When making your way to Kazanskaia station in the Moscow Metro crowds, there are glimpses of "what must have been" during the upheavals and deprivations of the early '90s as a few old ladies are begging or standing with a pair of used boots for sale. Babushkas and little kids are hawking pine tree branches for new year decorations or selling home-grown mandarins.
The station buffet: coffee (I ask for "Americano": another daily irony in this country…) and a salad roll is 270 rubles. The is no change on offer. I look at the sales lady. "VAT" she snarls, as her partner sniggers...
Outside in the flittering snow which seeps under the station awning, we wait with baggage for the indicator to direct us to our platform; the whiffs of coal smoke from carriage boilers (even air conditioned "vagons" have these, in case of a power failure...) drift amongst the huddled smokers standing at the platform buffers.
The days of "exciting train reading" provided to tourists by the Soviet state (I have particularly fond memories of a booklet on housing policy and an English copy of the Soviet Constitution being thrust at me on the train from Novosibirsk some 35 years ago...) have been replaced by charm and "soft class" comforts of a brown bag of food goodies and water, broadsheet and tabloid daily papers, a catalogue of lovely Russian Railway souvenirs, and the prices of cups or tea/coffee/Pepsi and junk food available from your (delightful-with gleeful giggle) carriage providnitsta (when she is not cleaning, checking your passport, vacuuming the corridors or belting the undercarriage with her broom or steel lever). The "rest rooms" are no longer the squat-stainless-steel-pedal-on-floor-freezing-draft-up-arse-from-tracks-below variety, but lovely retention loos, which are whiffingly emptied by a platform sullage truck during extended station stops.
My compartment occupant is a bluff 30's Russian guy who, once he sorts out I am "Angliskee", starts plying me with food (I do the same: so glad I hit the "24 Yaca" last night to stock up).
The Restaurant car attendant (all teeth, tatts, tits, tight leather mini-skirt and cool efficiency) visits with menu card to arrange "free dinner" of "bif" or "fish" (which could, apparently be delivered at any time convenient to the dining crew). The menu also offers something alarmingly called "Pork in French". I opt for beef. Other delights include: "Tea, black, premium, industrial production", "Croissant in individual packaging industrial unfilled", "Gem in the glass in an assortment in industrial packaging industrial unfilled". The free market has arrived, but not yet, it seems, the enticing marketing language...
With the kupe door closed, Russian bloke (Alexei!!) conspiratorially digs out a huge bottle of vodka, offers to share ("Not just now...") slings a shot into the Russian Railways tea cup, downs it and hoes into a huge beetroot and yogurt salad. Three more shots, and it's time to sample the free video on offer in soft class... The next 12 hours became an education in Russian binge TV with occasional snoring in a miasma of sweated vodka fumes. This was punctuated by visits from the lovely Providnitsta, plying me with green tea: " 'Premium' individually packaged industrial production" and informing me I was the "only foreigner" on the train, and encouraging fresh air/photography breaks when the train slowed for long station stops.
Outside the carriage were villages of dark, small wooden houses and black picket fences under heavy snow, scattered over ridges above frozen, snowy rivers or clustered around minimal railway platforms with sparse shelters and bathed in orange streetlighting. Inside the kupe, it was the "entertainment" schlock of B Grade American Vietnam war movies, overdubbed in bluff Russian; a black and white 1930s movie of the delights of Socialist Family Life and adoption of a child within a multi-family shared apartment under Papa Stalin. (Given that I was reading the stark, serial cruelties of Stalinist orphanages for the children of "political enemy" prisoners in "Second Hand Time", the ironies were telling...). I was then "entertained" by 5(ish) episodes (I was getting a bit vague and dozy by this time, as was my travelling companion who was fighting the vodka and the snores to be awake for his post-midnight stop in Kazan) of a mini series about Russian war heroes in ?Chechnya fighting guerrilla outrages for the love of family and countryyyyyzzzzzzzzzz..........
Shaken awake by a burst of loud Russian at 2.15am: Providnitsta is waking us for Kazan. "Kazan!!" shouted the enlivened Alexei, prodding my shoulder, pointing excitedly. On the distant horizon, shimmering on the flat, frosty landscape, floated a huge, luminous green, yellow-tipped-minareted, floodlit mosque floating among blue-lit new year trees and backlit in amber from city streetlights. The train eased slowly through a long curve around the mosque, dark apartments, and an all-night MacDonalds into the fluorescence of Kazan station. Much excitement. Much handshaking. Repeated fond farewells... A sudden thump on the window and a big platform farewell wave and Alexei morphed into the darkness and muffled station announcements as I drifted into fitful sleep.
