... and when your stuff are in it? I hope you do realise we are talking about the Trans-Siberian train, at a time of the year (end of September - but I'm pretty sure I mentioned it last time, aren't you listening?) when nights in Siberia hit the minus 10 degree line, in a country where English isn't really fluently spoken (+10 points to the one who can tell me the name of this figure of speech).
Well, relax already. Read this tutorial and if you are dumb enough to find yourself in this shitty situation, you'll know what to do. Because, Ladies and Gentlemen, my devotion to deliver high quality information to my 12,5 readers made us put in and endure this terrible situation. Wait, who I am fooling? We all know we dived into this crap with a complete lack of straight-thinking, and be sure I wasn't thinking about you suckers.
Anyway. We were on the train since 2,5 days from Vladivostok and were supposed to hit Irkutsk at 1:30am the following night. It was 4 or 5pm and we were bored: no vodka left, no books to read and we couldn't talk with the people anyway. We were running out of food so we had the once brilliant then regretted idea to took advantage of the next long train stop to go out and run some errands. Now this is where the universe tricked us: usually, there is a small supermarket within 5 minutes of the station. But not in Ulan-Ude: you have to walk a bit more. But do you think we knew that? Do you think English-speaking people could have told us that? Do you think the universe didn't want us robbed out and left dying in a pit?
So we went off the train and our few train friends told us in a weird Russglish that we only had 25 minutes. We laughed and said 'of course! what do you think? we're mzungus / gringos / gaijin / foreigners but not stupid!' and then we looked at each other and were like 'ahah, it would be funny if we missed the train!' 'no, it won't happen. we're not that stupid, aha!!' (As it turned out later, we were).
Before leaving the train I hesitated one second, then decided to take my handbag with me. Like I said last time, you don't need to be extra-parano on the train - but a lightning of lucidity struck me for a few seconds, and as a great clairvoyant I could almost picture the disaster that was building up in front of our close future. Almost. So I took my stuff with me.
So we got out. Lucas wearing flip-flops, me going German-style - Birkenstocks with socks. We were so confident in our brightness and luck that... we didn't even check what time it was - and we wouldn't know at what time we had to be back. But we're not that stupid, remember? We started walking around, taking some pictures here and there (as if we mongos had time to do sightseeing), and at some point, realised we should get food. So asked some people where the closest shop ist (read: we went up to locals and said in our fakest accent: superrmarkiet? gdié?), and some guy took us to a small place where we bought bread and some stuff that looked like cheese. Mind you, we could have bought the bread at the station, and we could have survived without cheese, but hey, only Frenchies who've lived 5 months in freaking lactosefree Japan can understand me.
So we had been all the way to get damn food that we didn't need that much, not knowing the time and lacking the necessary skills to estimate lengths or durations. We did start running at some point...
So we had been all the way to get damn food that we didn't need that much, not knowing the time and lacking the necessary skills to estimate lengths or durations. We did start running at some point...
But the platform was empty. No train. The sky was blue, the sunlight upon Ulan-Ude was fading away and we were screwed... At least, we had bread and cheese with us.
So what do you think that we did? Start insulting each other, blaming God or praising Satan? None of those! As the wise and not that stupid adults that we are, we kept our so-called dignity and tried to explain the situation to the employee that seemed less creepy / most susceptible of reacting positively to our emotion display. A very difficult task if performed in a foreign language, if you want my advice. Actually you don't even need to talk: you can just show your ticket and look stupid.
Luck was somehow on our side. In our loser-attitude we managed to pick the best city to miss a train: Ulan-Ude is ONLY 500 km / 7 hours by car away from Irkutsk, and there are buses leaving every 30 minutes or so. See? We could have screwed up more. Mind you, we could have hopped in a cab to the next train station, but may I remind you smartasses that nobody speaks English there? Besides, we didn't know the name of the next station. So back off.
So the relatively nice employee (according to Russian standards, she would be categorised as über-polite) took us to the parking lot in front of the station, where some cabs and minibuses were waiting, some with signs saying 'Irkutsk', where we were heading. We were saved! I thought. Ahaha. At that time I didn't know we would be having a timing problem.. So we paid the equivalent of 25€ (and we did try to make the train lady pay for us, as if the train company was responsible, but it didn't work) and got in the minbus.
And when it left, 20 minutes later, we tried to ask at what time we would reach Irkutsk. Because yeah, we had to be there to gather our stuff, put everything in our bags, then leave the train - as Irkutsk was our last stop (while the train was going all the way to Moscow). We knew the train would be stopping from 1:30 to 2:10 am. And then the guy told us we would be there at 2:00 am. Oops. So basically we would only have 10 minutes to rush to the platform, and throw our stuff in bags before being kicked out of the train. That is, if no drunk driver, pothole on the road or tired of life deer decide to mess with us. This is Russia, remember?
