52 train hours, this portion of the ride = a mathematically curious number of days & nights when moving across so many time zones. It's like the Little Prince, who exhausted himself on his small planet, with too many sunrises & sunsets to keep up with. I've seen dawn break for 4 consecutive hours!
For this longest leg of the Trans-Siberian Railway, 20-30 Russian police cadets occupied my train car -- strapping young fellows in their 20s -- three of whom were my bunkmates. Days & nights of drinking & card playing & wild laughter & racing up & down the hall to each other's cabins for no reason except to laugh & drink some more. At some point, one of them asked where I am from. I said "New York City," my strategic answer for right now. "Ohhhhhhh!!!" Apparently those are magic words, for suddenly a pack of these men crowded around me, wanting to talk about New York.
These two were the first priests of this village. They look like they dropped in from a gig in a heavy metal band.
The first cabin built in this part of Siberia
Prior to my trip, I read that it's nice to bring along post cards of your home town for the Trans-Siberian Railway trip because, bereft of common language, post cards & home towns are of universal interest. So I reached into my backpack & brought out my NYC postcards. Thus ensued an eager, gleeful round of the cadets pointing to certain cards & shouting "Brooklyn Bridge!" "Times Square!" "Empire State Building!" "Statuesque of Liberty!" Later, near dawn, they fizzled out & fell into their beds. As for the three in my room, at times they snored very lightly, as a baby with a cold might. In sleep, they looked rather cherubic, despite the stale afterwhiff of vodka...with their tousled hair & flushed faces & long eyelashes resting on their cheeks.
(Taking pictures of police in Russia is really not a good idea)
-23 F. Finally off the train. My Siberian guide, Constantine, & I headed out of town to a village where life is lived, purportedly, just as it was in the ancient times when independent-minded people traversed rivers & mountains & fairy-tale-looking forests (spooky beautiful) to take up an agrarian way of life, described so romantically in Tolstoy's novels. Happy, singing peasants with their scythes. On the way we pass a shop with what must be the most sublimely-named liquor store ever -- "Wine and Vodka and Other Essential Stuff."
Kontenobo is the oldest village in Siberia (though this is hotly debated in all the surrounding villages). (Also hotly debated is the assertion of every city, town & village over the span of 7 time zones that they are the "real Siberia.")
Constantine the guide at a special village lunch, about to pour us a home brew called "kopbelovna." It is made from red whattleberries & other local plants...an ancient recipe. We must drink three glass - one for salad, one for soup, & one for main dish. Oh boo hoo...it's so demanding to keep up with local customs.
Everything old is new again
A more modern dwelling
Put aside, if you can, glimpses of the satellite dishes & cell phone towers & wifi connections visible here & there in this village, for then Kontenobo is Tolstoy's village in the flesh. The beauty of the forbidding forests & snowy mountains & frozen, winding river at the basin of a cliff & bales of ice-hard hay lined up at the edges of rolling fields dressed in their winter planting of stubby, gold grass... on a sunny frigid day, this beauty is existential. It hurts to look. This remote landscape, which surely is a painting come to life, will endure, while you are a nothing, just passing through.
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