Very Small Array

We have been in Irkutsk for twenty minutes and already we have waited on two lines and Mister Chen has seen a lady with a mustache. The ladies in the windows at the end of the lines tell us they cannot sell international tickets. The lady at the end of the second line motions us upstairs. Upstairs at the end of a hallway is a room with blue wall to wall carpeting and eight windows. Two windows are open. A stout lady stands at the doorway, a blue work smock covering her clothes. Her job is to tell you to sit down and remember what order you arrived in. When it is your turn at the window she will motion you up from the blue couches.

There are two trains to Moscow today. One arrives in Moscow three days from now at five in the evening. The other arrives eleven hours later, at four in the morning. The first train is 7500 rubles a ticket and the second train is 5000 rubles. We take the second train.

Our tickets are in Cyrillic and the number of our assigned berth could be any one of a soup of numbers. We ask the man checking tickets at the train car door and he just motions us inside. We fumble through the train carrying backpacks slightly too large for the narrow corridor. Hostile stares bore through us. Tourists, mutters a Russian man. The word is universal. At the end of the corridor we walk into an occupant of the train’s final berth.

Mister Chen has never been so glad to see a Chinese man in his entire life. An unlit cigarette hangs out of the man’s mouth, he is lean and middle-aged and wearing tight fitting long johns with vertical stripes. Which number on the ticket is the berth? Why, of course.

We are rooming with the Chinese man and his business partner. The business partner is shorter and squatter, balding and smoking, wearing tight clean long johns with horizontal stripes. The two men are lumber merchants. They buy lumber in Siberia and sell it in China. They are drinking tea out of metal mugs and playing a board game with black and white disks. The horizontal man asks Mister Chen where he is from and Mister Chen, in his limited Mandarin, answers. The vertical man goes out for a smoke with his friend from next door. The horizontal man spends twenty minutes telling Mister Chen that Taiwan belongs to China.

The next morning a Russian official comes in to inspect our passports. In a scene that will repeat itself at least twice a day over the journey, my passport is not wanted. They just want to see papers from the lumber merchants and Mister Chen. The lumber merchants give the Russian official a small fist of cash and get off at the next stop.

We have the berth to ourselves for the rest of the journey. So: there is a padded bench with storage space underneath it. Above it, a second padded bench folds up to the wall. The benches are mirrored on the opposite wall, each one with a pillow and blankets. Between the beds at the outer wall of the train is a large, mottled window that leaks cold air in. A small table sits in front of it. Out of the berth and down the corridor to the left is the bathroom and the train car’s only accessible electrical outlet. At the other end of the corridor is the samovar, which is not what it sounds like (a pen and ink drawing of an antique barrel on persian carpets with a sword hanging above it ) but is a shiny metal kettle that dispenses hot water.

Once or twice a day a lady rolls a cart through the corridor to sell fried meat rolls. At the dining cart a surly man sells beer and snack food. The meat roll lady sometimes wheels a selection of packaged snacks and drinks through the corridor. The train is heated, but sporadically, and late at night when the heat is at a low ebb it can be extremely cold.

Three and a half days in a train, drinking hot tea and coffee and reading long books. Watching trees and snow go by, and the occasional sign of a very depressing civilization. Three and a half days spent really look forward to your next meat roll.

We arrive at Yaroslavlsky Station at 4am. Outside it is bitterly cold. The train station is warm and brightly lit. A piano sits by the large window, roped off. The sun does not rise until 9am.

…

TRAIN 339
ONE WAY TICKET KUPE (SECOND CLASS SLEEPER) 4478.00 RUBLES (ABOUT $167.39USD)
DEPARTS IRKUTSK DAILY 1:20PM
ARRIVES MOSCOW FOUR DAYS LATER 4:11AM
SUGGESTED SUPPLIES: Eveyone has said – bring rubles, at larger stations women with baskets sell fresh food for low prices. We do not find this to be the case. Bring food.

