History and Routes   Defining the Transsiberian Railroad is like trying to grab a slippery eel. Is it here, there, or where? It is similar in difficulty to trying to define the Orient Express, which has had many destinations over the years. The current Orient Express usually goes to Venice, but sometimes elsewhere.

When American and Canadian routes westward to the Pacific were being established, they didn’t start on the east coast. They didn’t need to, since there was already a railroad network available in the east. They started the transcontinental routes well inland. Similarly, when it was decided to build a Eurasian transcontinental route from the traditional European Russia eastward, it was started well east of the already established rail network within Russia, already connected to Western Europe. Therefore, you cannot say that the transcontinental route traditionally starts in Moscow any more than you can say that the original US transcontinental route starts in New York. Indeed, the routing out of Moscow has varied over the years.

In the same railbuilding period, the early 1880’s, when the US and Canada were laying rails westward to the Pacific, Tsar Aleksander III decreed it was time for Russia to lay rails eastward to the Pacific. Work started east of the Urals, extending the established network. The tsar called it at the time the Большой Сибирский Путь/Bol’shoy Sibirskiy Put’, the “Great Siberian Way”.

Building the railroad involved great expense, logistics for materials, and complex engineering. At some points substandard materials were used, causing accidents. A major problem was getting around Lake Baikal. They tried to ferry trains across on rail ferries, with disastrous results, due to winter ice (don’t forget, this is Siberia). Finally, they yielded and built the section they thought couldn’t be built, the Transbaikal railway around the southern end of the lake. The railroad was essentially built between 1891 and 1916, but it wasn’t until well into the 20th century that the whole route was upgraded to appropriate safety standards.

In the earliest years of the Transsiberian, there was something that is so hard to believe, yet is so quintessentially Russian that you have to believe it. It’s the church car. On the original trains over a century ago, one car, often the last one, was fully outfitted as a Russian Orthodox church. I would love to see a picture of an interior, but all I’ve seen is a picture of the outside with the priest standing at the exit. I think I recall seeing a cross on the roof. Actually, there was really quite a valid reason for having the church car. Many, if not most, Siberian towns and cities didn’t have churches, and the church car, a church on wheels, filled a real need. I’m not sure, but it was probably left at towns and cities along the route and picked up by a later train to continue the route.

So again, where does the Transsiberian go? A logical route would demand connecting major population centers, which means heading eastward toward Beijing. The Transmongolian route takes off in Siberia and does just that. Earlier, the Transmanchurian cut off to Harbin, and then south to Beijing. But Vladivistok, small as it was at the time, was still a major goal on Russian soil. At first, the route through Manchuria via Harbin had a connection back into Russia at Vladivistok (all these routes still exist and are used), but for reasons of national security, it was decided after all to lay track on a northern loop around Manchuria, and then south to Vladivostok, and this is perhaps considered the “classical” route, since it’s all-Russian. In more recent years the BAM route has been built, cutting off at the north end of Lake Baikal and taking a more northerly route to the Pacific.

The regular train running along the classical route Vladivostok-Moscow is considered to be one of the world’s longest single-service railroads. It takes 6 ½ days to cover 9288 kilometers (5772 miles). My first night in Vladivostok I walked down to the recently-restored 1912 station in traditional Russian style to look around. The station is above the tracks, which are otherwise open to the sky. I saw a train that was more decorated than the regular commuter trains, and looking down, I could read Россия/Rossiya “Russia” on each coach. It was 20:00 (8 PM) and I checked the board in the station. The Rossiya was to leave at 20:11, so I went down to the platform and waited. The train was a bit scruffy, but seemed to have regular sleeping compartments and everyone seemed excited at the prospect of a long trip. As the train pulled out, the station loudspeakers played the Russian national anthem, and it just seemed just historically perfect. The conductors, mostly women, leaned out of their doorways and waved back to me. It was a nice introduction to the TSRR. I spotted TSRR trains two other times along our route. Considering that they leave each end daily, and considering the route takes close to a week, there must be quite a number of TSRR trains running at any given time. Of course, there is all kinds of local shorter-distance service between the two extreme ends of the route.

[Please refer ahead to 2013/24 "Transsiberian Railway" for a further discussion of church cars and rail routes, as well as for maps and illustrations.]

From the above one might wonder exactly what train it was that I was going to take. It’s a private train that GW Travel in Britain runs regularly on various routes in Russia, China, and elsewhere. There is a much higher comfort standard, and the train stops regularly to visit cities along the way. They have contracted to use high-quality Russian rolling stock, which on this trip was supplemented by high-quality Belorusan rolling stock, to put together these private trains to specialized destinations on special schedules. I wanted the classical route, since I wanted to start in Vladivostok and stay entirely within Russia, and of course I wanted it westbound, and that’s what I contracted for a year ago.

Railroads in Russia famously run on Moscow time. This means that railroad schedules are quoted in two times, both Moscow time and local time, which can vary over half a day. Inside each car of our train there were two clocks, each clearly marked which time it showed. As we traveled west over the eleven nights on the train (a record for me), including many stops, we kept on picking up the time difference until we were on Moscow time. By the way, there are a couple of more time zones closer to Alaska, further east than Vladivostok.

