Experiences

Hot Train Carriages

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Most carriages are of East German origin solidly built and warm in winter. Each carriage is staffed by an attendant whose “den” is a compartment at the end of the carriage. She collects your tickets, lets down the steps at stations, and comes round with a vacuum cleaner and a small broom dipped in a bucket of dirty water to keep the carpets swept. She maintains the samovar, opposite her compartment, which provides a continuous supply of boiling water for drinks and cups of dried soup. She is the ruler over all that happens in the carriage and you are her subject.

The only place where passengers may smoke is in the unheated area between carriages. In second class, there is a bathroom (such as it is) at both ends of the carriage and compartments have four births…two on each side with a little ladder that swings out for the person lurching onto the top bunk. (First class has only two bunks in each compartment but is twice the price so we are going second class.) People wear slippers to pad around in especially when headed toward the toilet where the floor is usually wet. Track suits are the fashionable attire of the Russians. There is a small table in-between the two bottom births under the window that passengers can use to share their lunches with each other and on which sets the vodka bottle.

During the day you will find yourself sitting on your bottom berth sharing the sitting space with one of the passengers from the top bunks. During the night, with window and door closed, the compartments are claustrophobic and hot as hell (as are most of the homes and public building, by the way.) One night in frantic despair of getting any sleep I take a pillow and lie on the filthy floor in the space between the cars where there is some cool fresh air.

We welcome our breaks from the train at various stops. Bob hops off in the freezing cold in his shorts and does some jumping jacks causing the locals on the platform to stare at this grey-haired foreigner in disbelief. Bob actually wonders later why all the locals don’t do this. This is dangerous however for another reason: if the train takes off while you are off the train all your belongings will be tallied and taken off the train at some unknown station! A Swiss couple we heard about luckily had enough money with them to hire a taxi to speed toward the next stop to overtake the train.

Free-Wheeling Moscow

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Video

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Like in the big Central European cities we visited, there are cranes everywhere… old soviet buildings built during the Stalin era are scheduled to be razed and new one modern ones put up. Foundations for Stalin’s “Seven Sisters, called “Wedding Cakes” by foreigners, were laid in 1947 to mark Moscow’s 800th anniversay when Stalin decided that Moscow suffered from a ‘skyscraper gap’ compared to the USA.

Inextricably linked to all the most important historical and political events in Russia since the 13th century, the Kremlin (built between the 14th and 17th centuries by outstanding Russian and foreign architects) was the residence of the Great Prince and also a religious centre. At the foot of its ramparts, on Red Square, St Basil’s Basilica is one of the most beautiful Russian Orthodox monuments. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Moscow is a free-wheeling city. To the ambitious there are no limits…the streets around the hotels outside Red Square are lined with black Mercedes and BMW’s with black glass windows guarded by black leather clad “goon” drivers…looking like the mafia. I find a fancy hotel where there is free WIFI in the lobby while participants in a European Union meeting saunter back and forth and high-heeled jeans-wearing translators wait around having lively conversation with pipe-smoking goons.

While I sit here uploading text on our blog, Bob wheels off to find the American Medical Clinic where he has a smoldering tooth extracted by a Russian-speaking dentist before we get on the trans-siberian train for Yekaterinburg (birthplace of Yeltsin) Lake Baikal and Mongolia beyond. We miss each other at the end of the day and it costs me 600 roubles to get back to the flat in a taxi because I’m too chicken to hazard the buses and metros.

The night we saw “Spartacus” at the Bolshoi Theater, our bags were searched by monstrously big “security,” one at least seven feet tall. Tanya says, “I never see them there before…” I ask if it is because of terrorism and she says yes, terrorism. By the way, the suicide bomber that killed several of the people in front of the metro entrance was only about 5 minutes from her flat…she says she was at that metro only a few minutes before the bomb went off. People in Moscow worry she says, but what can you do? Yes, I said, I know, thinking of our Josh who works at a restaurant in lower Manhattan.

We are in the ozone at the Bolshoi, the first ballet for Bob who now says he is ready to take ballet lessons if you can picture that and we enjoy conversations with people around us during the intermissions…one older woman from Berkely and a young woman who is here for a few months to volunteer with an AIDS education Non Profit Organization. Come to find out, over a glass of champaign and caviar-filled pastry, her boyfriend, having graduated from Harvard, is working in Chicago as a chef and they are moving to Manhattan…so of course I take her email address to give to Josh.

We leave on a midnight train for Yekaterinburg.

Forest Mushrooms and Vodka

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The night before we leave St. Petersburg, Elena and her childhood friend, Dula, breathlessly excited, bring home bags and boxes of forest mushrooms. Bob and I haven’t eaten and we hope the noises coming from the kitchen mean we will be invited to join them for a meal.

