The Trans-Siberian railway was started in the late 19th
century and has a very potted history, which you must look up yourself, as I do
not have the space or inclination to repeat it all here. The section that I
will be following, the Trans-Mongolian, is the baby of all the routes. It follows the Trans Siberian line until Ulaan-
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| 942 miles approx |
Checked out of the hostel early to make the most of the day
and spent it wandering around the parts of the city I hadn’t yet seen and in
the State Museum of Contemporary History. Great museum, not least because it
had some English introductions to each exhibit. I’m sure all museums like to
blow the trumpet of whichever country they are representing, but it is always a
little chilling when you witness whitewashing in an official place such as
this. One example being that there was only one tiny sentence that mentioned,
in passing, and with no trace of the gravity, the reality of the famines
associated with Stalin’s Collectivisation where millions lost their lives; and
there was nary a mention of the Gulag camps. Much was trumpeted about the
Russian people’s enthusiasm for the modernisation of the country’s Communist
movement and several rooms lay testament to the regard in which Stalin is
(officially) held. It was an engaging museum and a stark reminder of the
censorship that still exists today, which seems anathema to our western
pansy democratic sensibilities.
Following another bizarre lunch of two oversized chicken
nuggets and a portion of dessert rice (I had asked for ‘chicken in Beilal
sauce’), I decided to give myself three hours to get myself onto the China
bound train. This was, in hindsight, a wise move. It took only ten minutes to
get from the centre of the city to the train station by metro. However, not
only were there three train stations all clustered together (Yaroslavsky Vozkal,
Komsomolskaya and Leningradsky) but each station had myriad transport options
within. I quickly found the correct station, by asking firstly an official
information desk lady, who told me in sign language that I was at the right
station and I needed platform 8. I had a gut feeling that this was nonsense so
I asked a few people who were waiting for trains. An older gentleman kindly
walked me to the entrance of the station and pointed to the station opposite
and signalled that I should take the underpass to get to it.
I duly walked around ¼ mile through the underpass, which
seemed to be full of one-legged loiterers and drunken, wild-eyed wastrels.
Exactly the stuff of my Dad’s nightmares I believe! I fetched up in the centre
of what looked like three different inner stations. I wandered around the
hordes of people looking for some information. Everything was in Russian and
even though I had managed to work out the Cyrillic alphabet, the sheer quantity
of signs and information and announcements made for a very bewildering starting
point. I queued at the nearest ticket
booth, showed my ticket and asked in Russian which platform – gdye platforma? She pointed me in the direction of
the neighbouring station. I went there and it was a dull, dirty, smelly place,
full of the same kind of underground malingerers in bad clothes and a
disturbing array of missing body parts and milky eyes. It was like a scene from
an apocalyptic zombie film. I went to the ticket booth, showed my ticket and
asked which platform. She shrugged and pointed back to the place I’d just been
to. I was beginning to get used to the Russian way of dealing with lost
tourists. Just point them anywhere as long as it makes them go away. I went
back to square one and decided to explore each building one by one until I
found a clue. I eventually discovered that if I went into a ‘No Entry’ door
opposite the Citylink building, I found myself in an airport style waiting
area. I went to a large multi-booth ticket area and asked again which platform
I needed. The lady didn’t know, so she got her colleague who examined my ticket
and informed decisively that 35kg is the baggage weight limit for my ticket,
then left. OK.... I asked again and then finally a lady with limited, but very useful English answered
my question. It had now been an hour and a half since I left town so I had the
same amount of time left until I had to board. I went to the waiting area that
I had been directed to, found my train on the departures board and awaited
information on my departure platform. I was incredulous that in an
international station there was nothing other than Russian both spoken and
written. This major European-Asian hub had no German, French, English, Spanish
or any of the other widely spoken languages of the world. There wasn’t even any
Chinese, even though half a dozen trains a week go to, and come back from this
very country and it is THE most spoken language of the globe and an immediate
neighbour of the Russians. The Russians are pretty short sighted when it comes to
making things accessible if you happen to be anything other than Russian.
I stocked up on water, pastries and cash from the little
kiosk and sat in full view of the board. I could see no discernible doors that
led to any platforms so I did what any rational person would do and scanned the
room for anyone that looked remotely Chinese. In a room of around four hundred
people, I spotted two. One was a guy fighting to fold up a mountain bike and
was indeed a passenger on the same train as me (waddathechances?! ;) ) and was
as baffled as me about everything, but at least we could chat. I then accosted
the second; a girl named Cassie from Hong Kong who also inexplicably had a
folded mountain bike and was also bound for the very same train! My Sherlock
methods of arbitrary profiling had led me to two allies. Cheeky but
effective! Cassie had given herself ten hours to catch the train as she’d been
having similar experiences. She knew where the platform was having spoken to around
twenty people to solve the dark mysteries of Russian travel information; I
offered to carry half of her six or seven bags if she could show me where I
needed to go. We walked out of the
waiting area building, back outside into the -13* snow, past the Citylink
building, walked around it beyond the security gates and guards - and there was
the railway line, slightly apart from the others. Simple, non? The comforting
sight of people with backpacks , and no doubt folded mountain bikes, greeted
me. It was by now fifteen minutes before boarding. Good job I gave myself three
hours.
In the freezing, biting cold, I thanked Cassie, showed my
ticket to the beautifully attired, grunting Chinese Provodnik and was shown to
my home for the next week. A compartment all to myself! Bang on time, 21:35,
the number 4 train ‘Rossiya’ pulled out of the station and slowly started our
rather languid 50mph, 7858km journey east.
