Last night was especially bumpy … but we still managed to sleep quite a bit. Interestingly, our dreams had rattling bumpy aspects to them … how adaptable we are.
Today was largely a repeat of yesterday … straight, flat and with no change of scenery other than swapping from silver birch to grassland and then back to silver birch. Toward the end of the day, the bigger towns started to look like towns in the Midwest of America … new office buildings, straight streets, modern cars. I believe that these towns were built in the 20th century to support the mining boom whereas the earlier towns were decaying remnants of the Tsarist era (when they were largely used to send exiles).
The train stations at Omsk and at Novosibirsk were large and impressive, but only at Omsk did we have enough time to walk inside the train station concourse before jumping back on the train. Novosibirsk is reputed to have the most impressive train station, but we would have had to cross platforms to reach it, and time did not permit this (nor did the conductor). Novosibirsk is an example of the modern town … it only came into existence when nearby Tomsk refused to have the Trans-Siberian Railway run through the town because they feared that extra competition would reduce their prices. By the time the bosses of Tomsk realized that trade would increase rather than decreased, the shorter bypass route had been finalized … Tomsk went into decline and Novosibirsk went became the centre for the region.
Barabinsk was unimpressive as a station, but it had far and away the best food traders on the pot-holed platform … we all bought breads, beer, sausages and water … and even an ice cream. Then we traded bits of bread and sausage with other passengers to provide variety and balance to our diet.
This is the day when I first try out my Chinese on the conductor … as we alight from the train, I casually say “wu fenzhong ma?” (ie. five minutes?). He understood me, smiled and repeated it … yippee?
Cabin fever is now firmly taking hold. 23 hours per day in a little compartment is not good for mind or body. The 10-15 minute stops 2-3 times per day provides little opportunity to do anything other than stock up on water (and on food at Barabinsk). We can walk the length of the train, negotiating the bridge from carriage to carriage, and with 15 carriages than can be the highlight of the day.
We might be getting stiff from sitting and standing, but we’re not likely to get fat on the food rations that we have. We’re better stocked than many others, but that just means more dry crackers, fruit and nut mix, and instant porridge … yummy!
So we spend much of the day reading … I’m making good headway on Frank Welsh’s Great Southern Land, a 700 page tome that is ridiculously heavy … while Karen has a collection of novels gathered from friends in UK and Ireland. Use of the laptop is rare because the power supply is so erratic.
Oh, and we made another acquaintance … he’s a Kiwi returning from his grandmother’s 90th birthday party in the UK … he’s a professional helicopter pilot currently working in PNG. Funny how we keep meeting people whose job provide very interesting stories … compared with the stories from the uninteresting stories from our corner of the corporate world. There is also the American bloke in our carriage … sharing with the Professor … but he’s only ever sleeping or smoking between the carriages … he doesn’t speak to anyone … perhaps he has the most interesting story, but we’ll never know.
You never told us what you actually got for your sausage???
ReplyDeleteEh? Did I miss a joke along the way? Worse, still, did I miss one of my own?
ReplyDelete