Midnight in Siberia: A Train Journey into the Heart of Russia by David Greene
Book: Midnight in Siberia: A Train Journey into the Heart of Russia by David Greene
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Authors: David Greene
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And for the next month or so he and I will be one another’s family.
I T IS NEARING midnight in Moscow, and Sergei and I have escaped the ticket office and are sitting in the waiting hall on the second floor at Yaroslavsky station. At a plastic bench nearby, a police officer has paused, menacingly. He reaches down and jostles a young man from his slumber, angrily demanding to see some documents.
“Passport, passport,” he says, using a word that’s equivalent in Russian and English.
The sleeping man, dressed in black pants, holding the leather jacket that was his pillow, wearily reaches into the jacket pocket to find his passport and dutifully presents it. With black hair and a darker complexion, the man appears to be from the Caucasus—which means he is sadly accustomed to visits like this. After a string of terrorist attacks in recent years, Russia’s uniformly unpleasant police spend much of their time interrogating people, mostly men, who have darker skin, suspecting they come from the North Caucasus region, a hotbed of Islamist radicalism. In the United States this kind of profiling is illegal, or in the rarest cases allowed but hugely controversial. In Russia, it carries on unencumbered by laws or debate.
A crackly march begins to blare from the station’s old speakers. This moment of ceremony seems lost on the majority of people in the vast station—many of whom are asleep on benches. But this is an important ritual: the most famous Trans-Siberian train, the No. 2 Rossiya, is boarding to begin its six-day journey to Vladivostok. Russian train stations play music to mark the departure and arrival of the most famous trains. The Red Arrow, the best-known overnight train between Moscow and St. Petersburg, pulls out of St. Petersburg to the tune of “The Hymn to the Great City.” That train is also known for its departure time . It leaves both cities moments before midnight. That allowed businessmen during Soviet times to claim an extra full day of work during a business trip—which they would not have been able to do if their tickets showed a departure at 12:01 a.m.
Our own train is leaving in about an hour. That means one thing: chai (Russian for tea). Having lived in this country for a few years, I can honestly say that the United States missed a golden opportunity to win the Cold War. Forget nuclear negotiations. Depriving this place of its tea would have brought an immediate cry for mercy from the Kremlin. Russians love tea and can’t live without it. Hell, within months of moving to the country, I loved tea and couldn’t live without it. I don’t know if it’s the cold chaos of the place that makes you crave a warm soothing drink, or if it’s an old-fashioned follow-the-crowd syndrome that stuck, but the manic scene at the ticket office has left me in need of . . . tea.
“Chai?” I say.
“Chai,” Sergei says, clearly already thinking the same thing.
We find the best Yaroslavsky Voksal has to offer at this hour—a woman at a kiosk with Lipton tea bags, small brown plastic cups, a rusty electric tea kettle and a bowl full of sugar cubes.
Sergei and I inspect the spread and have the same reaction: “Perfect.”
3 • BORIS
T HE TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILWAY is intertwined in Russian history. After years of struggle, mismanagement, and vicious battles with the land and elements, the railroad—at first, from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok—was completed in 1916 and quickly became a symbol of Russian ingenuity. Russians marveled at how they were able to build a six-thousand-mile-long railroad that held the vast country together and opened up the Asian frontier. The railroad crossed forbidden landscapes and required complicated bridges—one of which shared a prize with the Eiffel Tower for world-class design. Today, “Trans-Siberian” is a catchword for a number of routes. If you travel from St. Petersburg or Moscow to Vladivostok, or from Moscow to Beijing, you are definitely on a
I T IS NEARING midnight in Moscow, and Sergei and I have escaped the ticket office and are sitting in the waiting hall on the second floor at Yaroslavsky station. At a plastic bench nearby, a police officer has paused, menacingly. He reaches down and jostles a young man from his slumber, angrily demanding to see some documents.
“Passport, passport,” he says, using a word that’s equivalent in Russian and English.
The sleeping man, dressed in black pants, holding the leather jacket that was his pillow, wearily reaches into the jacket pocket to find his passport and dutifully presents it. With black hair and a darker complexion, the man appears to be from the Caucasus—which means he is sadly accustomed to visits like this. After a string of terrorist attacks in recent years, Russia’s uniformly unpleasant police spend much of their time interrogating people, mostly men, who have darker skin, suspecting they come from the North Caucasus region, a hotbed of Islamist radicalism. In the United States this kind of profiling is illegal, or in the rarest cases allowed but hugely controversial. In Russia, it carries on unencumbered by laws or debate.
A crackly march begins to blare from the station’s old speakers. This moment of ceremony seems lost on the majority of people in the vast station—many of whom are asleep on benches. But this is an important ritual: the most famous Trans-Siberian train, the No. 2 Rossiya, is boarding to begin its six-day journey to Vladivostok. Russian train stations play music to mark the departure and arrival of the most famous trains. The Red Arrow, the best-known overnight train between Moscow and St. Petersburg, pulls out of St. Petersburg to the tune of “The Hymn to the Great City.” That train is also known for its departure time . It leaves both cities moments before midnight. That allowed businessmen during Soviet times to claim an extra full day of work during a business trip—which they would not have been able to do if their tickets showed a departure at 12:01 a.m.
Our own train is leaving in about an hour. That means one thing: chai (Russian for tea). Having lived in this country for a few years, I can honestly say that the United States missed a golden opportunity to win the Cold War. Forget nuclear negotiations. Depriving this place of its tea would have brought an immediate cry for mercy from the Kremlin. Russians love tea and can’t live without it. Hell, within months of moving to the country, I loved tea and couldn’t live without it. I don’t know if it’s the cold chaos of the place that makes you crave a warm soothing drink, or if it’s an old-fashioned follow-the-crowd syndrome that stuck, but the manic scene at the ticket office has left me in need of . . . tea.
“Chai?” I say.
“Chai,” Sergei says, clearly already thinking the same thing.
We find the best Yaroslavsky Voksal has to offer at this hour—a woman at a kiosk with Lipton tea bags, small brown plastic cups, a rusty electric tea kettle and a bowl full of sugar cubes.
Sergei and I inspect the spread and have the same reaction: “Perfect.”
3 • BORIS
T HE TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILWAY is intertwined in Russian history. After years of struggle, mismanagement, and vicious battles with the land and elements, the railroad—at first, from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok—was completed in 1916 and quickly became a symbol of Russian ingenuity. Russians marveled at how they were able to build a six-thousand-mile-long railroad that held the vast country together and opened up the Asian frontier. The railroad crossed forbidden landscapes and required complicated bridges—one of which shared a prize with the Eiffel Tower for world-class design. Today, “Trans-Siberian” is a catchword for a number of routes. If you travel from St. Petersburg or Moscow to Vladivostok, or from Moscow to Beijing, you are definitely on a
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