However, for this discussion I’ll go back primarily to degrees of longitude. Flying from Seoul at 127 (38) to Vladivostok at 132 (43) you go in a northeasterly direction, and backtrack a bit by adding degrees of longitude. You also go back one time zone, since Seoul is on Greenwich +9 and Vladivostok is on G +10. This is parallel to my going back one zone from Montréal to Halifax. The only quirk is that the Koreas are not on daylight savings time, but all of Russia is, so in reality I lost two hours instead of just one.

Traveling the Transsiberian   First it must be made clear that calling Siberia everything from the Urals to the Pacific is inaccurate, although commonly done in the West. The Russians call the region on the Pacific the Russian Far East, and Siberia is the area in the middle between that and the Urals.

The private train was a wonder. There were three restaurant cars, the most attractive one outfitted in Russian style, including high-backed chairs and a (faux) beamed ceiling. There was a club car and a bar car. The First-Class sleepers were a bit tight, but apparently comfortable, with two lower bunks opposite each other. The toilet was down the hall, and there were separate shower cars, consisting of rows of compartments with showers in them.

However, I had chosen the deluxe sleeper. I had originally done so to accommodate Beverly’s wheelchair. Actually, it’s just as well she never made it, since the advice I had originally been given was perfectly right. It would have never worked out, given the total inaccessability for handicapped people in Russia. It was one flight of steps after another. It would never have worked on this particular trip. On top of that, pricey as the deluxe sleeper was, I ended having to pay 150% for single occupancy. It was the best money I’ve ever spent, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Actually, I’d take this train again in a heartbeat.

I’ve recommended they rename the deluxe sleeper a deluxe drawing room. There are only four to a car, plus a small private bar at the end. I think there were four deluxe cars on the train. The room seems as large and comfortable—given that you are on a train, after all—as my room on the QM2. There’s a couch on the left, that opens into a double bed (there’s a second bed up above, opened if needed). There’s a wooden table attached to the wall that just slides to the side along the wall when the bed is made, so you always have access to the table. There’s a large closet and a huge picture window. The outside door is a real door opening into the corridor, not a slider, of the same heavy wood as the table, as is the door to the bathroom on the opposite side of the compartment. I’ve had five people seated in the compartment and could have seated six, with several more standing, if need be. The bathroom has a picture window, a full shower, quite large, a toilet and sink that works by electric eye. Both windows have venetian blinds. The service was exquisite (on this car, and in general on the train). We had a проводник/provodnik “male attendant” and a проводница/provodnitsa “female attendant” who kept offering coffee, tea, fresh fruit, candies, and what all. The entire crew had very minimal to no English, but one got along.

I wanted to start in Владивосток/Vladivostok just because it’s there, because it’s at the end of the line. Vostok means “east” and Vladivostok means “Lord of the East”. You can’t beat a name like that. [Side comment: mir means “world” and Vladimir means “Lord of the World”. Imagine giving your kid a name like that. Of course, Vladimir Putin made it, so to speak.] Actually, Vladivostok was a closed city for many years, and even Russians needed special permission to go there. It’s because the Russian Pacific Fleet was stationed there. Even the TSRR ended at nearby Nakhodka instead during that time period. Of course, that’s one more compelling reason to want to go there. Unfortunately Vladivostok is still a very scruffy city, and has a long way to go to make a decent comeback. However, people on the train who had been there nine months earlier already noted improvement. Other cities in the Russian Far East and Siberia were much, much more attractive.

A quirk about Vladivostok, and to some extent, other eastern cities we were in, is that, although they drive on the right as in most places, almost all the cars they get come from Japan, where they drive on the left. Therefore, as you look at cars in Vladivostok driving on the right, the drivers are behind a steering wheel also on the right. It must make for some awkward driving. We were also warned, and it seemed equally true in cities other than Vladivostok, that zebra stripes at pedestrian crossings are routinely ignored by drivers and seem to be considered prime hunting zones for pedestrian fresh meat. You therefore take your life in your hands crossing the street even at a marked crossing.

Our hotel was on a hill, and we could look down onto the harbor (called the Golden Horn, after Istanbul’s harbor, and of a similar shape), which still houses the (rather scruffy looking) Pacific Fleet. Aside from “being there” and seeing the Rossiya leaving the beautifully restored station, to my mind the most interesting thing about the city was that Yul Brynner was born there in 1920. I went to see the restored mansion his well-to-do family lived in not far from the station. It was next to the building of the Far Eastern Shipping Company, still in business, which then belonged to them. The family left when he was four.

I asked about his first name, which has always intrigued me. The answer was so simple, it surprised me. Just like Юлия/Yuliya means Julia, Юли/Yuli means Juli(us). Yul simply dropped the I at the end. Actually, the family name is also a bit different: Бринер/Briner.

At the station in Vladivostok was a big marker showing 9288 kilometers to Moscow. Leaving Vladivostok at 132 (43) we went north (and three degrees in the “wrong” direction) to Хабаровск/Khabarovsk at 135 (49) and then turned left to go around China. This is also parallel to my having left Halifax to the north and then turning left to go around the US at Maine. Then we got serious about proceeding westward and lowering those degree numbers.

By the way, discussing the time-zone situation with the doctor on the train, she pointed out that human body clocks run in the 25-26 hour range, so that adding an hour feels even more comfortable than the usual day, since it’s closer to our natural rhythm, and therefore, subtracting an hour is that much more detrimental.

