Siberian exiles

The Trans-Siberian plays host across the range of Russian society and we shared our carriage with a wide variety of people.

This was no city hopper; many of them were making a journey of several nights, some the whole way to Vladivostok, 7 nights away.

Whilst coming from various backgrounds they seemed to share some things in common, in particular their clothing and their diet.

As soon as they were on board our fellow passengers were stripping down to suit the warm weather, sporting only the bare essentials of Trans-Siberian clothing and turning their carriage in effect into a moving version of their front room.. Polyester was a firm favourite, and no self-respecting passenger travelled without flip flops. In addition, for many time passed very pleasantly in the company of a large quantity of beer and cigarettes.

Everyone, it seemed, also existed on a very similar diet. Passengers arrived at Moscow with bags stuffed to the brim with provisions. Meat and cheese, bread and pungent fish, cucumbers and great jars of pickles.

Noodles featured heavily on everyone‘s menu, convenient as they were in their just-add-water packages. The samovar provided hot water for this purpose, along with slaking the thirst of those who like a nice brew.

Few of our fellow passengers held a strong command of the English language, whilst our Russian could only be described as ‘beginners‘, however, with the winning combination of grunts, wild gestures and the invaluable ‘point it’ book we managed to meet some interesting types along the route and learn a little about their lives.

A few of the more memorable included:

The provodnitsas
As attendants in your carriage, the provodnitsa (female) or provodnaya (male) is the beating heart of the train. On such a long train journey each carriage carries two providnitsas working in shifts, busying themselves with locking and unlocking the toilets (which they did infuriatingly often), acting as DJ (or was, given the selection of tunes, Dave Pearce hiding in her little cabin?), vacuuming the corridor and each carriage (every day!), dispensing tea and noodles and supervising passengers at every stop, chivvying the stragglers back on board before they became stranded in Siberia.

On the Rossiya service to Irkutsk our attendants were particularly good fun, both of them large buxom bottle-blonds who found themselves the butt of many of the numerous drunken soldiers’ pranks, suffering them like patient schoolmarms would an unruly school trip to Alton Towers.


Alexei the drunken soldier
A friendly but all the same rather scary off-duty soldier. When his copious offers to us of a good swig from his collection of vodka of rather dubious provenance were politely (but wisely) refused this John Terry lookalike resolved to show use his army home videos via his mobile phone. Our firm favourite had to be one of him and comrades cleaning out the toilet block, aggressively brandishing mops to 50 Cent’s ‘In da club’.

A scorpion on his right pectoral, Alexei had an unnerving habit of making throat slitting gestures, but perhaps it was better to stick with him rather than his mate. If Alexei was scary his mate was terrifying. Introducing himself by drunkenly trying to set fire to Lara with his cigarette lighter, he proceeded to spend the rest of the journey swigging vodka or sleeping off its effects

The bear
Never changing once of his checked shirt and voluminous trousers, Vladimir started as he meant to go on for the journey with a good solid 20 hour snooze (we later heard unconfirmed reports that earth tremors as far away as Murmansk had been attributed to his impressive snores). With his immense frame (towering a good half foot over me, with shoulders which would put Atlas in the shade), his love of large meat-based dishes and his obvious penchant for hibernation he soon earned the sobriquet ‘the bear’.

Although lacking a word of English the bear’s good nature allowed him to convey to us details of his hometown (somewhere near the Altai Mountains) and his profession (a lorry driver?). Stetched out on his bunk, his feet poking into the corridor, the bear loved to bury himself away in a good car magazine and try and ignore the pre-coital activities of the couple in the bunk below.

The eastern chavs
High on the hormone-inducing scent of polyester soaked in BO and cigarette smoke, Mr and Mrs Chav couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Perhaps pock-marked hubby had just been released from prison, or his svelte missus had decided to return to his loving arms having stormed off across the country following a lover's tiff, but whatever it was their love was such that, when in each other's arms, others simply disappeared into the worn upholstery.

Mrs Chav made up the final member of our four bed cabin, leaving hubby and frumpy, eleven-year old, be-mulleted Master Chav to sleep in the cheap seats further down the train. Such was the ardour of her paramour though that he was always to be found nuzzling his dearest as dawn broke in our carriage, his sweet cooings waking us up in a manner no alarm clock could come near. Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘a quick bunk up…’


Alexei the fighter pilot
Appearances can be deceptive but no careers adviser could guess that soft, doe-eyed Alexei was a fighter pilot. Somewhat sceptical of his claims, we were treated to pictures of his plane (a fearsome-looking SU-24 bomber) and colleagues, along with assurances that his participation in bombing the heck out of Chechnya was in the best interests of all.

After showing us his squadron’s tattoo - an eagle (well it made a change from scorpions) - and some rather racy pictures of his wife Alexei made room for his companions, his brother, Sergei, an equally dappy-looking chap, who worked for Cadbury’s, and some tubby bloke with an endearing laugh who fed us nuts.

Sergei and Ira
Like surly teenagers the world over, Ira made full use of the plentiful opportunities the Trans-Sib offered for long lie-ins.

Her father, an amiable army instructor had a clear fondness for his dayglo orange sleeveless top and fragrant fish. He kindly took the trouble to introduce us to the delights of storing smoked fish in a confined space for a number of days.