Morning, and hot tea from the car's samovar as the "other" providnitsta (they work as partners in 12 hour shifts, also cooking for each other in their little carriage-end alcove) let me know I was the only passenger left in the carriage until Ekaterinburg "because new year"... So: Lunch, and first experience of the "Pectopah" on the train.
The dining car is elegantly curtained with gilt-railed comfy booths in brown leatherette. The only occupants are two young blokes playing backgammon in the end booth; a pair of feet sticks out from the opposite bench. One player sees me coming and leans over to twist the toe of the prone leg. Up leaps the taut teeth-tatts-tits-leather gal from yesterday who is suddenly all business. Something hamburgerish with chopped cucumber and tomato is served with a warm Russian chardy.
Druzhino: this afternoon's 20 minute service stop. A large yellow-brown mongrel appears from between picket fences, pacing the slowing train over snow drifts as we crawl into the platform. The slower Ulan Ude "express" is already there - to be overtaken by us - and huddles of north Asian faces cluster in the platform snow for a smoke break. The dining car attendants from both trains place food scraps on the platform for the gaunt, local dog. The providnitstas give the undercarriage a broom-and-steel-scraper de-icing belting as the locomotives are changed (so that was the thumping that woke me in Vyatske Pommany at 4am...). A brisk walk in the -2 degrees on the platform: before departing, the providnitsta checks I am back on board: "Home?".
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Ekaterinburg: the city where the Tsar and his family were murdered in a cellar (where the site is now a sombrely golden Cathedral of the Blood in memory of the now sainted family, and their loyal servants). It is also the city of Boris Yeltsin, local hero of democracy, with an American-style Presidential Museum in his honour. It is exceptionally good.
New Year's Eve: I'm directed to the supermarket behind the hotel for a dinner box ("Everything else is booked out or expensive... tomorrow night too!"). Local TV is showing (in amongst glitzy variety shows) 2016 in review, and "Back The Future" dubbed into Russian. I escape to the massive ice castle and snowy angel sculptures in 1905 Square where cheerful crowds are gearing up for midnight, parking their unopened champagne on castle walls of ice bricks, dancing to the "doof-doof" music and building-projections in the falling snow, sliding down the ice slides on cardboard mats (mostly adults), and taking selfies with Old Father Frost (mostly adults).... I last until only 11.15 after 25 hours of train, sleeping through the promised fireworks...
Early sunrise (that would be 10am) on New Year's Day: Grinding up hill in the westbound tram, the surly conductress - glued to her "high chair" at the rear door - swipes 24 rubles and points me towards the front in a basic Comintern-austerity-steel-with-many-internal-coats-of-custard-like-grey-paint Czech-built tram from the 1960's. My company is 4 bedraggled older men, all significantly the worse for wear, either trying to find their way home or else sleeping it off in a warm tram until they CAN find their way home... The sour, dank stench of last night's sweated vodka, reeks through the tram's rumblings and sad, dangling New Year tinsel decorations along the foggy windows. After several blocks of crumbling 1960's apartments I see a "period photo" to take, and step off the tram, into thigh deep snow. In front of me are dilapidated Soviet-era factories of some sort. To my right, over the graffitied wall, I hear the high-pitched jangling and occasional donging of Russian Orthodox Church bells.
I'm here to experience what my guide book tells me is a Stalin-era transport experience: a long single-track roadside tramway unaltered since 1935, surrounded by traditional carved wooden Siberian housing (once threatened with destruction for more 1970's high rise). A blue metal sign with a white painted tram and an "11" swings high from the wires above the stop across the road. A rusted sign in the wooden shed says to expect a tram every "49 to 20" minutes. It's 20, and I join half a dozen passengers with skis who trundle to the end of the single track on the rolling, uncertain rails, with a line of squat, dark, wooden, filigreed houses on the left and leafless trees clearing to the right to reveal ice-bound wharves and a two kilometre expanse of frozen river. The ski guys strap and layer up, heading over to cross the river towards a distant forested park. Last night's transfer driver suggested I go there also to enjoy how Russians recover from New Year. Being ski-less, I take several trams from the massive black, snow covered memorial to the Great Patriotic War at VIZ, through new industrial estates attached to Soviet-era high-rise dormitory suburbs, picking up families and kids with toboggans. We terminate at a hilly forest alive with strolling local families, skiers, tobogganing littlies and mothers pushing babies over the snow in strollers mounted on attachable sleds. On the river: some serious ice fishing.