Everyone was amazed at the view from the train. I really don’t know what I was expecting, but it was green, green, green. Trees, fields, wildflowers in bloom of every color. This was the case all across Siberia, and also all across Russia west of the Urals. You could have been crossing Canada or the northern US, which, of course, I had just done. Villages could be a bit scruffy, but that can be the case anywhere. The Siberian cities were very attractive, and the people looked as European and as up-to-date as anyone else.

We reached Улан Удэ/Ulan Ude at 108 (52), and the highlight was a drive to an Old Believers’ village. The Old Believers were a breakaway sect of Orthodoxy who didn’t accept certain changes in ritual that came centuries ago, were persecuted, and often went off to settle villages of their own. I believe there are still groups in Alaska and elsewhere in the US. In any case, this village was one of wooden houses with people dressed in folk costume. We were invited into one house and compound to see the traditional life of Siberia. In the communal house we were sung to, and they did a mock wedding. Finally, there was a buffet for all. It was a very pleasant evening.

From here to Озеро Байкал/Lake Baikal and nearby Иркутск/Irkutsk was the nicest part of our Siberian trip. We woke the next morning going along the Transbaikal route on the south shore of the lake. There were beautiful views across the lake of snow-covered mountains. Do realize that this banana-shaped lake contains 20% of the world’s fresh water, and is the world’s oldest and deepest lake at one mile deep. It has more water than the five Great Lakes combined. The water is very pure. We had been being supplied with bottled drinking water, and when we reached this area, I was surprised that the bottled water from then on on the trip was Baikal water, harvested from 400 meters down. I remember reading once that the reason the lake is so deep is that Eurasia is splitting apart at this point, and may indeed one day become two continents physically. I believe the annual measurement of the increase in distance between the two sides of the lake is quite perceptible.

In the morning a special treat was announced. We had switched to a diesel engine for this stretch, and we would be allowed to ride on the locomotive. Every fifteen minutes or so the train would stop, the next bunch of passengers would walk from the first passenger car to the engine, and climb up the stairs to the outside. There were railings along the sides and front, and for a quarter-hour, as the train chugged along slowly, we had the view of a lifetime of the lake and mountains. During the day we visited a museum telling about the lake, and then a museum village of Siberian wooden structures that had been moved to the site from various locations. My first impression was the similarity of the look of this village to the look of Fort Ross in California (2001 Series 8). It had been announced that in the evening we would have a lakeside barbecue. I was dubious about this, but it worked out to be a wonderful experience. First of all, there’s an abandoned stretch of track now used for just touristic purposes, since a shortcut has been made for the mainline. Therefore, the train was able to just stop on this single track, and as it turned out, there was a beach there and steps in the hillside down to it. Therefore, we just got out of the train and walked down the steps to where the kitchen crew had set up the barbecue of pork and chicken shashlik, and whole fish, plus a table of side dishes and beverages. It was really idyllic having a stand-up dinner on the side of the lake in the evening with the snow-covered mountains in the background. As it turned out, the train’s doctor and another person had been delayed in town, and during the picnic a boat pulled up from across the lake and the two of them got off right onto the beach. It seemed like a scene from a ballet or opera where the prince and princess arive on the scene by boat. It was a pleasant evening.

The stop in nearby Irkutsk at 104 (52) the next day was also very enjoyable. It’s probably the most attractive city in Siberia. We visited a number of interesting sites, and one highlight was the public market. It has a new, huge building, and overflows into the street. Flowers? Any kind you’d like. Meats, fish, vegatables, it’s a beautiful, colorful cornucopia. I had heard there was a special section just for caviar, and I asked one of the few questions I can formulate in Russian to have it pointed out to me. I remember years ago seeing a seller of квас/kvass, which is sort of a beer made from bread, with a barrel on his back and a hose to fill your glass. At the market though, was a more standard-type seller with a huge vat on a stand, filling glasses from a spigot. I’ve also seen kvass in cans. Having tasted it earlier, I forewent the pleasure this time. All in all, the public market showed the availability of produce in New Russia that didn’t exist to this extent before.

But it was in Irkutsk that we had an event for a lifetime, one of those time-travel experiences you’ll remember forever. But first some background. Siberia is known as a place of exile. The Russians used it in a similar way the British used Australia, as a place to get rid of what were considered undesirables. There was penal servitude, but also just simple exile.

The Decembrists were a group of nobles who, in the mid-1820s, revolted against the Tsar for reforms for the country. The revolt was surpressed, and many Decembrists were sent to Siberia in exile. They lost their wealth, they lost their titles, they left everything behind. In contemporary Russia, in Saint Petersburg the big square just west of the Admiralty building has been renamed Площадь Декабристов/Ploshchad’ Dekabristov “Square of the Decembrists”.

A man named Волконский/Volkonskiy was one of those exiled, first to penal servitude, then to simple exile in Irkutsk. His wife need not have followed him, but she did, and gave up everything. She was Мария Волконская/Mariya Volkonskaya (notice how the names vary, which is standard), and she became one of the leading ladies of her time, which was primarily the 1840’s to 1850’s. Portraits of her hang in galleries in Moscow. With the coming of a new Tsar, he was pardoned, they moved back to West Russia, and they both are buried in the Ukraine. But let’s concentrate on the time in Irkutsk.

[By the way, in War and Peace, I understand Tolstoy had some barely disguised characters named Bolkonskiy and Bolkonskaya involved in a similar situation. It’s also interesting that his thin disguise involved Cyril’s two betas, Б versus В.]

