Back On the Trans

Day 6, Mon, 7/28

Russia.

Unlike my last compartment, all four beds in this one were full of snoring bodies, and I had to occupy the one on the top-right. Being stuck with the upper bed was extremely annoying because I had to climb up and down awkwardly by stepping on the lower beds whenever I wanted to go anywhere, and lifting my two ruthlessly heavy bags into the storage that high up was backbreaking. JW was four vehicles away from me, and sent me a text message complaining that he suffered the same fate.

Although I had toured Irkutsk all day and jumped in the Baikal on just a few hours of sleep, I couldn’t go to bed. I stepped outside of the hallway and into the noisy ‘bridge’ part of the train that connects the back of a vehicle to the front of another. There I found a short, brunette girl with a neat Lady Gaga haircut, dressed in a Hello Kitty wifebeater and quietly smoking a cigarette. I called my dad and told him in loud Korean that I was leaving Irkutsk and on my way to Moscow, and the girl promptly started babbling nonsense at me in a teasing voice, trying to imitate my Korean. Once I hung up I couldn’t tell whether she was annoyed and trying to tell me to shut up or simply joking around, but she smiled, so I assumed she was being friendly. I offered her some Orbit gum, trying to tease her back and imply that smoking causes bad breath. I don’t think she understood but she accepted a piece with a “spaseeba” and tossed it in her mouth. We talked for a bit afterwards, but when we couldn’t understand more than a few words, I gave up and went to bed.

I remember waking up to a horrible, gritty voice of a Russian rock singer. Having no idea where the music was coming from, I pulled out my iPod and played my own song, making the volume high enough to drown out the Russian music. Then I realized that this wouldn’t help me fall back asleep for my iPod was near its maximum volume. Irritated, I sat up in bed and realized that the terrible voice was coming from speakers embedded in the ceiling. Up until now I had no idea that there were radios on the train. Well, seeing that it was 4PM, I got myself out of bed.

I found brunette Lady Gaga in the hallway, except this time she was dressed in her proctor clothes - so last night I guess I had run into her during her off-duty.

It took me nearly three minutes just to reach JW’s compartment, opening a dozen doors and weaving through half-naked Russians in the narrow hallways. JW looked like he’d just woken up too. He brought out a bottle of shampoo and asked me if I wanted to wash my hair. Holy moly! Being able to wash my hair would be a dream come true. But how in the world was I supposed to do that when the faucets, as I’ve described before, were nearly impossible to use? JW laughed and pulled out a golf ball. Oh, what a genius. He was using that the whole time to block the water from draining. But there was still the problem that you couldn’t stick your head in the nasty sink without banging it against the tap. It was especially painful for me because I have a particularly big head.

“Oh it’s worth the pain,” JW assured me. And he was right. The privilege to wash your hair on the transsiberian is a priceless one, and once I was done, I almost wanted to spend the next hour walking up and down the hallway, showing off my clean, wet hair to everyone else.

The average train stop lasts about two minutes, but occasionally when it halts at a large town or city the passengers have 20-30 minutes to step off and exercise our slowly deteriorating legs. Also at these stops are merchants and small stands where you can get some bread, drinks and snacks. Each item also comes with a price tag, so you don’t have to worry about the mean old ladies on the train who try to rip you off.

*IMG_4748 Day 7*

I’ve been teaching JW some guitar, and thanks to his piano skills he’s been learning extraordinarily fast. Rather than holding the guitar normally, he also likes to lay the neck across his lap and tap at the fingerboard as if it’s a keyboard, which he’s getting pretty good at. Again my instrument’s been attracting random passersby, which helps with my stage fright training but also makes me miss Anton and everyone else from the last train quite dearly.

My three roommates include a fat Asian guy and an old couple, and they can all speak a little English. This is a miracle with the odds of which I can’t even begin to imagine. I had trouble enough finding anyone at all who could speak English, and here I am placed in a room with three. Ironically, I didn’t converse with them nearly as much as I used to with Oliya from the last train, who couldn’t even pronounce my name correctly.

For the rest of the day I established myself as the guy who gives out free guitar lessons. Unfortunately this also attracts a bunch of three year olds who end up banging and dribbling all over my instrument.

I’ve been tackling and transcribing a piece called Chaconne written by J. S. Bach since around September of last year (with immense help from my mentor and friend, Robert Squires). Originally written for the violin, the Chaconne is considered to be one of the most difficult pieces produced during the Baroque era; Brahms once wrote that it was pretty much the best song ever and claimed that if he had written it he would’ve gone mad with joy (I site Paul Lee on this). Anyway, I found out that JW had learned and played the entire fifteen minute piece for the piano. When he discovered that I was trying to learn it on the guitar, he jumped and insisted that he recorded me on his camera to take back to Korea. I didn’t allow it because I still sucked, but I promised that I’d let him do so at some point within the next week, so I’ve been practicing wildly for hours on end - so much that my roommates can now sing along to parts of the song.

*IMG_4780*

I also found out that JW has one of the best collections of music I’ve ever encountered (his monumental taste in music is up there with my other bassist friend, Jin Lee). We sat on his bed listening to each other’s music from 10PM to 4:30AM nonstop, and I only managed to get up to the letter K on his iPod. The only reason I stopped there was because my eyes were burning out, but I was excited for the upcoming day, knowing that I’d actually have something to do other than reading, playing the guitar or working on my college applications.

