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 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*
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