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.)