A Brief Window Into Train Life
Brandon(1) and I are sitting in our coupe reading and Erick The Dutchmen sticks his head in and says "Gents," and we sort of nod at him and he sings a Ry Cooder song and he takes our uncomfortable chuckle at the singing as invitation to sit down and so he does. It's a little after 2pm - though time is a little tricky to suss out because the train works on EEST though we're already 2 time zones east of EEST and also the sun is out about 19 hours a day and it can all be a little confusing -- and Erick is already into his seventh or eighth beer. The Trans-Siberian Railway is a little like a freshman dorm in terms of the generally unguarded behaviors occurring on it around the clock but the fact that Erick is a professional tour guide and currently responsible for an 18 person tour makes his current state at least a little concerning. Members of his tour see him in our coupe and they stick their head in like, "Is everything okay?" but they seem basically glad he's with us and not with them and they let him stay and Erick launches into a two hour one-man-show of rhetorical acrobatics as he tells us:
1. That 90% of the world is uninformed about everything that has ever happened ever;
2. That the US is basically over because the Chinese already own "all the gold";
3. That the Soviets cured cancer but Gorbachev screwed that all up;
4. That one of two total comets will be hitting/destroying Earth in October;
5. That the movie Avatar - I'm not at all making this up - made him realize that we are all avatars just like the movie and that we can all choose our future avatars and we should probably bear that in mind;
And over the course of these two hours Erick drinks another 5 beers and cuts his index finger wide open with the knife he's trying to use to cut a stick of beef. He holds his finger over his head for awhile and drips more blood than seems okay on himself then licks it all off and mumbles something about toilet paper and off he goes.
We're three days in and this is train life. Electrical sockets are a kind of currency here; the galley is the boozy-smoke-filled center of everything; each day is broken into the 4-5 hour segments of time between stations; I've burned myself on two separate occasions at the samovar; hygiene is becoming a profound issue; and everyone - from the conductors to the idiot Americans to Svetlana in the galley to the poor, unwitting residents of each small town upon whom we descend every 4-5 hours - fears greatly the pitching figure of Erick the Dutchman in the doorway with a song and a knife and an uncut stick of beef in his hand.
Follow me on the twitters (twitter.com/miketsimpson) or email away (miketsimpson@gmail.com)
(1) A note on format: I'm writing this on an iPhone in the Notes app in the middle of Siberia where Internet access is extraordinarily expensive. Apologies for: brevity, lack of clarity, and extreme sloppiness in presentation/typography).