Finally, Elena knocks on the door saying “10 minutes! 10 minutes…come!” When Elena says “I must go out first, I smell a rat and grab my purse to join her. “I am buying the vodka,” I insist, glad I had my wits about me on this one at least! The four of us sit down to the little table set with her best for a wonderful meal of musky black mushrooms stewed with potatoes and “grass” salad…toasting with Vodka, (Bob with water because he doesn’t like the taste of alcohol) every few minutes. Bob and I gratefully hit the sack, leaving the two to themselves to finish off the bottle late into the night.

Our last night in St. Petersburg, we invite Elena and Dula to their favorite restaurant (an inexpensive one we never would have found ourselves) for Shashlik of beef, pork and lamb, eggplant appetizers, “grass” salad with tomatoes, cheese, olives and cucumbers, “beautiful water with gas from the Caucasus mountains” and more vodka…all the while entertained by a resident karaoke singer singing traditional Russian songs and served by a lovely man who treats us all like extended family.

Afterward we buy Elena a bottle of Tequila and she gives me a knit neck scarf and a Russian nesting doll. Dula gives me a little bag of mushrooms she dried herself. We all hug and reluctantly leave for a midnight overnight train that will arrive at 8am in Moscow.

Bob & The Europeans

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There is something in the European demeaner/attitude that brings out my anti-establishment posturing. On the flight from the U.S. to Frankfurt (Lufthansa Air) my seat was broken. “No problem,” said the sweet little blond frauline in braids. “We’ll find you another seat after everyone boards.” “Perhaps in first class” I suggest. (87.3% joking but it’s always worth a try). “I DON’T THINK SO” was the authoritarian autocratic response of this idealic frauline now converted to “big nurse.”

On boarding an open top tour bus in Berlin I ask the attendant (100% joking) whether this is the bus to Paris? I DON’T THINK SO.” is the less than friendly response while he is thinking “scheiskoff!” In Krakow our taxi driver parked his upscale white Mercedes next to a bright orange-colored street rod. “Maybe you ought to paint your taxi that color,” I suggested. Predictably…”I DON’T THINK SO!” Suspect that my attempts at humor need a total revamping.

Europeans perceive Americans as large, loud and naive. (This does not apply to me of course.) I think that the Europeans are a bit dorky. Especially men wearing shorts and regular shoes with black socks. Oh well.

Traveling continues to be a learning experience–the perception/interpretation of other cultures as well as our ability to tolerate/adapt/react is a challenge. The language barrier contributes to frustration but that is my problem, not theirs. I’m in their country. Still working on the smile. But occasionally it is difficult to smile when confronted/frustrated. Am going to schedule a session with the Buddah who seems to have a corner on smiling.

Most encounters however are rewarding. And each day offers the promise of a new adventure/experience–and that is exciting. However, it seems that adrenaline rushes are good for a day or two–then need a day of R&R. This sort of thing did not seem as necessary back in my frivilous youth. The R&R days usually are not planned…they just occur as in “crash.”
Later,
RLG

Ripped Off In Prague

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My medications, that had gotten held up in Custums in Frankfurt, finally arrived in Berlin via fedex. We had planned on taking the train through Austria and Hungary but now we are out of time. We arrived in Prague on the 11th after a scenic train ride along the Labe River and through Dresdon. We had earlier also planned a stop in this town that was totally obliterated during WWII but we kept pushing on in order to make good our train reservations to St. Petersburg Russia.

Riding a hot crowded subway in Prague someone pushes against me from behind…pushes against my backpack…an underground train full of jostling young men…but at our stop the train doors won’t open…I am pushed again as unfamiliar sweaty hands and arms reach around me from behind and tug and pull at the jammed door…I am pushed again and again and finally squeeze through the barely open doors into the cool air of the underground…but something is wrong…I drop my backpack to the ground to find it open and my Mac laptop gone!

My best stuff has been ripped off and I am suddenly bereft…jangled…this woman on whose bathroom wall hangs a poster from the 60’s mandating us all to “Sell All Thou Hast and Buy a Flower!” The next 10 days are a frantic maze of memories of telephones that won’t respond to those free US 800 numbers, emails to banks heading off misused financial information, insurance companies..the American Express. After three days of looking we finally find a Mac wholesaler who agrees to sell us another laptop…but the Visa computers are down…so we return the next day with an American Express card.

Tip: Keep your backpack on the front of you instead of on your back.

U-2 in Berlin

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Coming up out of the U-2 line of the Zoo railway station and thinking of course of the Irish rock band we enter now-rich, Western, happening Berlin. We pore over maps trying to get our bearings once again. Ah, the pension is close…we check in and nervously wait for a friend to fedex 6 months worth of forgotten pharmaceuticals…missing Austria and Hungary for lack of time.