*IMG_4770*

Unable To Have Kids

Day 5, Mon, 7/27

Irkutsk, Russia.

Dizzy from lack of sleep, we quickly showered, broke our fast and headed out with sunscreen and swimming shorts. Although JW and I had arrived with different plans and without knowledge of each other’s existence, I convinced him the night before to travel according to my plans. Originally, he had wanted to tour the town of Irkutsk all day and visit Lake Baikal the next, for the lake was over an hour away. But since my train left tonight at 2:54 in the morning, I reasoned that we should have enough time to tour Irkutsk for most of the day and jump in Lake Baikal during the evening. That meant that first we had to go to the train station to make sure there was a seat left for JW on tonight’s transsiberian. It was highly unlikely and both of them said that there was no use; if you wanted a seat on the transsiberian, especially during the summer, you were advised to buy a ticket about a month ahead of time.

There was exactly one seat left. Yesss. This is what I love about the freedom of traveling: if you want to do something, the answer is to do it. Also, like I mentioned in my first entry, since traveling is so dependent on random factors - the weather, meeting travel buddies, accidentally staying up all night, etc. - the best way to plan your trip is to barely have anything planned at all. If, for example, JW had bought a different ticket ahead of time, we wouldn’t have been able to go on a four-day train ride together. In the end, such random, independent events tend to fall into place somehow (like meeting Gyu or getting a seat), and even if they don’t, you can always find another way around it. Always.

There are two types of buses in Irkutsk. One is in the form a family van with just a small number sticker on the window. The other is a normal bus. The hilarious thing about the bus system is that both the vans and the buses are imported from Korea! What’s even funnier is that the Russians never cared to take off the Korean labels covering them. For example, I saw a van that was labeled “충주남부감리교회,” which means that it was a church van in an area in Korea called Chungju. I saw another bus labeled “3420 장지동, 선릉역, 고속터미널” with the door labeled “자동문,” which means automatic door - I used to take this very bus all the time in Seoul!

Church van

Korean bus

A warning about the buses if you ever decide to travel here: there are no signs whatsoever that indicate bus stops. Gyu explained that you just had to know what corner or street the bus stopped on. Without Gyu, it would’ve been nearly impossible to tour the city and figure out the public transportation system. One more thing: you pay when you’re about to get off a bus, rather than when you’re getting on. I feel like that makes it extremely easy to just hitch a free ride and run; would a bus driver with a vehicle full of passengers actually get off and try to chase you down?

The town of Irkutsk reminded me of a typical European one, packed with beggars, century-year-old buildings and cables hanging above the streets. It was also stifling hot, so I spent $40 on sunscreen for the three of us. We passed by a small yard with leftover tanks and missiles from World War II, and despite the chains surrounding them, I just felt the need to jump over and climb on one of the tanks.

Pigeons unusually gathered around a love graffiti

While there are hundreds of rivers that flow into Lake Baikal, the Angara River is the only one that flows out of the lake. For me it was the nicest and most relaxing view in Irkutsk, but also the scariest. The river was as pristine as the very water I was carrying around, but so deep that I couldn’t see the bottom. If you dropped a leaf or a small pebble in it, you could see just how quickly the water flowed - yet as fast as it was flowing, the Angara was quiet. Gyu, JW and I leaned our heads over the bridge for half an hour and stared into the bottomless blue bottom, captivated by the river’s stealthy silence and imagining how quickly we’d drown if we all fell in.

Love lockets along the Angara

The sun was still high and bright by six o’clock, and we hopped on a bus (or a Korean church van) headed for Lake Baikal. There are all kinds of tours available to see the mammoth lake, some even that last for weeks. While I would’ve loved to ride a ferry to Aron island - the largest island on the lake - and spend a night there, I was also on a mission to reach the Atlantic Ocean before school started so I had to economize my time (call me a hypocrite because a few paragraphs ago I wrote that you should do whatever you want when you’re traveling). We ended up going instead to Listebianka(?), the closest point on the lake from Irkutsk that was about an hour away.

The bus ride to Listebianka(?) was so exciting that I thought I was on a rollercoaster. The highway was nearly perfectly straight and we went over some of the steepest hills I’ve ever seen an automobile go over. The driver kept his foot on the gas even when going downhill and the van reached speeds up to 95 mph. The back windows were just slightly open but that was enough to put my hair into Einsteinian mode. If a tire treaded on a rock on the road, the van would’ve flipped and we would’ve all died violently in a huge fireball. That’s how fast we were going.

We reached Baikal in just 45 minutes and I paid the driver an extra ten rubles for being so awesome. I wished I had a job where I could drive at ridiculous speeds and get paid for it (except NASCAR - that’s in fact the last thing I want).

I thought we had arrived at an ocean. It was just water for miles and miles until the end of the horizon. When I walked along the shore, I was still convinced that this was an ocean. Since Baikal had just recently melted, the water was frigid - I couldn’t put my foot in the lake for more than three seconds. Gyu explained that the lake was cold enough to be a main habitat for seals. Unfortunately I didn’t have seal fat, and I couldn’t believe that I was actually going to jump in. I’d get hypothermia or frostbite just by putting in a leg.

