training days

i'm loving living like this. with the claustrophobia, the tiny existing space and the heat. sweat is literally falling constantly. when the train pauses at a station and the air is still, it is excruciating. occasionally a stern matron-like woman in her sixties yells "chetyre" (four in russian) and throws four clear plastic containers of food into the cabin. we heard no mention of food in all the hearsay and literature about the trans-siberian so our cabin is slowly filling up with biscuits and sachets of coffee and meat-sticks that look like pepperami, but bright pink and slightly sweet.

the train is 16 coaches of thick steel painted in electric blue with a red ribbon. it is pulled by an enormous electric engine, a sturdy block that must've traveled a billion miles.

so far the scenery has been a constant line of trees, every now and again holding a little wooden shack or ramshackle village. this has not changed at all in 16 hours and will continue not to change until tomorrow lunchtime where the guidebook informs us that the scenery becomes inhospitable swampy wasteland; the claimant of thousands of lives with it's complete lack of landmarks. we'll move right through the middle on a distance of track the length of great britain.

i know, it sounds like hell. i suppose in some ways i'd agree with you. but i have diminished responsibility as a train passenger. and i'm doing it and living right in the middle and edging forward into wide open space... and this is the life. the life of a bit of an adventurer. i feel like i'm really seeing a country. properly. the good, bad and ugly.

i went to new york, but i didn't see america.

i came to russia hoping for and expecting at least a bit of snow. showing how much of our perception is affected by hollywood, i haven't even seen any clues that snow has ever fallen here. it's impossible to believe that these lush green fields have seen anything other than sporadic rain and constant heatwave. we're now surrounded on all sides by an iridescent carpet of growth. the only clue of it's alter-ego, a harsh frostbitten inhospitable land, is the thickness of the train's double-glazing.

we sit and read and sweat and sleep. there are still three-and-a-half days in front of us, two long steel rails and tens of thousands of wooden sleepers marking out a timeline into the future. a similar one winds its way back to moscow. i looked at a map and we've barely moved.