While Bob explores on his own, I savor raw oysters and beer on the 6th floor of the amazing Ka-De-Wa Department store, the largest of it’s kind in all Europe. I make friends with 3 generations of a German family sitting next to me…the smooth-faced 14 year old grandson will soon be off to a Chicago suburb on a rotary exchange program…his mother is worried…the grandmother is too…walking slowly away she waves goodbye and looks back at me twice with a smile…the second time nodding her head…in assent of our brief friendship I think.The grandfather gives me his business card. We know we will never see each other again.

Jet Lag

Posted on by Laughingnomad

After twenty hours sandwiched in a pressurized cabin in the air we drift down through darkness…time and space dissolving down long corridors and up and down escalators. We change money and language. We are different persons now. The next morning…or was it two days ago…we wake at 2 am…I get up to go to the bathroom but someone has moved the door and I walk into a lamp. I wait in the dark again for a time when I will not feel lightheaded and queasy…is it the flu?

Bob prowls the streets. By 2 in the afternoon I want sleep again desperately…I draw the curtains against a frenetic city. Voices…noises…elevators going up and down…somewhere outside my consciousness…I am not in synch…waking dissolves into a not quite dream and then I open my eyes again to a bright light on a hot foreign continent. Feeling disjointed, I try to focus on dazzling urban architecture and public art in Frankfurt. Finally feeling hungry, we devour sausages and boiled cabbage.

Zhangziajie

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Bob and I said goodbye to Jana who would leave later in the day on a train to Shanghai and then home from Hong Kong. The next day we took a train to Zhangjiajie in Hunan Province.

Zhangjiajie
At the Dragon International Hotel Coffee shop…Little Santas and Christmas trees hanging everywhere…like Cinco de Mayo at home…no one knows what the day really celebrates but it is an excuse for a party…Kenny G on the stereo as usual…Old Lang Syne and Winter Wonderland. Our waitress, Liu Wen Qin, is a smiling friendly 19 year old…”excuse me, can I ask you some questions?”…absolutely we say…where are you from…where is your tour group…you are by yourselves? And we quickly become friends. She is from Hubei Province near Yichang…has two sisters one of whom she lives with in a room costing 120 yuan a month ($15) with the husband of her sister and five year old child…the child having a heart condition, she said. When she gets off work at 11am she leads us to the bus that will take us to Zhangjiajie Village in the Wulingjuan Scenic Park about 40 minutes away…by ourselves we never would have found the bus, one of many that all look alike.

Zhangjiajie Village

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The Park is truly stunning with craggy cliffs and columns rising out of sub-tropical growth…the winter fog sitting low in the narrow canyons-a place that would be wonderful for hiking in the summer. Lonely Planet said the best hotel in the village was Minzu Shanzhuang, a thatched, Tujia-run (a Chinese minority group) hotel…but this was winter and it had snowed the night before. We buried ourselves under blankets and hot water bottles because the heater was lousy…and quit altogether during the night…

Back in Zhangjiajie City early the next morning we stumbled off the bus to the welcome-warm smile of Liu Wen Qin at the Dragon International Hotel Coffee Shop…glad for a place to park ourselves for the day until the train for Guangzhou at 6pm. We walked the streets awhile…a bookstore…Diary of Johann D. Rockefeller sitting right next to a book about Mao Tse Tung….in the window Bill Gates” Theories of Management and “How To Win Friends And Influence People.”

Since it was winter and hardly anyone was in the hotel, we spent most of the afternoon speaking English with Liu Wen Qin…Bob teasing her and loving it when, laughing delightedly, she finally catches on. He’s good at flirting with Asian girls 😉 When it was time to leave we paid the bill and by the time we had our backpacks on she had disappeared…the rumor that the Chinese hate to say goodbye apparently true…my throat getting a catch as I write this.

We settled in for what Lonely Planet said was a 24 hour train ride south back toward Hong Kong in a hard sleeper. But 6am the next morning, after only 12 hrs, we were awakened by the train attendant…we are here, she said…Guangzhou…Guangzhou!

After a night in Hong Kong we flew to the Philippines to warm up on a beach. Then we flew back to Hong Kong to catch our flight back to the States.

This is the end of our first year of travel around the world.

Off The Boat…Where?

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Back on the boat from the little gorges tour, a woman appears at our cabin door…in her little English she says “I have a hotel for you…a bus will pick you up and take you to the hotel…Yichang is small…it might be hard to find a hotel room at 11pm.” Later, Jana reads in Lonely Planet that the city has nearly 4 million people! We think she may have meant that the city isn’t as developed for tourists as other cities are…or she is just touting. We would get to Yichang, our ticket destination, by 11:00pm she said.