Ocean or lake?

“You gotta do it man,” said Gyu. “If you’re at Baikal this is something you just gotta do.”

There were lots of people along the shore, stretched out under the sun, but no one was braving deeper than ankle-deep.

“If I die, I want to be buried in Hawaii, or a desert,” I said. “And tell my parents I said hi.”

And so we changed into our swimming trunks, praying and appreciating life and whatnot. I was already shivering just looking into the water. People were staring at us probably thinking, “stupid tourists.” I handed my camera to a girl named Estella, who was wearing nearly nothing, as her two guy friends glared at me.

As we marched towards the water, the cold air made me feel as if I was entering a freezer. After the first few seconds, my foot was already numb, which was good because I didn’t feel any pain but bad because if the water was cold enough to make my foot go numb that quickly, I should’ve probably turned around. I placed my other foot in, and then entered slowly shin-deep, knee-deep, thigh, and torso. Forgive me for this remark, but a crucial part of my body felt shriveled and I feared the possibility that I may not be able to have kids. Estella was giggling and the boys looked as if they truly wanted me to freeze to death. With a quick shout at the sun and the clouds and the rest of the world, I dunked my head in and officially baptized myself in the Baikal. During the half-second my entire body was underwater, I felt clean. Fresh. Sterile.

Unable to have kids.

When I lifted my head, I had a brain freeze. Gritting my teeth, I waded back towards the shore.

Unable to have kids.

Apparently I stepped on a piece of broken glass but I wouldn’t realize this until a few minutes later because all that was on my mind was:

Unable to have kids.

JW and Gyu were both yelling and swearing as they came out of the water. I picked up my towel when I heard Gyu chatter, “What, don’t tell me you’re going in just once.”

“If I go back I don’t think I’d be able to have kids man,” I replied. To my horror, I saw two wide and incredibly scary Ronald McDonald grins form on Gyu and JW’s faces.

“Grab him!” Each of them held my arms and dragged me back towards icy death. I thought maybe it wouldn’t be as bad since I just experienced it, but no, it was just as bad. Before I knew it my head was underwater again.

Seriously unable to have kids.

Gyu and JW were also in agony but they were still clinging onto me. I looked back at the shore and wanted to slap my camera out of Estella’s hand.

No way in which I could have kids.

After about a minute we came back out and I was graciously allowed to pick up my towel. Never in my life did I remember myself having such powerful, loving emotions towards a piece of fabric. We took several group pictures and I have no idea why I’m smiling in any of them.

Me and JW

Gyu, JW, Me

Once we were nice and dry, I watched JW and Gyu smoke with Estella and the two guys, and we headed off to nearby restaurant. Along the way we ran into the captain of a ship that was docked on the shore, and we thought it’d be fun to make him take a picture with us.

Captain’s ship

Me, captain, JW

At the restaurant we ordered a grilled omul - a fish that is endemic to the Baikal - as well as some skewered steak. The omul was slightly bland, perhaps because it was fished out of freshwater, but it was nevertheless soft and delectable with the steak.

We finished up at around 8:30. As we were licking our fingers that were still cold, Gyu realized that he had forgotten the Irkutsk bus system ends at 8PM. That meant that we had to take a cab home, which would cost a fortune. Luckily Gyu bargained with the cab driver (you usually agree upon a price before you get on the cab) and brought the price down from 1700 to 1500 rubles, or approximately $50. That was a ton compared to the 3-dollar bus ride, and the windows were up the whole time, but the cab driver blasted some nice club music for us and JW and I got some nice shots of the setting sun.

Once we arrived at our home-stay we bode farewell to our tour guide, Gyu, and packed up for our next adventure on the transsiberian. Nothing particularly memorable happened except there was this one homeless person at the station who smelled really, really bad.

Russian Sunset and Russian Nightlife

Day 4, Sun, 7/26

Irkutsk, Russia.

Although I had set my alarm at 2PM, I ended up waking up at 9 in the morning after just four hours of sleep. I felt like I’d slept for much longer and I couldn’t go back to bed. Everyone had left except Alexei’s laptop was still sitting on my desk. I went to the proctor’s compartment to see if Anton was there, but his girlfriend was on duty and she told me that he was still asleep. Alexei was up though, and we chatted in my room for about three hours, talking about New York steak and traveling. He also showed me hundreds of pictures of him and his “woman” when they were traveling in Germany.

Anton woke up at around noon and helped me pack up. There’s no doubt that my compartment was the dirtiest one of them all; after Oliya left I had the entire four-person compartment to myself, taking advantage of it by spreading out my food and trash on all four beds. It took two hours to pack, vacuum and replace the sheets, and I was almost sad to see place so clean and remote.

Suddenly, two shirtless guys named Artur and Alec came in my compartment, their breaths reeking of beer. It was pretty clear that they wanted to steal my belongings, as they pointed at items such as my camera or my laptop and asking, “Present me?” I shook my head, and Alec pulled out a deck of cards and asked if I wanted to bet at all. I shook my head again and tried to refrain from planting my fist in both of their faces. How dare they rummage through my stuff like that? Instead, I kept a smile on my face and let Artur play my guitar for a few minutes.