As the wife of an exile, Mariya Volkonskaya was not allowed to attend local theatrical or other events, so she arranged evening entertainments of her own, which I will call soirées, for want of a better word. As time went on, the salon she maintained became the cultural capital of Siberia, the most important cultural spot anywhere east of Moscow to the Pacific.

We were given this background, but it seemed dry. It needed to be brought to life. We visited the restored wooden building, which was quite large, and had two stories. During Soviet times, this historical building had been subdivided into many apartments. Fortunately, the main building, and the complex of buildings around it, was restored, and you could get a bit of a feeling of how it had been in the 1840’s, but only a bit. Our program had mentioned this visit, plus “a concert” at about 3:30. Ho-hum. After the tour, we were seated in a middle-sized room upstairs, which nevertheless had enough space to accommodate the 100-plus people from our train, facing a piano, some candelabras, and a few doors. It was then that the magic started, similar to the time travel I discussed regarding Montevallo (2004 Series 23).

A lady in a gown appeared near the piano. She was the translator. She introduced the Director of the Museum. He turned out to be the skilled angel that did the time transformation. Aside from his musical talent, he had the requisite theatrical talent.

He introduced himself in Russian, and the woman translated. He talked about Mariya Volkonskaya. He said we were in the very salon that was the cultural high point of her time east of Moscow. That gave a good feeling. He pointed to the piano. He said they had miraculously acquired the very piano she had owned. It had been sent to Saint Petersburg for NINE YEARS of restoration, and here it was. That gave an even better feeling. He then said we would be enjoying an evening at Mariya Volkonskaya’s as it would have been in the 1840’s, and, with the shades drawn, he ceremoniously went around and lit the two candleabras and a few miscellaneous candles, saying this is what Mariya would have done. The mood was set, and beautifully.

He introduced a pianist, who played, then a soprano in an evening gown, who sang beautifully. A violinist then accompanied the pianist. At one point, he himself played the piano. Later, a selection was announced, and the pianist theatrically pointed out that it was to be a duet. The director ceremoniously asked the audience if anyone could play the second part. No? Then he would have to, which he did. Then he introduced the soprano singing “Là, ci darem la mano”, and he sang with her. It was beautiful in Russian. At the point where the Italian has: Andiam, andiam (Let’s go, let’s go) the words were: Пойдём, Пойдём/Poidyom, poidyom. It was absolutely delightful, both musically and linguistically.

As the music was coming to an end, he presented all the performers for a round of applause, and then he pointed to—the piano!!!, which also got a round of applause. One would have thought it was all over, but the best was yet to come.

He said that at this point of any “evening”, it was only appropriate that he do what Mariya Volkonskaya would have done, so, with a huge downward swing of his arm, he shouted:

And doors burst open behind him on either side and bewigged and becostumed servants entered with trays full of flutes of champagne. All right, it wasn’t champagne, it was Russian sparkling wine, but, believe me, no one cared at that point. It was the 1840’s, and Mariya Volkonskaya was treating us to champagne. It was a delight.

Afterwards, he ceremoniously snuffed out all the candles, since it was the end of the “evening” Mariya Valkonskaya was presenting for us.

During all of this, we kept turning to each other, commenting on how wonderful and unbelievable it was. The lady on my left from New Zealand had tears in her eyes. One man from our group was pushed forward to thank the Director for the presentation. He ended by saying we were sorry we weren’t dressed properly for the occasion. The Director then had the presence of mind to quote Pushkin, who once had arrived disheveled at a function in Irkutsk from sailing on Lake Baikal. The Director’s point: if Pushkin could do it arriving from a boat, we could do it arriving from a train. It was a most gracious comment, and it was entirely off-the-cuff. Through this charming host we had travelled back in time, and had become contemporaries of Mariya Volkonskaya.

We had a stop in Красноярск/Krasnoyarsk at 93 (56), and shortly afterward passed the 90-degree East point marking the end of the third world quadrant and the start of the fourth, which would end at Greenwich. At this 90-degree East point I was just halfway around the world from the 90-degree West point I had passed in Canada just about two weeks earlier. Canada now seemed “worlds away”, and in a sense it was, and in another sense, it wasn’t at all.

We stopped in Новосибирск/Novosibirsk at 83 (55), which is Russia’s third largest city after Moscow and Saint Petersburg, in that order. Novosibirsk would therefore be the most populous city in Siberia, but my heart still lies in charming Irkutsk, in Mariya Volkonskaya’s salon.

Our last stop in Siberia was in Екатеринбург/Yekaterinburg at 61 (57). The tour guide referred to it as “Catherineburg”, which sounds nice, but I’d never heard that translation before. The name is sometimes transliterated Ekaterinburg. The variation arises in the fact that the Russian version of “Catherine” does start with an E, which is pronounced YE and is properly transliterated that way, but some people like to see the name in transliteration start with an E, like the original.

Unfortunately, Yekaterinburg has now become infamous as the site where the tsarist royal family was executed. They had been imprisoned in the mansion of a local merchant, and shortly before midnight on 16 July 1918 they were taken to the basement and shot. Then the bodies of Tsar Nicholas II, Tsaritsa Aleksandra, the (hemopheliac) Tsarevich Aleksei, and the four daughters, all Grand Duchesses, were gruesomely disposed of. The remains were discovered in recent years and reburied in Saint Petersburg. They have all been made saints in the Russian Orthodox Church.

