Day 2 of the journey from Saint-Petersburg to Beijing. The Trans-Mongolian railway train arrived at the platform. It is now time to board.
“Yingwoche” (hard sleeper). This word is Chinese, but is written using the romanization system introduced by Mao’s government in 1958, which is called “pinyin”. This writing system was originally meant as the first step to phase out all the Chinese characters, but in the end, the government changed its plan and pinyin only became a system used to mark the pronounciation of the characters to help Chinese children and foreigners to learn Chinese. In China and in some other countries as well, railroad cars are divided into four categories, which are (from the most expensive to the cheapest): soft sleeper, hard sleeper, soft seat, hard seat. The difference not only consist in the softness (or hardness) of the padding, but also in the size of the cabin or the number of seats in a car. For the Trans-Siberian railway, there are only sleepers.
Here is a picture from the interior of the car.
And here is the schedule of the stop-overs. To see a bigger picture, so you can consult the schedule and see the cities where the Trans-Mongolian stops, click here.
While I was seated in my cabin, and the train had just gotten off, the workers in the train went cabin to cabin to check the passports and ask for the country of origin of each traveller. I heard someone shouting many times “Uruguay! Uruguay!” to the worker, who apparently had never heard of that country before. All workers in the train were Chinese, and in the Chinese language, the names of nearly all countries do not sound the same as their standard international form. For instance, “Uruguay” is pronounced, in Chinese “Wulagui” (乌拉圭). Maybe that traveller was the first, or among the first, person from Uruguay to take this train. Later, during a stop-over, as I was standing outside taking picture, this man went to me and asked me “¿Vos hablas español?”, with a Uruguayan accent (which is almost identical to the Argentine one). He took me for a South American, perhaps a Uruguayan, an Argentine, a Chilean or a Brazilian. His name is Gustavo, he was travelling with his sister, Sylvia, who emigrated to Belgium during the era of the military dictatorship in Uruguay. Gustavo and I had various times, some uruguayan mate.
Gustavo introduced me to his cabin mate, Viktor, a Ukrainian who works in a mine in Mongolia. He could only speak Ukrainian and Russian, while Gustavo and Sylvia could only speak Spanish and French. I tried the best I could to translate his Russian to Spanish, but it was very difficult for me who only speaks a little Russian. Later on, a guy from Ecuador, Fransk, a medicine student at Moscow University, who was going to resume his studies in Mongolia with his Mongolian girlfriend that he met in Moscow, replaced me to do the translating. Viktor served us a lot of vodka. I drank so much that night, that I got sick the following day. But I recovered after a couple of hours. Afterwards, I refused to drink more than one or too shooters of vodka!
A night-time stop-over.
In the daytime, there were many stands where one could buy food and water bottles.
A Croatian tourist is taking a picture of an old Russian woman.
At night, it was party time! People screaming and laughing, singing and drinking, and taking pictures of themselves getting wasted. Just another typical party, but this one in a long distance train.
A Croatian and an Englishman are playfighting outside the cabin.
After the party, I met this worker. He wanted something, but I could not understand him. With his hands, he tried to communicate with me. He wanted to see foreign currencies. He is a collector. I brought him some Canadian coins, and also some coins from South America. And he kept them…
Then, he showed me this bill… A North Korean 100 won bill from the year 1978, with Kim Il-Sung on it, in mint condition! I could not believe my eyes. This bill is so rare. And he gave it to me! How many Westerners can brag about having in their possession a North Korean bill from 1978? (North Korea is a country closed to Foreigners, especially to Westerners).
I felt that I owed him something. The coins that I had given him did not even closely match the value of the North Korean bill. So I went back to my cabin and I took the bill that I cared most about: a two canadian dollars bill in good condition. I had been keeping it since 1996, when this bill was being phased out by coins. The person on the bill is Her Majesty the Queen of England, Elizabeth II, Canada’s head of state.
I went to the restaurant car. This little meal cost me around $15. I then realized that I would have to settle for the noodles sold for $1 at the stands in the stations where the train was making stop-overs.
At some station, a worker is replacing or filling up the water system of another train.
This worker seems to be lacking motivation!
Only one window out of every two could be opened. Sometimes, many people were gathered at a window to look outside.
A Swedish couple. The woman is of Somalian origin. It was the first time I met a Somalian person, or someone with Somalian ties. I had many questions to ask her about her country of origin. She was surprised to see a foreigner being interested in her country. She was impressed when I mentioned the name of Siad Barre, Somalia’s last president, since 1991 (date when the coup d’État took place and the civil war started).
After I could sleep three nights alone, this man came to my cabin. He is Zhang Xingping. He had been working in Russia and was going back home in China. He was carrying huge Russian-Chinese dictionaries. He was very nice, but I would have preferred to be alone in my cabin!
And then, I met another person. This man was described by Xingping as a “очень плохо челавек” [sic] (a very bad person). He presented himself as Zhiming Shashou (致命杀手). Only later did I find out the actual meaning of this name. It means “deadly killer”. Furthermore, he is some sort of an international polygamous: he has a wife and children in Russia and in China, and they don’t know about the existence of each other. I met the same kind of person in Peru. He was a very unpleasant person, and fortunately, he was not the one assigned to my cabin.