Artur (Thief #1)

Alec (Thief #2)

The train was scheduled to arrive in Irkutsk at 5:20PM. By around four, Anton, Leila and I were pressing our faces against the window, too depressed to talk about anything. At 5:15, I pulled out two pairs of cheap wooden chopsticks (the ones you throw away after just one use) and two Korean 100 won coins. “Ssahnk you,” they said. We exchanged phone numbers and wrapped our arms around each other for the final five minutes, swaying to the motion of the train.

Russian village

Fortunately, our train conductor sucked at his job, so we didn’t arrive until nearly 6. It also meant that I had to face an angry driver who I had asked to come pick me up at the station by 5.

We exchanged our last hugs and I slung my unnecessarily heavy - but slightly lighter - bag over my poor back. I stepped down the train and onto Irkutskian(?) soil, almost wishing that I had left something on my bed so I had an excuse to go back for a few minutes. I walked out about a dozen steps and turned around to wave goodbye, but Anton and Leila were already flooded with a horde of passengers shoving tickets in their faces, and couldn’t see me. Sad face L.

At the station I was again accosted by a series of enormous ugly Russian taxi drivers eager to rip me off. That reminds me; here are two more characteristics I learned about Russians:

1) They try to have a staring contest with you all the time. They simply won’t stop looking at you and it gets pretty creepy. Sometimes I feel like they want to eat me. The one nice thing though is that the girls are never shy to show that they’re checking you out, as in they don’t look away when you look back at them. Russian girls also have some of the nice curves, which come as no surprise since they are best known for their ballet and gymnastics.

2) They wear nearly nothing. Fully grown men walk around shirtless, or in a button-up without buttoning anything. Women wear spandex or jeans as tight and short as possible without the slightest care for what they’re exposing. It’s as if Russia is one huge beach.

Once I evaded the scary people, I met my driver along with a fellow solo Korean traveler, Jeong Woo (I’ll refer to him as JW). Apparently he was on the same train as me the whole time, just in a different vehicle. As we drove to a Korean home-stay called 예지네집 (Yaeji’s house), I found out that JW was a balling partying 20-year-old piano major from Hanyang University with hands the size of my face.

The moment I arrived in my room I ripped my clothes off like Superman would from his office wear and had the most satisfying shower of my life. 3 days worth of transsiberian grime washed away. I wish it’d never ended. But I also shed about a fourth of my hair from malnutrition, which wasn’t very pretty.

After a nice Korean dinner (our first normal meal in days) JW and I headed out to see the surrounding neighborhood and the sunset. Our home-stay is located at the top of a rustic hillside and the air had a kind of crisp that felt like a nice clean shower compared to Korea’s sticky, goopy atmosphere.

View from veranda

What struck me most about the houses were the colors. The view looked like a mosaic. Enough with the words, let the pictures do the talking:

After about an hour, JW and I became hungry again and dropped by our rooms to pick up some money. Suddenly a short kid named Gyu, the house owner’s nephew, came up to us while we were leaving. I seriously thought he was in middle school with that height and voice, but he was a year older than me and going into law school in September. He told us that he was bored and had nothing to do until midnight the next day, which was when his plane left for Korea. Jackpot. With the exception of one year - when he schooled in Texas as an exchange student - this guy had lived in Russia for a lot of his life. The point is that when you have someone who is fluent in Russian and has nothing to do, you make him your tour guide.

For as scrawny as he was, he seemed to know literally half the people in Irkutsk. During the half hour it took for us to walk to the supermarket, we spent about twenty of it shaking hands with his friends that we ran into. Then JW and I would try to converse awkwardly with them in a mix of Russian and English (Ringlish). The Russian friends asked Gyu to invite us “newcomers” to go get a taste of Russian clubs, but I was a minor. I told Gyu and JW that it was perfectly fine to go without me but they insisted that it was okay because we had to wake up early tomorrow to tour Irkutsk and Lake Baikal. I felt like a party pooper.

The one unusual thing about the supermarket was that the fruits, vegetables, cheeses and yogurt were all located in a separate room at the temperature of a refrigerator. It was pretty amusing to watch people push their carts down the aisles with their teeth chattering violently. That should teach them a lesson to put some more clothes on.

Another shocking discovery I made about the Russians were their unique taste buds. In the snack aisle I ran into my favorite Lays potato chips, only to find out that they were either crab-flavored or fish egg-flavored. As much as I liked to try out new things, I had to pass on this one.

Crab

Fish egg

It was around 11 when we began walking back, and Gyu told us never ever to walk around at night without someone who could speak Russian. That didn’t sound too good. He explained that Russian teenagers spend their free time cornering and robbing tourists. Even the police are corrupt here; since their wages are so low, they tend to make a significant portion of their income by pestering foreigners and pointing out fictional problems with their Russian visas, and demanding up to $100 at a time.

The path in which Gyu led us back home was a shortcut, but I would’ve rather walked back the longer way. We had to maneuver through a forest in the complete darkness, and we all had our cell phones out to light the way. I complained and said that this sucked.

