When it’s time to go, I had only 3 hours of sleep, obviously I feel tired but like I said, it’s not a big deal. We find the train station without much trouble (although in the subway in Russia, it’s difficult to find your way since the names of the stations are not always written, and the signs are quite unclear – and only in Russian of course). Soon we are in the train, ready for the biggest train ride of our lives. The same routine starts again, sleep / read / eat / sleep, and the first day goes smoothly. For some reason, since the beginning of the trip, Tuck keeps drinking all the time and going to the bathroom, so we have to get a new bottle of water almost every stop. At the end of the day, we play a Uno card game, just the two of us. Not that we are refusing people willing to join, but there is not a single person in the train able to speak English / German / French / Chinese / any other language than Russian, so it is difficult to make contact.
It is incredibly hot in there because the windows don’t open, but we walk around without T-Shirt so it’s all right. What is not cool is when someone starts eating something that really stinks, like some kind of fish, and after it smells in the entire carriage for hours because we cannot open the window to get the smell out. I guess it is what they call adventure !
Anyway, when we wake up on the second day, that’s when we start to get bored. Actually I keep reading my book so I’m pretty much ok, but Tuck is fed up reading his, so he gets bored. I come down from my berth (we flipped a coin and I got the upper berth, it’s the best one because no one bothers you up there) and join him for another game of UNO. This time the people around us look like they want to join, we explain them how to play using only the words “this”, “ok”, and “not ok”, it seems they understood, let’s start.
We are 5 players, a girl from Belarus, an enormous guy (really huge, I mean I could fit 3 times inside his body), a really stupid guy (until the end of the game, he was still making many mistakes in the game when everybody else understood from the beginning), Tuck and myself.
It is really fun playing all together, we can mostly understand what they say from the context, and we actually learn some words, like the colors, and the numbers. The enormous guy is very funny, he has great facial expressions, and the funniest part is when he picks on the stupid guy. I know it’s not nice to make fun of stupid people, but I have to admit this time it was really funny, because the guy really had the smartness of a three year old hamster. For example in the game you have to put a card of the same color on top of the previous card played, and he kept making mistakes and putting another color…
We keep on playing and drinking some vodka for 3 hours, until we reach a stop in the middle of nowhere (like always !), I feel hungry for dessert so I get out of the train and go around the station looking for some kind of a bakery. The stop is supposed to be 20 minutes so I feel free to take my time. But for some reason, when I come back after only 10 minutes, they already closed the doors. I can see there is no one outside the train, so I start to panick and run towards the train. I manage to get myself inside a carriage but it’s the wrong one. For some reason this one does not communicate with the rest. I get out, run again and finally reach the right carriage. Tuck was waiting for me, really scared that I would miss the train, I have to admit it would not have been fun to be left there, 16 hours away from Moscow, with no phone or passport !
Anyway, it’s now time to sleep, thanks to this card game, the day went pretty fast, and tomorrow in the morning we are supposed to reach Moscow.
The next morning, we impatiently wait to arrive at 11, but it seems like the train is late, so we start another 2 hour game of Uno with our friends. At this time we feel exhausted from the train, I mean, we’ve been in this thing since Monday morning and it’s Wednesday afternoon! But finally, after 56h30, we reach Moscow, we feel so happy to be there, and the city looks wonderful.
I’m glad that you arrived safe in Moscow. I smiled on the part of your post where you were about to be left by the train. It’s a good thing that you found the right carriage.