A little more from my Trans Mongolian train trip:
After an evening at the Russian Border (passport control took 4 hours!) and the Mongolian border (passport control took 1.5 hours) we entered Mongolia. While enjoying a good night sleep, after yesterdays
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2nd of March 2007 – 4th night on the Trans Mongolian train
“Are you asleep?” ~Gina
“I have pretended to be dead since 1 am, but I am still alive, still awake.” ~Lawrence
I had pretended to be dead since 1 am, but at 2.36am in the night I was still alive, still awake. I reached for my mp3 player, as, unfortunately, there wasn’t a Lawrence available but J., my roommate asks me if I am awake, he couldn’t sleep either. We were completely awake in the middle of the night, in a train crossing through Siberia, a full moon lighting up the snow.
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The Trans Mongolian train in the morning sun on the top of the world in Mongolia
a day like this
a day my thoughts
all wander off
a day my brain
refusing work
just wants to be
back on that train
If you want to get an impression of what my train castle on the Trans Mongolian train trip looked like, please step inside.
Moscow, 27th February 2007 – Yaroslawsky station
And then you are standing there and think : What could be the train to Beijing?
This wasn’t the most fun day of the trip, but I think I’ve found my train, thanks to someone writing Beijing/Peking in Cyrillic on a piece of paper. Now that I am here in the evening, the evening trains are actually displayed on the time table, they weren’t earlier today, which caused some of the panic.
(Can you guess which train I am supposed to take from the names on the this time table?)
Mockba, 26 February 2007
My hotel is located in one of Moscow’s suburbs in the South East. It’s cheap and it takes about 20 minutes by metro to the Red Square and Leninski. Absolutely doable especially because the Metro station is about 50 meters from my hotel. I had done some research on the Moscow metro up front (which is recommended I’d say) and knew how their ticket system worked. You can buy 1, 5 or 10 trip tickets, and since I knew I was going to use the metro quite a bit, I showed the woman behind the window my 2 hands, telling her I wanted a 10 trip card. That went fine, and being used to using my Oyster card in London using the Moscow card wasn’t that different.
Back to my hotel – located this far from the centre, this also means that this is a non tourist area, and chances to find people speaking English are zero. Even the people working at the reception of the hotel don’t speak any English at all.
It’s an area that gives a good impression of authentic Russian city life so to speak. There are loads of small shops and stalls in the area selling drinks, food, magazines, newspapers, snacks, meat, bread, soap, well you name it, they sell it. With a bit of goodwill and pointing at things I manage to buy things like chocolate, Pringles and Coca Cola (hey I am on holiday). There is also a tiny (and I mean tiny) DVD shop on the same block.
Surely a normal person with a well functioning head wouldn’t begin to consider doing this with a Russian vocabulary as large as, well, one word. That was what I was thinking.
But I wasn’t a normal person.
And so, I stepped inside.
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I am in China! Wooohooo!
Moscow was harsh in many ways, and I didn’t feel too sorry to leave it. I found my train, woohoo! for that and thanks so much for all the crossed fingers – it helped!, and I will write more about all my up front worries later. But I entered my 4 persons compartment in the train and sat down. 2 minutes later my train roommate came in, also here I was prepared for the worst. After a tough time in Moscow I ended up sharing my cabin with only one person, so lots of space, which was great.
And how I love Ithika and A simple twist of fate, because this person, are you ready, was as English as an Englishman could be (and hearing him speak was like music in my ears after days of struggle Russian), and the very first morning I woke up after my first night on the train and he-served-me-tea-in-bed. Tea in bed ladies and gentlemen, and not just any tea, it was bloody Yorkshire tea!
Right. I think I’ve actually overdone myself in madness this time. But I believe in that simple-twist-of-fate I was talking about even more now.
Let me tell you what my plan was – yesterday. Oh : long post alert.
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