“Hey,” Gyu said. “Would you rather come this way or walk past a huge whorehouse-warehouse thing that’s full of thieves, murderers, drug addicts and AIDS? Besides, there aren’t any bears here, just some ticks.” Great. I was the only one wearing shorts. “And I think I saw a ghost once,” Gyu added.

Suddenly, JW’s bag ripped under the weight of his beers. We all screamed, thinking maybe an animal was jumping out to attack us. Then Gyu and I started yelling at JW, half mad and half crying because we were so shaken.

We reached our dwelling at 11:10, only to be scolded at by Gyu’s aunt for being out at night.

Although Gyu and JW had not ditched me to go clubbing because they wanted to wake up early tomorrow, we ended up eating several bags of chips and shortbread cookies, listening to music, playing guitar and discussing life, religion and politics until sunrise, which was our planned wake-up time. Uh oh. None of us were tired by then, so we eventually had to force ourselves to go to sleep, setting the alarm at 8:30.

Well… no one heard any of the alarms, even though JW had set up ten, each a minute apart starting from 8:21 to 8:30. Gyu shook all of us awake at 10:30 instead. Well there goes most of our morning.

Further Along the Transsiberian Railway

Day 3, Sat, 7/25

Russia.

I’d like to happily announce that I’m still alive on my diet of sausages, gooey waterlogged rice and cup noodles. I had to trash the kimchi though because it was stinking up the hallway. Also, my hair is nice and slick with oils and sweat, just in case you wanted to know.

I gave Anton one of my cup noodles and wondered if he’d be able to tolerate the spiciness. He came back to me a few minutes later, sweating a little but giving me thumbs up.

Me and Anton

Sadly, Oliya gets off the train tonight at 1:40 in the morning. She’s been like a true grandmother to me, force feeding me all kinds of her cooking and asking me about my parents and life in America. I asked her if she wanted to take a picture with me, and she blushed and told me to wait a moment. She spent the next three minutes putting on lipstick and brushing her hair, which I found quite flattering.

Me and Oliya

I met this kid named Andrei who was sweating profusely, blasting techno on his cell phone and wearing a black eye. He was also dressed from head to toe in a military uniform. When he first entered my compartment I thought he was going to knife me. His breath was thick with the smell of beer and cigarettes, and he leaned his forearm against the wall to keep himself from falling over.

“Amehleeka,” he said, reaching out his hand. I shook it, and he after that he yelled continuously in Russian for twenty minutes. I just sat huddled in the corner of my bed, scared out of my mind, waiting for this black-eyed drunk soldier to beat me up. Finally he asked, “Smoke?” I shook my head. He grunted and pulled out a bag of rolls and offered me one. “No hungry,” I said, shaking my head again. He grunted once more and placed the entire bag on my lap. Umm thanks you creep.

Wait a minute - if this guy was giving me his food instead of stabbing me in the face, maybe he wasn’t so bad after all. I felt much more comfortable and, long story short, he became one of my best friends on this trip. I learned that Andrei was 22 and blasting things in the Russian Army, and also that he was some sort of an orphan.

“Father, mother,” he said, raising two fingers to represent his parents. “Father, die,” he shrugged, and put down his middle finger. “Mother…” and then he proceeded to mutter to himself in angry Russian, putting down his index finger only half way. I had no idea what to make of this half-finger; was his mother half-dead? Did she abandon him after his father died? It’s a mystery that I’ll never solve, but a half-finger of a mother can’t mean anything good.

Me and Andrei

I also found out that Andrei was going to get off the same station as Oliya. At 1:40AM, I helped carry their bags out to the platform (Jesus, Oliya had like seven that weighed a ton each). There I met Oliya’s lovely family as she kept telling them things like “Reuben Amehleeka Reuben” while she pointed at me. I also met two of Andrei’s friends who were waiting for him, both looking not sober at all. In the end I gave everyone a hug, and Oliya kept waving her finger at me in a concerned grandmotherly way, whispering in Russian what seemed like, “You best watch yourself young man, you hear?” No matter how hard I nodded my head, she didn’t seem convinced. They’re an inseparable couple, sweet old people and paranoia.

And just like that, my roommate was gone.

There was another proctor standing on the platform in front of the adjacent vehicle. Anton told me that her name was Leila and she was only sixteen years old, when I thought she was in her mid-twenties. By this time, Alexei, the one I described earlier as the thief-looking one, had brought all of us vanilla ice cream cones.

“Russian ice cream,” he said, giving me thumbs up. I took a bite and it tasted horrible. But here I learned that Alexei knew some elementary English, which was incredibly helpful. He became the translator as Anton and Leila turned to him every time they wanted to tell me something. Suddenly, while we were quietly nibbling at our cones, Anton pointed at me and Leila and made a highly inappropriate and suggestive gesture. Embarrassed and disgusted, I tossed my nasty ice cream under the train and climbed back inside.

Once the train got rolling, Anton, Alexei and I hung out in my compartment and they began telling me about Russian women and how their beauty and personality surpassed those of any other women in the world. Anton showed me pictures of him and his girlfriend on his camera, while Alexei pulled out his laptop and showed me his “woman,” who was 37 - a decade ahead of him. They asked me if I had a woman myself, and I mentioned that I had an American one, and immediately they responded with grumbles and some thumbs down.

