20., 21. July – Moscow was fun, but it was time to move on, go east. We took the metro to the Jaroslawski train station, had our breakfast at a local buffet and purchased some food for the long ride ahead. One of the benefits of Russia is cheap caviar, so I stocked up with a full jar of its black variety for not much more than an euro. While waiting at the shop an akward chat developed with a customer and the security guard. At first they were unsure about the whereabouts of Slovenia, but they soon remembered the football match with Russia and briskly left, somewhat dismayed. :)
The next 31 hours were spent on a train from Moscow to Yekaterinburg. One would think this is where the story ends, that there wouldn’t be much to write about. One would be wrong. One has much to learn about Russian train travel. Who is this rethoric one I speak of? I don’t know. Ask him, or her. Whatever.
First, we came to the train on the platform, gave the stewardess (yes, they’re called the same on trains) our tickets and she blurted out our seat numbers. We muddled along to our coupe, where there was already a middle aged and, due to the heat, topless gentleman. He spoke only Russian, but seemed rather nice. We proceeded to unpack our belongings, make our beds. After a few minutes, another three topless gentleman came, politely asking if we were all going to stay here and asking for our tickets. They said they were all traveling together and that this was their coupe. After another glance at our tickets we realised our, and the stewardesses’ mistake, then moved two coupes forward.
We repeated the settling process and mentally prepared for a day and a half of relative boredom. But it was not to be. Our previous acquaintances soon invited us over to their coupe for some drinks. It turned out to not be only drinks, as an entire corpse of a baked chicken lay on the train table. The table was almost comicly small when put in perspective with the chicken and accompaniyng vegetables. We tried it reservedly, but the main focus of the feast was elswhere. Vodka. Their Praznichnaya variety went down really easy, as if it did not contain all that alcohol. Naturally we still had to seal the deal with a few sips of beer. As the often repeated and useful Russian saying goes: “Drinking vodka without beer is like throwing money into the wind.” And we couldn’t act so wastefully, could we?
A debate soon developed, although a bit hampered by differing languages. Jasmina’s and Maja’s knowledge of Russian came in handy, as ususal I struggled through with the few words I know and my improvised Serbo-Croatian with Dolenjska accent which, when put together, can sound surprisingly like Russian.
As you might have gathered by now, the guys were really friendly and talkative, a fact in no doubt emphasised by the dashingness of my female cotravelers. During the small talk we found out that they were construction workers from Belgrad, a Russian town near the border with Ukraine on their way to Perm for a month-long job. When, much later, our limited vocabulaires left us with little more to disscus, we retired to our quarters for a few rounds of cards and observing of the shanty lumber towns and berch forests we were passing by.
Surprisingly time went by quickly. Before we knew it, it was already the evening of our second day on the train and we’ve arrived at our destination – Yekaterinburg. It was quite late, we didn’t have a place booked, so we took a taxi to a nearby hotel that was in the Lonely Planet guide. It turned out to cost a lot more than we would have liked it to and the energetic and business savy taxi driver offered to call around for other offers while he kept repeating he has a brilliant memory. That extra service of course increased the price of our taxi ride to about 10€. When I tried to haggle my response was met with a non-threatening “I called hotel, I now control situation”, the ususal “I have a brilliant memory, you know” and the slightly racist “I work for good price, I am no nigro”. In the end he came through, quickly got us a good and much cheaper hotel and even waited to see that we got our room keys. So I suppose he well earned his fee. :)
Afterwards we did a quick midnight walk around our part of the city of Yekaterinburg, which used to be known as Svedrlovsk. What more it had to offer would have to wait until the following day.