June 11, 2011—9:30 am—just passed Krasnoyarsk, Russia.
After dinner last night of noodle soup, beet chips and almonds, we took showers. Our compartment shares a shower and sink with the room next door. The water pressure is not great but we were able to get clean which is a nice luxury while riding a train for several days. After that we watched The Way Back on our laptop, an appropriate movie given our location. After the movie, we made up our beds with the sets of clean and ironed sheets. It was 11:30 pm Beijing time and I slept like a rock. Our first night without border crossings to deal with.
It seems like we pretty much have the entire car to ourselves. There was a Russian lady who got off the train an hour ago and another who got on. But for the most part there is nobody walking up and down our car. The entire train it seems is only about a 1/3 full. Yesterday afternoon the ride was just as beautiful. Passing groves of birch and aspen our train crossed metal bridges spanning fast flowing rivers. The occasional little village made up of houses no larger than 600 square feet, each with its own garden. Everybody has a garden surrounded by a low wooden fence. The houses look tired and I can imagine them to be very cold in the long Siberian winter. People are not out gardening as a hobby, they probably don’t read the latest organic growing techniques from Martha Stewart’s magazine; they grow potatoes and onions out of necessity and tradition. Some people had lilacs in their little garden yards.
The scenery is still beautiful. The birches have branches with leaves that droop and dangle. The tall, pines with their orange bark are a nice contrast to the white birch trunks. Tall, thin spruce trees point upwards like arrows. On the ground, ferns and super green grass. The kind that is so excited to come up again after so many months of frozen dormancy. The flowers are still amazing. Lisa has spotted wild hot pink peonies, little yellow poppies, pink wild roses, yellow mustard flowers, purple larkspur, Queen Anne’s lace, little orange marigold looking flowers, purple salvia, tiny yellow lilies. The fresh smell of the air is something we can’t get enough of. Standing at the window and watching the scenery go by as the air fills our lungs is just fun!
Most of the time we are traveling through wild, natural areas like this. We are sometimes passed by other trains, mostly freight often carrying logs, lumber or rocks and dirt (ore?), new rails for future tracks or rust colored box cars with who knows what. With the exception of the engine these freight trains look like those of antique toy train sets from the early to mid 1900s. Although the electrified engines pulling them including the one now pulling our train look to be about 60 years old. The freight is a throwback in time. In contrast, the freight trains we passed last summer in Iowa and Nebraska mostly were hauling containers. Russia is cutting and moving trees, the U.S. is importing flat screen TVs bound for Best Buy packed in containers that were on a ship from China.
We stopped yesterday at a few stations for enough time to get off and walk around the platform and take a few photos. At every stop that lasts longer than a few minutes the rail workers in orange vests walk along the length of the train on both sides with a hammer with a long handle and small head. They inspect each set of bogies on every car by hitting them in three different places and listening for the sound it makes. They hit the cap over the hub which I have learned should sound hollow and they hit the wheel itself which should give off a nice high frequency ring. They determine the integrity of the wheels with a 5 second sound check, pretty slick.
We have no Russian money which has become a problem. One station had a dozen little kiosks selling all sorts of things people riding trains might want. We found a nice loaf of bread we wanted and tried to pay with a dollar. The stout woman looked, quickly waved her hand in a “no” gesture and laughed. I tried another kiosk, same reaction. I tried at the next station, similar reaction without the laugh. I guess there is no place to exchange it in these Siberian towns. I suppose it would be strange if someone got off a train in rural North Dakota and tried to buy something with Russian money. Would they accept it? Probably not. I’ll try to exchange some money in the café car where we had lunch yesterday—Fried salmon, potatoes, peas, a cucumber, tomato, onion and dill salad and an order of “pancakes” filled with raw salmon. It was all delicious.
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