Train by Tom Zoellner

Author:Tom Zoellner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-01-20T05:00:00+00:00

BLOOD ON THE TRACKS

Moscow to Vladivostok

Almost everyone in Russia who heard me say I was going to ride all the way to the Pacific Ocean looked on me with pity. You don’t understand, they said. So boring. Nothing to do for seven whole days. Bad people on the train. Crowded. Smelly. Why don’t you fly? It’ll be easier.

I didn’t listen. This was a train journey nonpareil, nothing else like it anywhere. Nearly six thousand miles of unbroken iron across the Eurasian landmass. Russia would never have become Russia without the easy access it provided to mineral and agricultural wealth. It is the longest unbroken railroad in the world and spans sixteen time zones. As the sun sets on one end, it is not far from rising on the other. Even the name has panache. Trans-Siberian. It sounds like a teleportation across the steppes, an easy glide past the snow and birches.

But this railroad is not beloved in its home country. For one thing, the term “Trans-Siberian” is not even used here; it is the foreigners who call it that. For those who live in Siberia, it is the only real choice for traveling long distances, as the roads are shabby. They tend to associate it with going to a relative’s funeral or getting to a hospital for surgery. Older Russians recall it mainly as a link to Stalin’s gulags, a belt of misery. A traveler generally boarded only when under compulsion, and not as an experience to be enjoyed. Few but eccentric tourists or true aviophobes ride the whole way.

But how bad could it be, really? Though it was November and snow was everywhere, the train would be warm and the scenery would be unique, if monotonous. I was certain to meet some Russians with interesting stories. If nothing else, it would be a good chance to sit and read for a few days and make some notes. My destination was the Pacific port of Vladivostok, Russia’s easternmost city of consequence.

Practically every rail journey from Moscow through Siberia starts from Yaroslavl station, a handsome hulk built in 1904 and designed to look like a Russian Orthodox convent. Peddlers sell food and radios from the stalls outside. I took a train down from St. Petersburg, ate a final restaurant meal of Stroganoff and thin beer and walked to the platforms at Yaroslavl to find my train. The ticket I held was for platskartny, otherwise known as “hard class,” the cheapest type of Russian train ticket, purchased the previous day after a round of pantomime with a sour woman behind smeared glass.

Once I’d shown a guard my passport, I was pointed to the wrong seat in a carriage jammed with Russians stowing away their plastic luggage and getting ready for the slog. Young women peeled off their high-heeled leather boots and changed into rubber slippers; unshaven men in zippered tracksuits dealt cards to each other, the first rounds of many. The car itself was basically a long hallway divided into eight sections of benches and bunks.

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