There was nothing to do but wait. And laugh about the situation. And wet our pants. We had bread and cheese, but no water. And the night was falling so we couldn't even see the landscapes. But somehow, we knew we would make it - because we're not that stupid!
But this story ends well: the driver kindly took stupid risks and proudly demonstrated his ability to overtake cars in curves, going up, at night - so that we would arrive in time. And we did: we even arrived before the train. To this day I still don't know how it was physically possible. We saw the train approach and saw the happy face of our provodnik, who was waving at us and calling us 'crazy! crazy!' in an almost-perfect English. He was a good man. We will never know what happened on this train while we were away; but on the platform, a lot of passengers went down to greet us. Perhaps they were all stressed out that we had died, that we got lost; perhaps they were so bored that the thought of us occupied them a bit (perhaps they all had bet on our survival and only the ones who won went down to celebrate).
Anyway, our brave provodnik had stuffed our belongings in our bags and put them aside, perhaps in the hopes of selling them later on the black market - or perhaps the poor lad did that to prevent evil passengers from spliting our stuff among them. We'll never know.
What I know now, is that he gave us a letter in Russian with his email address, that he probably wrote after we didn't show up; and now we're friends on FB. So no, not all Russian males are violent impolite assholes. Kindness and openminded-ness are found everywhere, even if you don't speak the language!
Wow, this might be the first (and hopefully last) positive post I'll ever write. For the first time, I didn't end up complaining about how bad life and people are! (ok ok, actually Poutvedev wrote me a big check if I could say something nice about the Russkies - don't worry, in the next message I'll be trashing on them like hell)
So what do you think that we did? Start insulting each other, blaming God or praising Satan? None of those! As the wise and not that stupid adults that we are, we kept our so-called dignity and tried to explain the situation to the employee that seemed less creepy / most susceptible of reacting positively to our emotion display. A very difficult task if performed in a foreign language, if you want my advice. Actually you don't even need to talk: you can just show your ticket and look stupid.
Luck was somehow on our side. In our loser-attitude we managed to pick the best city to miss a train: Ulan-Ude is ONLY 500 km / 7 hours by car away from Irkutsk, and there are buses leaving every 30 minutes or so. See? We could have screwed up more. Mind you, we could have hopped in a cab to the next train station, but may I remind you smartasses that nobody speaks English there? Besides, we didn't know the name of the next station. So back off.
So the relatively nice employee (according to Russian standards, she would be categorised as über-polite) took us to the parking lot in front of the station, where some cabs and minibuses were waiting, some with signs saying 'Irkutsk', where we were heading. We were saved! I thought. Ahaha. At that time I didn't know we would be having a timing problem.. So we paid the equivalent of 25€ (and we did try to make the train lady pay for us, as if the train company was responsible, but it didn't work) and got in the minbus.
And when it left, 20 minutes later, we tried to ask at what time we would reach Irkutsk. Because yeah, we had to be there to gather our stuff, put everything in our bags, then leave the train - as Irkutsk was our last stop (while the train was going all the way to Moscow). We knew the train would be stopping from 1:30 to 2:10 am. And then the guy told us we would be there at 2:00 am. Oops. So basically we would only have 10 minutes to rush to the platform, and throw our stuff in bags before being kicked out of the train. That is, if no drunk driver, pothole on the road or tired of life deer decide to mess with us. This is Russia, remember?
There was nothing to do but wait. And laugh about the situation. And wet our pants. We had bread and cheese, but no water. And the night was falling so we couldn't even see the landscapes. But somehow, we knew we would make it - because we're not that stupid!
But this story ends well: the driver kindly took stupid risks and proudly demonstrated his ability to overtake cars in curves, going up, at night - so that we would arrive in time. And we did: we even arrived before the train. To this day I still don't know how it was physically possible. We saw the train approach and saw the happy face of our provodnik, who was waving at us and calling us 'crazy! crazy!' in an almost-perfect English. He was a good man. We will never know what happened on this train while we were away; but on the platform, a lot of passengers went down to greet us. Perhaps they were all stressed out that we had died, that we got lost; perhaps they were so bored that the thought of us occupied them a bit (perhaps they all had bet on our survival and only the ones who won went down to celebrate).
Anyway, our brave provodnik had stuffed our belongings in our bags and put them aside, perhaps in the hopes of selling them later on the black market - or perhaps the poor lad did that to prevent evil passengers from spliting our stuff among them. We'll never know.
What I know now, is that he gave us a letter in Russian with his email address, that he probably wrote after we didn't show up; and now we're friends on FB. So no, not all Russian males are violent impolite assholes. Kindness and openminded-ness are found everywhere, even if you don't speak the language!
Wow, this might be the first (and hopefully last) positive post I'll ever write. For the first time, I didn't end up complaining about how bad life and people are! (ok ok, actually Poutvedev wrote me a big check if I could say something nice about the Russkies - don't worry, in the next message I'll be trashing on them like hell)
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