“American woman no. Russian woman yes,” said Alexei with his creepy smile, referring back to the other proctor, Leila. I shook my head.

We exchanged stories and played guitar until around 3:30 in the morning, and I began to feel dead tired. I had to get off at Irktustk(?) at 5:20PM and I was afraid that if I stayed up too late I may end up sleeping thirteen, fourteen hours and missing my stop. That’s when Leila just happened to walk in, apparently bored. Oh boy. I spent the next hour and a half teaching everyone how to use chopsticks and getting overly frustrated whenever someone made a mistake. By 5 o’clock, Alexei opened his laptop and loaded a Russian comedy movie. Unable to understand any of the jokes even if I tried, that did it for me; I fell asleep to everyone else’s obnoxious snickers and knee-slaps.

Me, Alexei and Leila

Me and Anton with his chopsticks

P.S. Anton apparently wants to go to America pretty badly - L.A. in particular - but first he has to learn some English. His valiant attempt at trying to read the first sentence of this entry went something like this: “Eed like to happy annooons that eem steel aleeveh on my deeyet of sah-ooo… um… goo… waterlawg reese and coop noodles.” (I’d like to happily announce that I’m still alive on my diet of sausages, gooey waterlogged rice and cup noodles.)

The Transsiberian Express

Day 2, Fri, 7/24

Russia.

Now I know why (director) made a horror film about the transsiberian express (Title of movie, year). This place gives you the creeps. You can literally hear rusting when you stand next to the boiler. The bathroom has a toilet the size of a large soup bowl, which empties out directly onto the tracks when you flush it (man, I’m never going near train tracks again). The toilet paper is gray, soggy and spotted with mold (thank goodness I brought my own). There’s a tiny sink where water comes out so slowly that you wonder whether the faucet is actually functioning or if it’s just leaking. It’s also one of those annoying taps where you have to keep one hand on it for it to work, so you only have your other hand free to wash your hands and face. I mean, I knew there wasn’t going to be a shower, but it looks like I won’t even be able to wash my hair in the sink. The train also rocks pretty violently so it’s impossible to make a bowl of cup noodles and bring it back to your bed without getting second-degree burns. It’s a huge challenge to fall asleep too, and even if you succeed, chances are that you’ll be shaken awake an hour later with bruises on your head from bumping around. Not to mention, going out in the hallway at nighttime is terrifying; the lights are so dim that you can’t tell if someone’s standing around on the other end of the hallway, so seeing a head suddenly appear out of the blue and walk towards you is not uncommon. The 60-year-old blonde prostitute that hangs around isn’t much of a help either because she’s constantly gibbering to herself. Blugh.

Boiler

There are nine compartments in each vehicle, labeled in ancient Roman numerals, and each one holds four beds. The room is so cramped that it’s quite difficult for me to sit on the edge of my bed without invading the personal space of the person directly in front of me. Each vehicle has a proctor to provide assistance and vacuum the hallways every morning, but again, communication is a huge roadblock. It took me fifteen minutes to understand that the bathroom was inaccessible for around 20 minutes before and after each stop; originally I thought they were simply banning me from using it.

Despite all of these descriptions that probably give you the impression that the transsiberian is a living hell, let me expand throughout the rest of this entry why I could stay on this train for months at my own will. The two main reasons are because of the random Russian friends I’ve made and the mesmerizing scenery.

There are three proctors who exchange shifts. I’ve gotten pretty close with one named Anton, 22, who is fascinated by America and enjoys the various videos I have saved on my laptop. The second proctor, Alexei, 27, is a lot less friendly and looks more like a thief than someone who’s supposed to be helpful, and I swear he’s out to steal my guitar. The third is Anton’s girlfriend, also 22, who’s always smiling and lets me use her outlet to charge my laptop (only the proctor has an outlet). She also lent me her spoon when I had trouble drinking my soup with a pair of chopsticks.

Although each room is made for four, thank God I only have one roommate, Oliya (OHL-yah), and she’s an extremely nice grandmother who seems to love me. We only rarely understand each other but I’ve somehow explained the general outline of my trip and how I attend school in America, NOT Japan for crying out loud. She noticed that I was carrying around Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, and gave me a Russian-pride thumbs up. We always share our food during meals, no matter how hard I try to convince her that I don’t need anything. She just continues to close her eyes and nod gently, almost like my own grandmother, and insists on giving me some of her bread, or offering me a hard-boiled egg after she’s spent a great while slowly peeling off the shell. In return she seems to really enjoy my Korean sausages.

The others on the train are just four or five families, including two boys and four girls around my age. During the day the compartments get really hot and stuffy, and apparently Russians are perfectly fine with prancing through the hallway in mere underwear. This may sound amusing but let me stress that it is in fact not so fun to watch a sweaty, hairy, rotund fat man walk around shirtless, swatting away flies with a towel.

For the first twelve hours or so, I wondered if it was a mistake to bring my guitar; everyone in the hallway would be able to hear it and I was sure that I’d wake up some cranky old couple trying to nap. But once I heard someone blasting Kanye on their speakers, I pulled out my guitar. Oliya looked ecstatic and seemed to ask if I could sing as well. I shook my head vigorously and wished I knew how to say “You’d probably go deaf if I sang,” in Russian.

