Fast Train 16 Moscow – Archangelsk

I just returned from my four day vacation in northern Russia: Archangelsk. And although I have very many great stories to share, for some reason, I can’t adequately turn them into words at the moment. Usually the writing genius strikes at approximately 1 a.m., so I will hope that later tonight the words I can come up with will adequately describe my experience. Because the excerpts I just wrote are really really bad and don’t capture what seemed to me to be a sort of magical and unbelievable trip….

And so begins what will definitely end up being a very long, multiple entry story of my last five days. My train to Archangelsk left from Yaroslavl at 2:15 p.m. on Halloween, October 31. However I arrived at the train station at approximately 11:30. You ask, why? And I say that Margarita was driving me crazy. So, I just told her that my train left a lot earlier than it actually did. This was a brilliant plan until she wanted to look at my ticket. She wanted to make sure the train was leaving from the main Yaroslavl station and not the Yaroslavl (Moscow) station. But I just sort of refused and ran out of the apartment. So I sat at the train station for a long time just people watching. So then finally the train came and we all got on. And I found the correct wagon but I didn’t understand the seating. It was a platskart wagon so there are open compartments of 6 people in each compartment. Except the seats were numbered for both a sleeping wagon (which I was in) and a sitting only wagon (which would have held a lot more people). So I just stood in the aisle where I thought my seat was until this man told me it was impossible for another person to be sitting in that area as it was already full and he pointed me to the correct place. And then I just sat down and took a deep breath. And realized that I had 20 hours to go. And I was already exhausted from waiting for the train and getting to the right platform and finding the wagon and then my seat.

So I sat there for a while. My seat mates were two women who essentially immediately made their beds upon receiving their package of sheets and went to bed (at approx 3 p.m.) and another middle aged man who didn’t seem very friendly or talkative. Also everyone immediately took off their shoes and put on their house shoes which they had brought along for the journey. Well, everyone except for me.

So I started to read the magazine that I had bought before my departure. And I sort of read/sort of looked at the pictures for a while. And then the most important event of the journey occurred. New seat mates joined our compartment. They were two men who I would guess were approximately 50 years. Okay, this entry is getting really boring to both write and reread. So I am just going to fast forward to the highlights…

Picnicking with the Russians
The two new men decided it was time to eat. And suddenly the little table was alarmed by loafs of bread, hunks of sausage, cheese, crackers, tea bags, like a billion hard boiled eggs, some container of salt, some larger container of sugar, cookies, hunks of carrot cake. (I am sorry that I used the word “hunk” to describe approximately half of the food.) Moving on. So I was fairly alarmed by the whole magical appearance of all this food. And then one of the guys started talking to me and put a hard boiled egg in front of me. I tried to continue reading. And then he said “Why are you reading….Let’s eat…” And so we had this feast of food and they just kept giving me more pieces of bread or cheese or meat or eggs. And then we drank tea. And it was awesome.

And then we all made up our beds and read until they dimmed the lights and then I just sort of laid there thinking how awesome it was that I had just picnicked with Russians and now the train was speeding towards Archangelsk. And then for some reason everyone got up again and we drank tea again and then we actually went to bed for the night. As in I would sleep for an hour and then wake up either because the train was stopping and so people were getting on or off or because I had to change sleeping positions.

Bloody Nose
Okay, I realize this is gross and not really blog appropriate. But then I got a bloody nose and so I laid there really hoping this was not a “Kit” level bloody nose. As in the bleeding would not spread to my eyes. Because that would have been a very very very bad situation. But luckily it did not spread to my eyes. So that was good.

My Friends Departure
And then I woke up again and the men were bustling about because we had arrived at their station. And then they waved at me and left. And I felt really, really alone and scared. So I went back to bed.

6:30 A.M. Arrival
So then the train lady woke everybody up at 6:00. I was very confused. But I followed along what everybody else was doing and I folded up all my sheets and rolled up my sleeping mattress. And I went to return the sheets to the train lady. Except I had forgotten the towel, so she yelled at me. And then I returned with the towel and she scowled at me. And then we all just sat there. And I was still very confused. And then one of the women in my compartment put on her coat which consisted of like an entire dead fox and his face draped across the back. It was really fairly atrocious. And highly alarming at approximately 6:15 a.m. And then the train slowed into a station and the large letters said Archangelsk. WHAT? I thought we were arriving at 10 a.m. So, I just sat there wondering if maybe this was the Archangelsk Oblast station and we were still 4 hours away from the actual city. But then everybody got up to get off the train. And the scowling train lady was scowling. So I got off. And then I went and sat in the train station from for 3 and a half hours. Because I needed time to compose myself in order to embark upon the next challenges, mainly finding my hotel and checking in. Plus, I knew that the check-in time for the hotel was noon. And although I figured I could show up around 10 or 11. I wasn’t about to show up at 6:45 a.m.

Sitting in the Train Station
Nothing happened. Except these official looking men came and stood about for a while. And I felt like they were just staring at me and waiting for me to move and then they would come and demand large amounts of paperwork and documents and such. But then they just turned out to be waiting for a train. So they got on and left. And I started to breath again.

Public Transportation
Although I had spent a significant amount of time reading the travel guide book that Megan has at school, I had to return it to her before I left for the trip. So my entire knowledge of Archangelsk was confined to a small piece of paper on which I had written down things which seemed important. And I had a mini hand drawn map I had copied down from the book. The map consisted of a box representing the train station, another box far away representing the hotel, and the name of the main street which connected the train station to the center of the city in which my hotel was approximately located. So, exiting the train station, I knew only that I needed to go straight for a long time till I ran into the water and then wander to the right and somewhere there would be my hotel.

So I stood at the marshrootka stop for a very long time. Just reading where all of them were going and desperately hoping that this all worked out. And then two different people tried to ask me directions. And I almost started laughing at them. I wish they knew that they asked directions from the clueless American girl with only a paper map of the city. So then I saw that one of the buses was going down “Sunday street” which was the main street I needed to get to the end of. So I got on and paid. And then we drove. And then at the end of it, we turned left. So I got off and walked back to the right. And at this point, I realized how helpless I was. And how useless the paper map really was. Because it didn’t have any connecting street names between Sunday street and my hotel. I also forgot to mention that I knew the information center was at 8 Freedom Street. And on the paper map, the dot for the information center and the box for my hotel were close together. So then somehow I walked straight and I found Freedom Street. And then I turned to walk towards the water because I thought that I remembered that my hotel was close to the water. And then THERE WAS MY HOTEL! And so I walked into the lobby and sort of just stared at the doorman. And he said “registration?” And I said “da.” And then I checked in, which was made much easier by the fact that the moment the front desk boy saw my U.S. passport he began to speak in English to me. And then the doorman carried by suitcase to my room and wished me a “pleasant relaxation.” And then I took another deep breath. And took a nap for 4 hours.