A cathedral has just recently been completed above the site of the execution, interestingly called the Храм на Крови/Khram na Krovi, the Cathedral-on-the-Blood. It’s in traditional Russian style, and the upstairs is the main church, but on the lower level is a second, T-shaped church, and the right-hand arm of the T is the site of the basement of the house. There are marble plaques on the wall for each of the family members. Being able to read Cyrillic allows one to identify each name and title. There are also other displays of pictures and personal possessions of the family. I think the memorial was very well done.

Shortly after leaving Yekaterinburg we crossed the Urals, and the official border between Asia and Europe. I heard that the city of Yekaterinburg is trying to get the official border moved to include it in Europe. Of course, my opinion is that Europe runs to the Pacific, along with Russia’s borders. At any rate, the train slowed down so we could see the white stone obelisk to the south of the train marking the border, which said:

Dutch Name   Speaking about Europe, I’d like to interrupt this discussion to set up a puzzle that will be answered and discussed in a later letter. Name a European city, not located in the Netherlands or Belgium, that nevertheless has a Dutch name in its local language. (In other languages, the name is translated into those languages.) If you can figure out the logical reason why such a city would have a Dutch name, it will immediately identify the city for you.

Iron Road   For a further interruption before getting back, I’d like to make this point about train travel. The Russian word железо/zhelyezo means “iron”. Add an adjective ending to it plus the word for “road” and you get железная дорога/zhelyeznaya doroga, which means Iron Road.

Your first reaction might be that the Russians have a funny way of saying things, and you could not be more wrong. It’s English speakers who have a funny way of saying things. Note this:

In French, chemin de fer (fer means “iron”—think “ferrous”) means road-of-iron, or Iron Road.

In Spanish, ferrocarril means Iron Road.

In Italian, ferrovia means Iron Road.

The German word for “iron” is Eisen—think Eisenhauer (respelled Eisenhower and meaning “iron hewer”). From “Autobahn” you know that Bahn means road, so you must have guessed by now that trains run on the Eisenbahn, the Iron Road.

As is so often the case, English is the exception. English had the word “rail” meaning fence-slat. At the time, you would split a tree into vertical strips to build a rustic fence of these fence-slat rails supported by posts. These still are built, but more often than not, only decoratively. Anyway, when trains came about, the image prevailed of these fence-slat rails running down the road to the horizon, and the word stuck to become “railroad”, or British “railway”. By now the meaning of “rail” has totally flipped. On hearing the word, no one thinks of fences, and everyone thinks of tracks. But remember, Abraham Lincoln was known as the “railsplitter”, but he was making fences, not working on the railroad.

Anyway, English speakers are stuck with the namby-pamby Fence-Slat Road or Fence-Slat Way. Everyone else rides the majestic-sounding Iron Road. It’s just not fair. Maybe I should consider starting to salt my text with that phrase. How does this sound? Around the World on the Iron Road. Works for me.

Back to business. The TSRR trip by private train ended, after Yekaterinburg, in Saint Petersburg and then Moscow. After that, I went back to Saint Petersburg again, and then to Moscow again. In other words, I was in each city twice on this trip. To avoid confusion, and to be able to discuss those cities properly, I’ll talk about those two cities in a separate letter. Here, I would like to discuss several items about the trip on the private train.

Comment: Illness   I never use travel insurance, but it was a requirement on this trip. It was also announced that there is always a doctor on the train. During the welcome dinner at a Vladivostok hotel the night before the train left the doctor was introduced, and it was jokingly commented that it was hoped no one would have to use her services. The irony of that comment soon became apparent.

First the serious illnesses. That very same night in Vladivostok a woman traveling solo was rushed to the hospital with a gall bladder that was about to burst. She never even made it onto the train. Our doctor checked out the hospital, and it was fine. They would keep the woman for observation to see if she could fly home. If not, she would be operated on in Vladivostok. There were about 104 passengers on the private train, so, one down, 103 to go.

There were colds going around the train, and after a couple of days the lady in the next compartment to me said she had some sort of lung infection and was getting off in Irkutsk to go to the hospital. Another lady followed shortly with similar problems. The last I heard, a man also got off there, all three with their spouses. Our doctor also said the Irkutsk hospital also looked very good. In all, we lost seven passengers, four sick people and three spouses. You see why it was good they had this trip insurance, but this situation was highly unusual. You will remember that I said our doctor and someone else returned from a visit in Irkutsk back to the train by arriving by boat at our barbacue on Lake Baikal. Now you know what she was doing.

Now for the less serious illnesses. Arriving in Korea, I was developing a scratchy throat and heavy cough. After the dinner that night in Vladivostok I had the doctor come to see me in my hotel room. She said my lungs were fine, but got me aspirin, lozenges, and gargle. Over a few days my cough retreated. But lots of other people started coming down with similar things, some with diarrhea. The doctor was visiting people, then set up a schedule. One first-class compartment was allocated to be her office, but she used her own compartment next door as a waiting room, because there were so many people. At each major city, staff was sent out to scour drug stores for all sorts of cough medicines and the like, again, and again, and again. These things were handed out en masse. At one point I was given a children’s cough syrup out of the latest grab bag, and was told to just double the dosage.

At one point the doctor posted on her office the fact that people should make appointments, but that appointments wouldn’t be made during mealtimes or during Dr DiNapoli’s lectures (see below), which I thought was sweet. But then it happened—the doctor got sick, saw no one, and holed up in her compartment for at least a day. She missed my middle lecture, and I offered to catch her up privately, but that didn’t work out. Anyway, I told her she could get the missing info from my website (explanation later).