As I began tuning, several curious heads peeped around the door, including Anton and the shirtless fat guy. I was flushed as the familiar yet dreadful stage fright butterflies bombarded my stomach lining. It took a few minutes for my fidgety fingers to successfully tune the guitar, and by that time Anton was sitting next to me on my bed and more people had arrived. I quietly played through Blackbird and Fly Me to the Moon, but no one seemed to recognize it. I then plucked any other famous American songs I could think of - Green Day, Jack Johnson, Amos Lee, etc. - but everyone just stared and smiled at me, totally clueless. Bah. The one song they did recognize though was Romance by Narciso Yepes and they reacted with a short applause in the end. Unfortunately this didn’t make me any less nervous.

The crowd dissipated after a while, probably because I sucked, except for a few people who decided to sit in my bed as well as the beds above me. Anton asked to hold my guitar, and after figuring out how to hold it, begged me to teach him something. Oh boy. It was quite a challenge, but I’m happy to say that he can now successfully play Mary Had a Little Lamb from beginning to end, which comprises a total of three notes. Anton wore a triumphant smile on his face and bowed, which was followed by more laughter and ovation.

Returning to the scenery I mentioned earlier, I realized the word “mesmerizing” doesn’t do it justice. The rolling hills and green and mountains and rivers and ponds and ducks and Russian kids splashing around are picturesque to say the least. Out-of-this-world could be another way to put it. This place is so beautiful that I feel like I’m not supposed to be here, as if I’m interrupting a scene in a fairytale and my very foreign presence contaminates the setting and ruins all the happy endings. I spend up to four hours leaning against the window in the hallway and only go back inside when my legs are shaking from exhaustion, and immediately regret the sights I’m missing. It’s even worse at night when all I can see outside is the inky blackness and the prostitute that rambles at the end of the hallway.

Stunning castle I spotted across the river, in the middle of nowhere

All I wonder now is if my kid will see the same things that I’m seeing when I send him or her on this trip across the continent, twenty or thirty years from now. Though hopefully by then they’ll have showers.

The ‘Beautiful’ Port City of Gray and Dark-Gray Hues

Still Day 1, Thurs, 7/23

The ‘Beautiful’ Port City of Gray and Dark-Gray Hues

Vladivostok, Russia.

The flight lasted just above two hours, which is also the time difference between Vladivostok and Korea. Waiting in the Customs line lasted almost as long, for there were just three lines for everyone on the plane. Thank God for iPods.

Before I go on, I just want to say that Russians are ginormous and intimidating and could likely kill things by just looking at it. Maybe it’s the sudden shift in cultural perspective that makes me think this way, because Korean are so short and skinny. Moving on.

After the ridiculously long wait in line, I claimed my bag and followed everyone else. The exit to the outside was nothing like any exit I’d ever seen; rather than two huge automatic glass doors revealing a wide swath of people waiting in a semi-circle to greet the arrivers, there stood a single rusty door. So again everyone had to get in single-file line. By the time I stepped out the door, three of the biggest men in the world surrounded me, the width of their very heads blocking out nearly all sunlight. One of them smiled, exposing an entire top row of gold teeth, while another asked, “Taxi?” Before I could answer, the third crazy man tried to grab my bag, assuming that I’d allowed him to carry it to the taxi for me. I swallowed and shook my head; I needed to get to the train station by taxi but the driver was supposed to be carrying a sign had my name written on it. Enter a fourth Russian, much shorter but just as facially intimidating. He blurted, “Reuben,” and pointed to his sign that read “KIM ROBIN.” I nodded, and he shooed away the other three. As mean as he looked, this guy was my lifesaver.

By ‘this guy’ I speak of Anatoly (an-uh-TOLL-ee), also known as The Man. He picked up my guitar and bag and jerked his head, gesturing me to follow him. Despite his size and the weight of my luggage, he walked twice as fast as me, and at one point I thought he was trying to run away with all my stuff. Instead he pointed to a huge, dirty van with two fissures cutting across the front windshield. I bet you no one on this planet would’ve been able to guess that that was a taxi.

He gently placed my bags in the backseat and nodded at me, telling me to get in the front. I opened the door, and to my embarrassment, found myself staring at the wheel. I had completely forgotten that the driver sits on the right in this country. Anatoly stared at me, confused, and I smiled back jokingly. Russian taxi driver’s first impression of 17-year-old Asian boy: Dumb. Ass.

I had learned some elementary Russian before I left Korea (thanks to Freddy Yang and his website), but I quickly found myself flailing my arms about, drawing diagrams on my hand and shouting just to explain simple things like “I’m America” or “17 years old me.” The fact that he didn’t speak a word of English hit me like a truck; I couldn’t find a single English word on street signs or stores either. When I traveled through Europe back in 2005, I was at least able to rely on English to get around and was convinced that everyone in the whole world spoke a bit of it. But in Russia I learned that English is truly not the universal language.

Looking out the window, I noticed that the houses were so torn up that they reminded me of the day I toured North Korea. Roofs were falling apart, walls were packed with cracks and satellite dishes were brick-red from rust. How could people live here?