The city was very closed for new year, so, after risking an allegedly ethnic restaurant where the rather strange food was blamed on Italians and served by a student recently returned from New Zealand, I sampled some local TV. If you can imagine "Russia's Got Talent", commencing with the panel of judges (an "Ellen", a straight-man in a suit who spent most of the program falling over props, a kind of prim Maria Venuti - dressed as an ageing Snow Maiden, a flamboyant overweight older guy as Old Father Frost - and a hyper-manic younger host with a "rug" - or possibly even worse - a transplanted "helmet" of wiry hair... all singing "Jingle Bells" in Russian, then you have the high point of the show. The rest was eye-bending schlock.
From that point it all became tastelessly, scarily, lamely addictive.... The goal seems for amateurs to perform, impersonating a famous(ish) person. (The real version of the artiste is briefly sampled on video before the "appropriated" performance begins). The make-up artists have a lot to answer for: female performers looked like bad drag. Males looked like child's paintings of the person (such as "The Gypsy Kings").
Contestant #1:(an over-filled kaftan of) "Gloria Gaynor" staggering down three stairs, blacked up, singing "I Will Survive" surrounded by 20 male and female boxers doing "the moves".... The production is pure Eurovision in the usual "Got Talent" stadium with the judging panel at the front (who appeared to enjoy every act immensely, with declining degrees of immensity as the show rolled into its second hour with a moderately bad "Madonna"). The singing was EXCELLENT....
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The wisdom of Tour Guides: Yekaterinburg:
"I was a child of Communism. I am agnostic but I have friends who believe. The Russian Orthodox Church is now rich and powerful again. They have the ear of Putin... In the second democratic election, even after the mistakes of 1991 - Chechen War... collapse of the Ruble... massive job losses... workers being paid in the product they produced such as nails or cosmetics then being expected to barter for food... I voted for Yeltsin. He was the only one who could unify others to beat the Communists. He started with a 5% approval but used western election methods and the money of the oligarchs to fund his campaign, so he owed them after winning...
A Russian Central TV crew has been in Ekaterinburg, making a program about the century since 1917. The remains of the last two Romanov princesses have been found and identified. They believe Putin will inter them in St Petersburg with the rest of the family next year. The TV crew thought Putin planned to bury Lenin with his mother in St Petersburg as well, as Lenin wished, but really to shut down the Red Square mausoleum... “If they are from Russian Central TV, then the government want them to do this program”.
“See these apartments on the Main Street. See how the post office, KGB lodgings and 1920's apartments start off as Soviet Functional Style: no decoration. Purely utilitarian with lots of light. Now see: Stalin complained that buildings of a strong and cultured country should reflect that. See how there are more and more Russian classical revival features and columns as we drive into the 1940's. See here our columned Public Baths. Kruschev visited in late 1950's becoming angrier and angrier. He stopped the car here: "You decorate/public baths so expensively when good Soviet citizens are living in barracks or several families to an apartment!" That's how the plain Kruschev apartments of the 60's happened. Other countries have architectural trends. In Russia, we can recognise which President built in what style."
The tour guide wisdom continued even during the 3am pick-up for the train to Irkutsk. At 3.15 I was being driven (somewhat dazedly) around floodlit Russian Classical Architecture in the side streets on the way to the station, while national conscription into the Russian Army ("...now only one year... not like two, under the Communists..") was described in eye-glazing detail.
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I'm assured that the "Rossiya" is the Russian Railways' finest long distance express train. It travels seven and a half days each way from Moscow to Vladivostok and seems a little shabbier than Train 56. The service is not so slick (on first blush), and the dining car does not run to wine (apart from champagne). The free reading is much the same, except for a glossy magazine with 50 pages of chess puzzles given to every soft class passenger.
Only in Russia.