Tickets for international train travel cannot be purchased at Ulaanbaatar’s train station. To get to the International Ticket Office you must walk one block north of the train station and take a left past the hammer and sickle statue. We arrive at the ticket office on a Sunday. The only open ticket window lets us know that tickets for Chinese and Russian trains can only be purchased one day in advance. Returning on Tuesday, the same ticket office can no longer sell us tickets. They point us upstairs and across the building to the wood-paneled VIP room. Two ladies in uniform sit at behind a large wood-paneled desk. To the right, a doorway leads to a wood-paneled bar.

The lady on the left books the tickets. The lady on the right takes our money and speaks a little English. Between pantomime and place names we learn that the cheap train from Ulaanbaatar to Irkutsk takes two days and the expensive train takes one day. We pay in cash for tickets on the expensive train. The expensive train can be Chinese, Russian or Mongolian – on Wednesdays it is Chinese.

We arrive at the train station early and spend our last Tugrik on mysterious vegetable juice and a Mongolian-German-English phrasebook. When the train arrives it is already full of people travellng from Beijing. Bulky Russian men are busy trying to pack bulky black duffel bags into our compartment’s every crevice. Boxes are stored under both benches, boxes sit in the depression above the passageway, boxes are under the table by the window where your feet might go. Next door a man sits on dozens of cases of cigarettes. We stuff our backpacks into the hollow seat beneath our bench and then sit on the bench with our tote bag with the picture of a duck on it. When the train begins to move the Russian men go to the next compartment to smoke and play cards. The day is warm and the windows in the corridor are partly open, so we go over to watch grassfires and small painted homes connected by clotheslines, railroad crossings with uniformed female attendants holding one red paddle in their right hands, fields of brown and yellow grass, men in the distance on horseback.

Three hours later one of the Russian men returns to the compartment smelling like vodka. He places one bottle of water and one bottle of beer carefully on the table near the window and then goes to sleep.

You must get an invitation before visiting Russia. You can get an invitation from a friend who is living in Russia, from a legitimate hotel you have booked ahead of time, or from a cheap, sleazy internet agency. I bought our possibly fraudulent internet invitation months ago and stood on a line at New York’s Russian Embassy until the vaguely slutty Russian ladies employed there could emphatically stamp my papers and tell me to return in four weeks for my visa. Cowering on a train too late at night at the Mongolian border across from two large and slightly drunk Russian men I am wishing we did not. The taller man with the awful teeth keeps bouncing out of his seat to visit the next compartment over, only to be returned by the customs officials. I find the blanks for the address of hotel we are not really staying at and number of the invitation we have fraudulently received. Before Immigration collects the information forms Customs drops off the customs forms. These are similar to the Immigration forms, except that they have not been translated into English.

Brows furrow and pens make their best guesses. The taller and more frightening Russian man leans over. He points at the form and tries to translate.

The lights stay on in the train until far into the night. Mongolian Customs is a lady in a military uniform. She is next in the parade of officials that will be asking us things in foreign languages this evening. Unable to sleep and staring at my passport again, I quiz Mister Chen on the five acts that can lead to the loss of your U.S. citizenship. Then he tries to name all sixteen vegetables in the mysterious vegetable juice. When the parade is over the lights go out and we are safely in Russia and on Moscow time. Moscow time is five hours earlier than Ulaanbaatar time. Tomorrow the sun will set at 2pm.

In the morning when the Russian men leave they give us a bag of soft grainy apples and six chocolates wrapped in blue paper with a picture of a bear printed on it, which I discover in my pocket in Paris, and eat.

…

CHINESE RAILWAYS’ TRAIN K3
ONE WAY TICKET KUPE (SECOND CLASS SLEEPER) 40930 TUGRIK (APPROX $35USD)
DEPARTS ULAANBAATAR TWICE A WEEK (CURRENTLY WEDNESDAYS AND SATURDAYS) 7:40AM
ARRIVES IRKUTSK NEXT DAY 1:15PM (MOSCOW TIME)
SUGGESTED ACTIVITY: Getting into Russia is easy. Just remember: Bring a book! And don’t be Asian.