After about half an hour, I finally began to see gas stations and tall buildings, though they were still pretty dark and grimy from acid rain. We arrived at the train station just after 8PM, and I began to pull out my wallet when Anatoly shook his head implying “not yet,” and got out of the car. He lifted my bags and gestured for me to follow him once again. So this guy was going to escort me all the way to my platform, sweet!

The weather was chilly and the terrible gray sky just decided to drizzle all over my stuff. I worried for my guitar. Along the way Anatoly and I bumped into a handful of homeless people. Unlike Korea, where the beggars usually sit still on the sidewalk with a small basket in front of them, these guys actually wander around and try to block your path, asking you for money. I reached into my pocket but Anatoly shook his head sternly, shooting a vicious look at the beggar. Damn.

He asked for a look at my ticket and found my platform in about ten minutes. I realized that I never would’ve been able to find this place without him, and that scared me. Also during this time a bunch of evil-looking people had been eyeing me. Every other person in the station seemed to be huge and bearded and wearing leather jackets or black hoodies. I can almost remember someone wearing a leather jacket on top of a hoodie. Mommy, I want to go home!

Not. I felt so safe with Anatoly at my side that I could probably take a tour through hell untouched. Unfortunately, he wasn’t going to be there forever. By the time we arrived at the platform I paid him $50 for his troubles - the price he and my travel agent agreed on over the phone. Expecting him to abandon me now, I shook his hand and thanked him, “Spaseeba.” He smiled but instead of leaving, sat down next to me on the bench. Why? I thought maybe he wanted to choke some more money out of me. It was 8:15, and my train didn’t depart until 9:52. Was he actually nice enough to keep me company for an hour and a half? Nah, couldn’t be. It was getting pretty cold and seeing the gold band around his finger, I assumed that he had a wife and children to get back to.

“Nyet,” he said, pointing at the floor and then crossing his arms. He was going to stay here and I couldn’t do anything about it. Wow. Instead of a taxi driver, I had hired a personal Russian bodyguard.

After a while he looked at me in my t-shirt and tried to ask me if I was cold. I shrugged, trying to look tough, but I began to shiver soon afterwards. He nodded knowingly and picked up my bags again, heading back to his car where it was nice and cozy. We sat there awkwardly without saying a word for about ten minutes. Then he pointed at my camera and waved his hand at the buildings and streets outside, suggesting that I had more than enough time to go tour around the town. I felt so stupid, wondering at how I hadn’t yet thought of such a good idea. I nodded and began to get out of the car, but he grunted and pulled the door back shut. Rather than letting me walk around in the cold, he was going to drive me around Vladivostok. I pointed at the gas meter, saying that his services were too much and he didn’t have to waste any more fuel on me. He gruffly muttered “Nyet!” and started his car with a kind of passion that made it seem as if his life depended on his showing me around town. Nice. Anatoly was now an all-in-one Russian bodyguard-tour guide.

The parts of town he showed me were pretty gray and listless, but I’m still in his debt and it was a great way to spend an hour. Vladivostok is after all one of Russia’s most famous port cities. Anatoly drove by a small version of the Louvre glass pyramid while a statue of Lenin towered over it on the right. The sight was unusually funny and gave me an impression that there was a hidden message behind this, perhaps that Russia is bigger and better than France? Anatoly didn’t understand why I was smiling to myself, and instead probably confirmed - after the driver’s seat incident - that I was truly mentally challenged. Maybe that’s why he insisted on not leaving me alone at the station.

Lenin

He parked the car at a beach and we got off briefly to get a whiff of the salty air. Unfortunately this beach was the most depressing beach I had ever walked on. Maybe it was the dull weather that had an influence, who knows, but something else I noticed were the deadly Russian warships that lined the horizon. Christ, I thought I’d walked in on some war. Everyone else there were all leather jacket and mean-looking, and the few women I noticed were prostitutes.

Scary Warships

By the time we came back to the station it was just barely 9. It had gotten much colder so I finally admitted it by pulling out my Exeter jacket. From then on Anatoly and I just sat there, watching and waiting. A group of five rowdy gangsters passed by us holding knives, radiating death and destruction for all humanity. They gave me the ‘you’re-lucky-you’re-not-alone-or-else-we’d-tear-your-limbs-apart’ look. Four of them were so ugly I felt bad instead of feeling scared. The one leading the pack walked with a hunch and wore a face that seemed to be incredibly pissed off by default, as if he were constantly chewing on poo.

The train arrived at 9:40 and I gathered my bags. I pulled out a Korean fan adorned with a pair of daffodils my grandmother had hand-painted, and gave it to Anatoly. I then pulled out a scrap of paper and pen and drew a sloppy family tree that included me, my parents and my grandparents, circling my grandmother and explaining that she painted the flowers. “Spaseeba,” he grunted with a smile, and I found an innocent tourist-looking guy to take a picture of us.

The person grabbed my camera and the rest of my bags and booked it and I never saw him again.

Just kidding. He gave it back to me peacefully. As for Anatoly, instead of just watching me safely board the train and leaving, he insisted on literally coming on with me and making sure that I found my bed and settled in for good. Man will I miss him.

Me and Anatoly, "The Man"