There were two black-humor jokes going around the train. One was that they should paint the train white with red crosses on the rooftops. The other was that, in the tradition of the church car of a century ago, we should have had a hospital car.

Comment: Food   I have compared this private train to the highest standards of train travel in regard to style and service, and generally, it holds up quite well. However, when it comes to food, the British Pullmans and the Orient Express have white-glove gourmet food service of the highest order, and in fairness, the TSRR private train cannot be compared to them in the same way as to food. The food is good, but generally, it’s more standard fare. The soups are outstanding and rate a 10; appetizers and salads, maybe an 8; main courses could on occasion be humdrum—a 6; desserts usually fell down, often being just fruit salad or jello—a 3.

It is however a delight that an attempt is made to keep the food ethnic, which, to my way of thinking is just what should be done. Everything is Russian style, and when I asked when we’d be getting (Siberian) pelmenyi (meat-filled dumplings, which is the first thing I always order in a Russian restaurant), they showed up on the menu in a couple of days. I also asked for golubtsy “little pigeons” (pronounced kholubtsy in Belorusan, and therefore in my family, and in Ukranian), which is meat-and-rice-filled stuffed cabbage leaves, and that appeared, too. I also learned golubtsy comes Armenian style, which is wrapped in vine leaves like Greek dolmadakis. We not only had that, we had one of each on the same plate. It’s also very good this way, although I still have a slight preference for it in cabbage leaves, probably because I was brought up on it that way.

Red and white wine came with each meal. Although beer was also included free of charge, it was only available in the bar car. An improvement would be to have it available at meals as well. And of course, let’s not forget the vodka. A shot glass (or more) was offered at each meal. And caviar appeared not infrequently.

Comment: Quality “Sightseeing”   I need to repeat myself on this subject, just to make sure my parameters are clear. Some people use travel to reach a resort, where they spend their time. They usually consider it relaxation time, and often call it a vacation. Others go to see places (of course, doing a bit of each is always possible). Over four decades, Beverly and I have rarely vacationed, and have rarely spent amounts of time at resorts. Much of our travel can be described by the term “sightseeing”, which is an unfortunate term that implies casual, frivolous looking around, rather than what we always treated it as: an effort to learn the history, geography, language, art, cuisine, and any other element of interest of the area being visited.

One can’t do it alone. One needs a guidebook to point out what’s where. A guidebook that just lists points of interest with no recommendations is next to useless. (More useless than that is a list of sights put out by the local chamber of commerce, which, because of self-interest, will treat every pile of bricks in town as though it were the Colisseum.) You need a guidebook that rates sights, just like hotels and restaurants are rated. As I’ve said before, the Michelin guide is the best of its type (it has great city maps, too), and is my travel bible. The system is this: three stars means worth a trip; two stars means worth a detour; one star means interesting. Anything with no stars, yet still mentioned is just of casual interest.

Do I agree slavishly with each rating? Of course not. Some highly rated places, or places within a city, do not interest me, and sometimes something given just one star falls into a category of something I think very important. But you at least have a guide with which to proceed, so you can go ahead with valid information to expand your mind, your education, and your horizons.

Comment: Group Travel   Travel Beverly and I have rarely been involved in group travel, and if at all, it was on day trips, or trips of just a couple of days. We never liked being told what to see, rather than selecting what we wanted to see. We never enjoyed being plopped down for twenty minutes and being told it’s time to shop (we rarely shop when traveling). We’ve never usually eaten lunch at home (we do brunch and dinner), and CERTAINLY not when traveling, when time is so precious.

Sometime I’ll describe our group-travel horror stories in detail, like the time we took a long bus tour out of Athens to Delphi at dawn, but because of traffic delays, TOTALLY SKIPPED SEING THE SITE OF THE ORACLE OF DELPHI. Why? Lunch was included in the tour, and we had to go eat instead. How about the time in Iceland when the bus stopped for the mandatory shopping, and then drove off while Bev and I were in the rest room? The shop owner drove us down the road, where he flagged down the bus. I have too many stories like this, and they upset me, so I’ll stop talking about them.

It is now easier than ever to plan travel by using a computer and phone, and a good guidebook. Why anyone does it any other way is beyond me.

I planned the beginning and end of this trip by the means described. Korea was new to me, and I had only one day in Seoul, so I checked online for tour agencies, found one I liked, and had an e-mail correspondence over several days putting together a tour, partially with a group, then individually, that suited me fine.

I enjoyed meeting many nice people on the group travel part of the trip, and enjoyed giving the lectures (described later) and seeing people benefit from them. Yet solo travel is the best. Of course travel with Beverly would be better still, but that is no longer to be. I also had some nice conversations in the restaurant car while crossing Canada—and what group trip would take you to Point Roberts? It became clearest to me in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. As good as the group tours were in each city, when I went back right afterwards to each city, I had a great deal of enjoyment finding some very interesting things entirely on my own (description later), and then continuing on solo again westward.

Criticism: Sightseeing on the Private Train   Taking what is essentially a “land cruise” by a private train like this is no different from getting on the Caronia last year around South America. The only regimentation (and it isn’t that at all) on the ship is having set mealtimes and set lecture times, and the equivalent exists on the private train. There is no problem here. No tours were included on the Caronia, any you wanted were at an extra charge, and Beverly and I involved ourselves in precious few, all to our full satisfaction.

