China post # 10 - train to Siberia

We boarded the train at the unearthly hour of 4 in the morning, which wasn't obvious at first on our ticket, since all times in all train stations in Russia are Moscow time, we thought that we would board at just before midnight. Our new cabin mates weren't too happy, especially Julia the mother of Sasha and little Sonya who were woken up with our entrance. The two-year old Sonya was all smiley, but later spent the whole night crying. Her mother seemed young and while Sasha spent the whole day running up and down along the corridor with his mates, Julia and Sonya swung between alternate bouts of loving and hating each other while copped up in the compartment. Julia would slap her child for being demanding and later give in to whatever it was. We added a new word to our russian vocabulary, the only word Sonya apparently knew - "Die! Die! Die!" which means give me. We had to make ourselves scarce in this atmosphere and were happy to bump into a bunch of Italians and French at the other end of the train where we finished off the bottle of Vodka that we had lugged around fo a while.

We had bread, sausage, soups and fruit to feed ourselves, which was just as well as any backpacker who goes to the restaurant carriage and tries to order food is generally ignored or told "nyet" they don't have it! This is typical of the service industry in russia, just not interested in your business, too much trouble to them. Even more curious since only this carriage is run by a private company not the railway. Russians themselves once you break the ice (vodka is best), are very hospitable and generously share their food and drink with complete strangers.