From Switzerland to Viet Naam, overland, 2005.

Part Three: The TransSib from Moscow to Beijing -2

10th Feb First off, I had a quiet moment in the loo when we stopped for 4 minutes, so I was able to re-listen to my MP3... Midday on the 9th of Feb was BALEZINO (which sounds as if it ought to be in Italy). ************** 10th Feb (cont.) Our next stop is scheduled in one hour. Or that could be 25 hrs. There is no indication on the train schedule of the days, so your guess is as good as mine. I think I mentioned that I didn't want to waste my drinking water, so I ended up sterilising my apples with vodka. Well, it worked even better on baby kumquat. The same lady also had ripe grapes (from the Crimea?), but I hadn't tasted kumquat for years, so it seemed like a good idea at the time... which is probably why I was spending a long, quiet moment in the little room at the end of the corridor! ************ 5a.m. Swiss time and either the attendant was being rather rude, or we shall be in OMSK in 1 hour. ************ Typical English conversation thread: food, therefore the discussion turns to lavatories.... But I've noticed something that looks like a great idea. The toilet seems to flush with hot water (from the samovar?). I reckon that's something that could be incorporated all over the place. It certainly seems to be powerful enough to leave the stainless steel bowl in a much better condition than you would imagine. ************* In the corridor, one of the Chinese attendants has just given me some exotic fruit. small, crab-apple size, lacquered red, rather like the cormorants I used to see in the Hong Kong market years ago. The lacquer is sweet, but the fruit is very slightly sour. Each of them has been cored, to remove either pips or stones, and the attendant obviously likes them very much, because he's just shown me a bag that must contain a couple of kilos or more, and he had two more bags of same beside his pillow in his compartment. He said they were "sore". Whether he meant they were sour I don't know... it would seem to be an odd word to make up his total English vocabulary. 'Sor' is beer in Hungarian, but it aint that! ************* It's quite interesting looking out of the windows at the moment. I've set up a convention of filming back the way we've come through the left-hand window and forward towards the Engine through the right hand window. I can understand what all the assistants, technicians and other 'credits' were doing in Michael Palin's TransSib film trip: they were obviously frantically cleaning

windows! The grime makes it very difficult to focus through the double glazing and, although I have used a fare dose of vodka on the inside (windows, not me) the accumulated grime from the engines AND each and every coal-heated samovar means that the view of the outside is rather like looking through the bottom of a beer mug. Which is not good news for the participants on my 'documentary' course. The idea is to give them the rushes and see what each group makes of them. The odd shots I've taken outside are pristine clear, so the contrast may be really too much. ************* Dusk has rolled down like thunder and I think the mixture of my timetable and that of the Japanese is getting to me. Good night. ...I've offered my compartment-mate a Swiss-produced "English Toffee" ************* The continuing saga of Beijing Plaice A bleary-eyed morning... and I've lost track of the days. Outside, it looks very familiar... suddenly I'm travelling through Swiss scenery. It looks so familiar that I have to make an effort to keep filming for my prospective students. Perhaps, as the windows are so mucky, I should phone a colleague in Geneva and ask him to send some stock Swiss footage and then tell the course participants that it's actually Siberia! After this morning's visit to the loo, I think perhaps I was being too interpretative yesterday. Of course, it's minus 20 outside, so when you flush the toilet, the water is appreciably warmer than the outside air, so that possibly causes the steam... Nevertheless, I think my first interpretation might provide a useful idea for railway companies. ************* Just been down to buy some food from the sister of the little old lady I met the day before yesterday... same headscarf, anyway. I've got a litre of pineapple juice, some pears, dried beef, a loaf of triangular-shaped bread and a couple of bottles of beer and the Oriental equivalent of Twiglets beef-flavoured crisps from Korea north or south, Ive no idea. And another Bounty bar. With a couple of cups of leek soup, it'll be a feast fit for a king. A king all alone in his cabin, because the Japanese have decided to eat in the Restaurant Car, and the young Norwegians are busy looking after the shortest of their number (about 1m 95) who overdid the vodka during the night. So I wish you a hearty... whatever. ************* Before Irkutsk Our morning ritual of sharing packet soups: the Japanese gave me a sea wood soup and also a pot noodle that was lots of vermicelli and a separate packet that I had to promise to add when everything was well mixed; I gave them a supermarket 'Celestine', a 'Minestrone' and a vegetable soup. I also had some bread to spare that was still remarkably fresh. We then ate (again a ritual?) in our separate compartments: we've never actually sat down together to dine.... The sea wood of course turned out to be seaweed, which was very pleasant, reminiscent of kelp in south Wales and north Somerset. As I was finishing, my

'flatmate' brought me some tofu spiced up with glutamate and what tasted like mint sauce. I've never really taken to tofu, but it did jog a couple of memories... somehow related, but I'm not sure why, except for the obvious relationship if place. I was taken back to my time at Courtaulds in 1958/59, where they were producing something called 'kesp', a meat substitute being tested on the employees (a by-product of one of the cellulose spinning processes, I think). The 'chicken' version worked quite well, because the flavour wasn't bad at all and the texture was quite acceptable. The 'beef' tasted like mild Bovril, but the texture was not at all meaty, matey. The second memory by association was of a suggestion that I put in the 'Suggestion Box' about an improvement to 'Spinning Boxes' on the viscose production line. Eventually I had a visit from someone who explained that, if I had been blue-collar, I would have received a worthwhile cash prize, but as I was 'staff', kind of articled to the company, I was not entitled to anything except a 'thank you'. ............. I remember it was round about the time that Graham Hayles and I were spending part of our lunch hour running round the Courtaulds' cricket pitch. It must have been winter because I remember the snow on the ground intimately, as I was running barefoot. ************* Back to the present. The timetable (corrected by the Chinese attendant) suggests that we shall pass through Irkutsk I and Irkutsk II a little before and a little after midnight Moscow time, so, if that's true, and it's really in the middle of the night, it will be another good reason why I should travel back by the same route: I absolutely want to see Lake Baikal. From one end of the lake to the other is about the same distance as from Zurich to Paris, so even by TGV it would take a few hours! I went to stock up on smoked ham and pickles in the Russian Restaurant car and met a TransSib employee who was amazed that I was going both ways: "No-one EVER does both ways in the same pogrom; either the fly out and the train back, or verse vice-A", which I thought was rather quaint. How do you prefer your verse? With or without flies? In or out of the ghetto? ************* It's Saturday morning (12th Feb), so at last I can start to (re)orientate myself yet again. We're pulling into somewhere, so more news later. *************