Therein lies the problem on the private train. Again, let me state the disclaimer that I’d get back on that train tomorrow (and will again in the future on some of its other trips) even with the defect I’m about to describe. All sightseeing was included. Disregarding the problems of group travel described above, much of it was excellent. What we did in Saint Petersburg and Moscow (yet to be described) was outstanding. But then they are three-star cities. [Note: Michelin doesn’t have a guide to Russia, but in its guide called “Europe”, which is unfortunately trimmed-down to include too many countries at once, it does include Saint Petersburg and Moscow, and, yes, they are three-star.]

Since Michelin doesn’t do Russia beyond those two cities, from my experience using Michelin, I’ll apply their classification to places we saw. Lake Baikal is three-star. Irkutsk could be three as well. It goes downhill from there. Vladivostok is maybe one. Yekaterinburg is maybe one, but the Romanov site once you’re there is two. Ulan Ude is zero, but the Old Believers’ Village once you’re there is two. I would say that’s it. Not one other city was worth stopping in. However, the Siberia trip AS A WHOLE is three-star.

The problem was, there was tour after tour. Seeing the descriptions of what was to be seen, I totally avoided Khbarovsk and Krasnoyarsk. I took the Yekaterinburg tour because of the Romanovs, but after that hour we were dragged around to see nothing at all. I remember the guide pointing out the main post office and some cinemas as I was about to go out of my mind, and then dropping us off in some war museum. Maybe a third of us plopped down at the entry after a while, waiting for our escape. I, of course, grumbled verbally to the group about two hours of my life being totally wasted once we left the Romanov site.

Obviously, these additional useless tours were put in as fillers, to lead the sheep around to feel they were seeing something worthwhile. But I’ll be the one to say that the emperor has no clothes. All in all, the sightseeing we did was an incredible combination of excellence and mediocrity.

Criticism should be constructive: cut the “time filler” tours in “zero” cities either entirely, or down to an hour. Make them optional and at an extra charge. Sign-ups needn’t be at the last minute—they can be done before the trip starts. Never stop for lunch in local restaurants (Moscow and Saint Petersburg are the exceptions); work out the short tour so you eat on the train. Do MUCH MORE on the train in the way of entertainment and lectures (more about this later).

Criticism: The 900-Pound Gorilla   The question is, how do you ignore a 900-pound gorilla in your living room, and the answer always remains: you can’t.

I booked the compartment on the TSRR private train just over a year before it left, before this year’s date was published on the website. I did that, knowing that it sells out quickly, and also to know when to book the QM2 for this year during last year’s trip to get the onboard-booking discount. After we got back last summer I got a call from MIR Travel, informing me that “an alumni group from a major university” had booked a large percent of the train (then 92%, but with attrition and expanding the size of the train, it maybe became something between ¾ and 2/3 of the passengers). I do like variety in meeting people, and I certainly like meeting people travelling independently, like most people on cruises and transatlantic crossings. (I have since been assured that, to a large extent, that’s usually the mix on this train.) I asked which alumni group, and was told from Stanford University. It didn’t seem like too much of a problem—some old grads had put a group trip together—and I agreed to keep my reservation.

It was only in Vladivostok that I found out the full truth of the matter. It wasn’t just “an alumni group”. It’s virtually a travel agency that sets up this type of thing regularly, for Stanford alums and evidently for others who are interested. But more disturbingly, it was a self-contained study tour, with a regular lecture program and extra activities, especially in Moscow. If they had booked the entire train for themselves, that would have been another matter. It was a totally inbred entity mixed in with the “regular passengers”. I did not like that at all.

It started in the Seoul airport. As people got on the plane to Vladivostok you saw the Stanford name tags hanging around their necks. There were dozens and dozens of them. After clearing customs in Vladivostok, Tatyana, the company rep from the train, who was sending people to the tour buses into town, checked my name and then told her associate that I was “nye Stanfordski”. Although that designation made me laugh out loud, I was beginning to resent the whole situation. When I later got to my compartment on the train, there was a card on the table welcoming me to travel with Stanford. My blood began to boil. What GW Travel was thinking when they set up two different factions on the same train at the same time was beyond me.

And some of the Stanford people, who knows, maybe most, never learned the difference. One of them asked me if I had ever taken any Stanford trips before. I clearly informed him no, and I wasn’t taking one now, either. Some very nice people I was speaking to in Saint Petersburg were also convinced Stanford had organized this train trip, knew nothing of GW Travel or that this train runs on this and other routes regularly and frequently. The feeling seemed to be that the 30 or so of the others of us were just joining in, sort of as hangers-on. They didn’t realize that they were the parasites here. I didn’t of course use that word, but that’s what they were. One of them also incredibly said they thought it was very nice of the “Stanford doctor” to treat other patients as well.

It’s no secret that I don’t suffer fools gladly, so I kept my Stanford contacts to a minimum. “My people” were elsewhere. But who my people were and where they were located was the problem.

The “regular passengers” consisted of four Americans, an Australian couple, and some 27-28 New Zealanders (“Kiwis”) traveling together in a group, but otherwise independent in outlook.

But then locations were problematic. The two “warring factions” were totally segretated. The group of regular passengers was located in the first-class section in the back of the train that was from Belarus, including a dining car where they ate and club car. In front of that was the large Stanford first-class section of Russian cars, including a bar car and two dining cars, one of them the particularly attractive dining car pictured on the website, with high-backed chairs and a faux-beamed Russian ceiling.

