty for the first half hour. Then, suddenly, from out of nowhere, a very large, puffy-faced Russian woman in a dirty tank-top and over-sized trench coat appeared in our doorway. She stood above us as she chatted about nothing in particular for five minutes, her slurred speech rolling out in bursts of emphatic Russian, her eyes droopy, and her movements spontaneous. She was obviously very drunk and it wasn't long until she had removed her coat and was sitting on grampa's bed. And it was only a bit longer till I realized she was soliciting sex, and grampa's polite, friendly smiles, which I interpreted as "yes, I think you're psycho, but I can't understand what you're saying so I don't have proof," were only encouraging her. She became almost violent at one point as I tried to dismiss her, but finally, after repeating several times that "my grampa loves my gramma," that "no, he doesn't need comforting," "no, he doesn't have anything to say to you," and "no, I will not leave the two of you alone," she disappeared. This event has been catalogued in my mind as "Train, Day 1, Adventure 1." Adventure 2 followed shortly after as a boy named Anton described to me for four hours the horrors of being a young soldier in the Russian army, and Adventure 3 was tallied when a fat, pompous, pointy-eared man introduced himself to me as "Baron of the Gypsies" and then tried to sell me a cell phone.
The ladies aboard that train loved grampa. Every time the snack lady rolled her cart through our car, she'd linger a while at our door and, looking at grampa, say, "You're sure you don't want any vodka? You're sure you don't want any cabbage-stuffed rolls? You're sure you don't want any dried fish heads? You're sure you don't want any warm bread water?" And on his 75th birthday every woman in our car came by to congratulate grampa. Several invited themselves over later for cognac and birthday cake, and several more promised to find him a beautiful Russian grandmother to help him celebrate. It took quite a bit of smooth-talking on my part, acting on grampa's behalf, to avoid hurt feelings and broken hearts.
We woke up that first morning in our coupe fairly satisfied with how quickly our sleeping bodies had adjusted to the swaying, bumping, clacking, of the train, but also fairly certain that we would never fully adjust to the complication of peeing standing-up in a tiny, dirty bathroom on a constantly jerking vehicle. We quickly settled into a routine of six or seven rounds of Phase 10 (yes, one round equals ten "phases"), a few hours of reading, a few hours of chatting, including a few minutes of awe and a few minutes of complaints, and a couple hours of intermittent naps. The scenery was at times breathtaking, and at times bleak and monotonous. We had chosen to ride the train in May hoping the weather would be neither too cold nor too hot, which, aside from occasionally being too toasty in our coupe, was exactly what it was. But Spring had not quite arrived in most of Siberia and the Far East, and the trees remained bare and the landscape somewhat grey and dreary in some areas. Still, there is a definite beauty that pervades even those scenes of overcast skies and wasteland, a very Russian-type beauty accentuated by the occasional deteriorating village that could easily be the stage for a Gogol short-story or a Chekhov play.
The train stopped every so often at certain small towns and big cities, sometimes for two minutes and sometimes for 25. At each big stop, grampa and I would unroll the large map of Russia we had purchased in Vladivostok, and track our route across the country. It was also a chance to get off the train and get some fresh air, or, more exactly, to buy some un-carbonated drinking water and hunt down a cold diet coke for grampa.
This is starting to become very lengthy for a blog entry, so I'm going to stop copying from my journal here. The trip was a blast and was made especially interesting by the many people we met along the way and the inevitable obstacles you'll run into on any such journey. It was really an awesome adventure and I loved being able to do it all with my grampa. I'll write more later about our stop at Lake Baikal and the second half of our trek across Russia.
