13.08.2010

Trans-Siberian Express Part 1: Moscow-Irkutsk

From a totally smoke-filled Moscow, in the evening at 21:00 still 37°C at the Yaroslavl train station, we take refuge in train which was standing the whole day in the sun and the air conditioning will be turned on only on departure. Our train, the “Rossia” No. 2 Moscow-Vladivostok is pulled by a diesel locomotive at a very slow speed into the station. I counted later: there are 18 cars that are pulled from Moscow by a double-locomotive.

On the platform a hustle and bustle: there will be a travel and it is a long travel. In our first-class car there are a small German group, two German women, two Italians and the rest are Russians. The 4-bed-compartements in the second-class car are as far as I can judge, quite full. In each car is a conductor (what I have seen, there are only women) responsible. They check tickets and passports, including visa – yes, the visa is valid for exactly this journey – and run the samovar and ensure cleanliness, which is done in our car really well. The train manager is a man in a well-fitting uniform.

Our compartment has two very narrow beds, or maybe better couches, equipped with two pillows, a sheet, a thin blanket and a solid quilt as a day-cover. A warm blanket is also available in the compartment. But their use seems to us not needed at all. This is our place to stay for four nights.

Quite in time the train is moving very slowly and soon it speeds up through the eastern suburbs of Moscow. First, the folding window brings through the wind a little cool, but then we are prompted to close it, and actually works the air conditioning and even the existing smoke smell disappears with time in the compartment. After a snooze beer in the dining car – equipped beautifully! – we go to sleep.

Of the forest fire areas, we actually go through with the train, we see nothing.

During the night train No. 2 stops in Waldimir (km 191) and Nižnij Novgorod (for the train company: Gorky km 441). The first stop, we are experiencing is in Kirov (km 957). Kirov actually is called today (again) Vyatka. The railway company RZD holds but in different places firmly in the revolutionary name, e.g. in Ekaterinburg, which for the train company is still Sverdlovsk. In Kirov for the first time we experience the ritual that is repeated at almost all stations served. Women, mostly elderly, but also some younger, offer all sorts of newspapers, homemade backed, homemade cooked or cached and smoked, fruits, berries and even cones of the Siberian pine, sometimes even pushy, especially for at the moment less popular products such as fur hats and thick blankets and the like.

George feds largely of products that he buys at the stations, also canned food which can be prepared just with samovar water. I prefer the food in the dining car, where you can choose between eight different salads, six soups and three main courses. According to the menu the selection should be greater. Since this is only in Russian and our knowledge of Russian is extraordinarily weak but is the almost exclusivity for the dining car staff, I do not know if what I eat, that’s what they can explain us or what they actually have stocks to. During the whole trip to Irkutsk it is the same staff in the dining car, and the stocks, which are placed on some of the seats, are dwindling, i.e. the seat number is increasing. The Russian beer is excellent and quenches the thirst perfectly.

Restoran in Rossia Nr. 2 Moskau-Wladiwostok

By evening we are still in Europe. The trip goes according to the track condition rapidly with about 120, sometimes even 140 km / h, but sometimes leaning even with 70-80 on the slightly undulating terrain of the European part of Russia, past villages with often little, small wooden houses, in wet weather conditions probably muddy village streets and through beautiful forests. After Perm (km 1434) it becomes dark and the passing of the border between Europe and Asia at km 1777, we were sleeping.

In the night we have left behind us Ekaterinburg (km 1815) and in the early morning Tyumen (km 2144). We are in the West Siberian Plain, which extends to Omsk (km 2716) and Novosibirsk (3343 km). Totally flat, often swampy terrain, interspersed with a few birch groves. In Omsk we cross the Irtysh, the main tributary of the Ob, the longest river in Russia. The Ob itself we cross in the late evening of the second day in Novosibirsk.

Krasnoyarsk (km 4104), we reach in the course of the morning of the third day. After crossing another large Siberian river, the Yenisey, the line ascends for a while, and then runs on a wide plateau, again interspersed with beautiful mixed forests and in large intervals with small villages. Towards evening we reach Tayshet (km 4522), the origin of the Baikal-Amur Mainline BAM, which perhaps is also once again as a travel project in question.

After a further night journey we arrive in the early morning of our second stage Irkutsk (km 5191), where I Tatiana and Lew, friends of my now former colleague (he has just retired) Werner Schoch, a picture of me (from where do you have this, Werner ?) is held under my nose. Fortunately, we can get the rooms in the hotel (extra charge), immediately wash the dust from our last four days from the body. But Tatiana and Lew expect us already for the next step.

At this first stage of Transsib we have covered 5191 km in 75.8 hours. This results in a travel speed (travel time including stops) of 68.5 km/h. The different distance between two stops is in the average 179 km, while the 300 km-long stretches without stopping are mainly in the west. This represents an average journey time of 2.4 h without stopping, but there were also temporal stages of more than 5 hours without stopping. The average speed is 72 km/h.

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