At 8:30pm we received a knock at the door…”quickly, quickly”…as we frantically packed our things, not expecting to be off the boat until 11pm…and then stood at the exit with our backpacks on for 20 minutes. Finally out the doors and up the ramp, we were led to a waiting bus where about 15 Chinese were frantically elbowing each other to get on. I have never seen anything like it in my life. The company apparently overbooked the bus-we think probably with the last minute addition of the three foreigners! To make room for everyone two poor Chinese guys were forced off the bus by the driver and tour operator after much sustained yelling and waving of arms…controlled rage, Jana called it.

We did not know for sure where the boat had let us off until we passed the lights that covered the construction site of the dam and the locks. It would be another couple hours to Yichang where the bus let us off at our hotel…no third bed as promised…this time the foreigners were fooled.

You Can Always Fool a Foreigner

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Down the Yangze River
From it’s origins in Tibet through Tiger Leaping Gorge to Chonqing every Chinese calls China’s longest river Chang Jiang and at 6300km is the third longest in the world. From Chongqing to the North China Sea just north of Shanghai, this river is known as the Yangze by Westerners. Along the way lie the three gorges, regarded by many as one of the great scenic attractions of China…at least for now.

By 2009 when the mega Three Gorges Dam is completed, the gorges will become part of history…nearly 2 million people will have been dislocated…the water will back up for 550km and flood an area the size of Singapore. The dam is five times as wide as the huge Hoover dam. The wall swallows up 26 million tons of concrete and 250,000 tons of steel. It will yield the equivalent of 18 nuclear power plants…four times more than an power station in Europe and eight times the capacity of the Nile’s Aswan Dam and half as much again as the world’s current largest river dam, the Itaipu Dam in Paraguay. and it is said that it will prevent flooding and relieve the region’s environmentally damaging dependency on fossil fuels. It will cost as much as $36 billion generating electricity that will have cost $2000 for every kilowatt of capacity.

The dam will be an epic show, Lonely Planet says, of the new 21st century Communist might and definitive proof of man’s dominance of nature. Li Peng needed a project of this magnitude, and stature says Simon Winchester in his “The River At The Centre of The World,” to revive his image and the morale of the Party, still shaken by the aftermath of Tiananmen Square tragedy.

Chinese Saying: You Can Always Fool a Foreigner
Foregoing the expensive luxury boats for foreigners, we managed to negotiate a ticket for a local Chinese boat down the Yangtze…paying two guys a dollar each to carry our luggage and lead us down the dock to the right boat which we never would have found by ourselves…although we later had our doubts about whether we were on the right boat anyway…doubts nurtured by other travellers’ stories about scams designed by smaller boats to cash in on the more expensive tickets.

Our tickets were for a four passenger compartment…so small all four people had difficulty all standing up at the same time…our fourth compartment mate being an older well-dressed Chinese man.

Waiting on the boat for an 8pm departure, we were immediately offered the entire compartment to ourselves for an additional 200 yuan (about $25) which we declined. When the older gentleman lit up a cigarette in violation of compartment rules we had our suspicion that he was a pawn in an effort…assuming we wouldn’t want a smoking partner…to extort extra money from us. But they can always fool a foreigner.

Then they came around again and wanted an extra $40 each for three side trips…only one we knew for sure we wanted…the trip down the three little gorges which is said to make it all worthwhile. The first trip was at 6:00am the next morning so we crawled into our bunks early. Waiting for sleep amid the constant noise and activity on the boat I thought about “The Gorge,” the music amphitheater in central Washington that sits absolutely on the edge of the Columbia Gorge. I really didn’t think anything I would see here could beat that. But you can always try to fool a foreigner.

A Chinese Adventure With Three Foreign Devils
Then at 2:30am…we hear banging on the door which swings open and the lights go on…a lady engages in lively conversation with our Chinese roommate of which we understand not a word. The Chinese man pulls out his ticket…it wasn’t clear who wasn’t where they were supposed to be.

The three of us responded typically the way we usually have on the whole China trip: Jana groans, oh it can’t be 6am yet as she pulls out her ticket and tries to figure it all out. I’m not moving, I said. Bob lay motionless with eyes closed…waiting for it all to sort itself out.

The lady leaves. Amid our confusion…and explanations to us in Chinese…our roommate suddenly says “bye bye” and flicks the light out as he leaves…but we had just gotten back to sleep when he came back and pointing to his nose delivered more explanations in Chinese. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with his nose. Then he pointed to his watch…oh, I thought…he points to his nose to indicate himself! Then he points to the door. He was to go at 7am. But you can always try to fool a foreigner.

On top of all this, during the night my heavy rubber slippers provided by the boat had fallen off the end of my upper bunk and hit the Chinese gentleman below me on the head…so before he left in the morning our Chinese friend pointed to my slippers and then to his head…sorry, sorry, sorry I begged him…later-peels of giddy laughter. Next time he sees Westerners on a tour he’ll probably get as far away from them as possible! Couldn’t fool a foreigner on this night.