The Trans-Siberian

Adam and I had a kupe berth leaving Vladivostok in the afternoon. We hauled our bags in and said hello to the woman we were apparently sharing the four-bed room with. She soon moved next door to hang out with her friend, leaving the place to ourselves.

Soon a Russian man stumbled into our cabin. He spoke no English, and though we were quite clear that we understood no Russian, he managed to hold a ceaseless one-sided conversation. It turns out that this is a trend with inebriated men on trains.

After maybe 20 minutes of gesticulations and lots of nodding and saying "da", all I gathered was that his name was Igor and he didn't like playing cards. In fact, he seemed frightened at the prospect.

The next thing I understood was "vodka". He said the word while making a tipping gesture with his pinkie and thumb. Adam was feeling sick but I agreed, not so much wanting to drink, but if he was drinking, he wasn't talking.

Igor came back with a small unopened bottle, and then had to go find a glass when he discovered that I didn't have one. The drinking commenced with occasional interludes of Russian soliloquys.

Eventually, a bear of a man with dark hair and a tiny braid in the back came in, casually speaking English to translate what Igor was trying to tell us. This was Mikael, a driller who explained his job by saying, "Bruce Willis in Armageddon."

Mikael kinda scared Igor off for some reason, maybe because he could speak English. "School lessons", he insisted, although he was surely being modest. Mikael was 28 years old and his handshake nearly pulverized my hand.

We talked a bit with Mikael, about his three girlfriends and learned that in order to avoid mixing up the names of Russian girls, we can just say "ripka", the equivalent of "honey" or "darling".

Soon three more guys from an adjoining cabin piled in, with a large bottle of vodka and zakuska, drinking food to be taken after vodka shots, like a chaser. One such delicacy was pig fat, but the best zakuska, word had it, was pickles.

I didn't want to get too drunk and wind up like Igor, who occasionally wandered past our cabin, looked in and nodded and wandered on, so I was relieved when the big old guy who brought the vodka poured a couple of shots to empty the bottle. Then, I thought "Oh Jesus" as he brought out an unopened bottle.

The Trans-Siberian guidebook warned us that turning down drinks is extremely difficult in Russia, as Russians can be very determined. One method the book suggested was to say you were an alcoholic. Another method that Mikael used which seemed to work was to say you are on antibiotics. At least I thought I heard him use the word.

The three guys who joined us all worked for the same company. They were good fun, just for the fact that Adam and I found ourselves in a pretty interesting scene, crammed into a steamy kupe cabin with four Russians, "regular Russians", Mikael translated for us. I tried insisting that we were regular Americans too, but Mikael replied, "Regular Russians do not travel in America."

Fair point.

The party came to an end before I got very drunk fortunately. The woman who was originally in our cabin got off earlier in the evening, but she was replaced by a young mother and her four-year old daughter. Adam was spot on when he said the daughter was eerily similar in looks and cuteness to Cindy Lou-Who of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas".

Well the guys cleared out when she arrived, and fast. It was a funny scene. We all got ready for bed, and I soon realized that it may have been better if I got a lot more drunk because the cabin was way too hot to sleep in.

Adam had it worse than I, saying he didn't sleep at all when we got off the train around 7AM the next morning. I got some sleep, but could've used a lot more.

We had considered just dumping our bags somewhere and exploring Khabarovsk for the day and leaving in the evening, but thank god we decided to spend the night Couchsurfing and relax a little.