But there was a further problem in this segregated society. The four Russian deluxe cars were at the very front of the train, and in front of the Stanford first-class section. Worse still, the only “regular passengers” were an older American couple next door to me who rarely if ever left their room, and—me. All the other people in the deluxe cars were Stanford people. Which means that, on a de facto basis, I was alone—alone—in enemy territory.

I was told I could eat in one of the two nearby dining cars—the one with the nice ceiling was the closest, only a couple of cars away—and I did, but just for breakfast. But otherwise, I trekked a full dozen cars to the Belarus dining car at all other times. We were also segregated by buses. Our group was always tour bus 1, and Stanford had 2 and 3. The Stanford group had their own lecturers, including William Perry, who they tell me was Clinton’s Secretary of Defense.

On the first full day on the train we got the schedule for the day, including mealtimes and events. Events were listed under these headings: Stanford Passengers and Non-Stanford Passengers. I hit the roof.

I had a discussion with Tatyana, and she said she thought it was awkward that way, but didn’t know how else to phrase it. I immediately suggested changing that negative phrasing into “Independents & Kiwis”, and that’s how the schedule was listed every day for the rest of the trip.

Tatyana, to her credit, had scheduled a number of events for the regular passengers. One day she gave a very interesting talk about life in New Russia, and how she sees all the changes in the last decade and a half. She referred to Russia as a “young country”, and I could see her point. She also arranged for the pianist in the bar to give two piano concerts for the regular passengers, one on the history of Russian music since Glinka and the other on Tchaikovsky’s music, which were very well received. A guitarrist joined the train for a couple of nights of concerts.

But on that first day’s discussion about the bulletin, I could see a lacking in number of lectures, and I immediately saw a way to fill it. In the hotel in Vladivostok, as the regular passengers were assembling waiting for the day’s (boring) excursion, people were looking around at all the signs and trying to figure out the Cyrillic lettering and the words. I started talking about some letters, and people really seemed interested and enjoying it, so the idea I told Tatyana about was a natural. I asked her to list three lectures called “Easy Introduction to Cyrillic by Dr Vincent DiNapoli”. She was glad to have them, and the group received them very well.

Although “our group” called me by my first name, some Stanford people started calling me “Doc”, since they saw that on the daily bulletin. One Stanford guy took me aside and asked if I normally lecture on trains like this, and if I get a discounted trip for doing so. Ha! A couple of Stanford people asked if they could sit in on the second and third lectures, and of course, that was fine. When I told another Stanford person that I write up these trips, he asked when I plan on publishing. I was so glad to be able to say I self-publish regularly on my own website, and the latest would be posted as soon as I got to a hotel room with good internet connections.

I did the lectures for two reasons. First and foremost, the regular passengers were eager to know about it, and could use what they’d learned looking out from the bus or walking along the street the next day. Second, a definite balance was needed to the heavy-handed Stanford side of the program, and I was glad to help provide it.

What were the lectures about? The worthy reader already knows most of it. The first day I discussed the history of Cyrillic, and presented everything I had already posted on the website up to Vancouver. Then I had to get moving, since I hadn’t yet written the rest. I did so, presented it first at the second lecture, and only then prepared it for the Transpacific & Korea letter, which I later posted on the website in Saint Petersburg.

For the third and final lecture, after some review and discussion of additional points, I did something I had first made a mental “lesson plan” for about thirty years ago. As I told the group, I had prepared this final piece long ago for presentation specifically in Russian, which I was finally getting to use, although it would work, and I could also do it, in a number of other languages.

As I explained, the whole point of both presentations is to use material that is very familiar, such as all the same letters in Roman and Cyrillic, and couch a new item or two inside. That’s the whole idea about reading Торонто or Америка. The learner gains confidence in the familar, and the new doesn’t seem so startling or so hard.

The old “lesson plan” involved speaking, but not the daily “Hello & Thank You” vocabulary that would take regular instruction. I just wanted the group to be able to hear, learn, and answer questions, sensibly, all in Russian. I told them we were going to totally avoid English for about twenty minutes, and I was going to get them all, speaking chorally, to answer some complex, though somewhat nonsensical, questions in Russian, just to get the feeling of the language. It worked excellently. I had a map of Europe with me, and, avoiding English totally, picked five countries to identify and repeat again and again. That’s the “familiar” part: everyone recognizes Frantsiya, Germaniya, Italiya, and others immediately. In a few minutes, the group was able to answer in Russian “Yes, that’s England” or “No, that’s not Spain, it’s Russia”.

The second part was even more complex, and worked just as well. They were doing sentences like “That’s Paris”, “London is a capital”, and even “Berlin is the capital of Germany”, which involves use of the genetive case. The pièce de résistance was their being able to give as complex and as long an answer as this in Russian: “No, London is not the capital of France; London is the capital of England, and Paris is the capital of France”. And they were not just parroting, but knew exactly what they were saying, because you could change the question and they would change the answer accordingly. Again, we did all this in about twenty minutes, before I was exhausted and sweating and broke the “no-English spell” with my congratulations for their quick progress.

And thus gave the Travelanguist three lectures dealing with Russian on the private train plying the route of the Transsiberian Railroad. What better and more fortuitous and happy a combination: Travel plus Language on the Iron Road, through Siberia and Around the World.