Friday, June 09, 2006

4 days in a train..

So that was it.. I travelled the famous Transsiberian and i must say it was awesome!
4 days in a train with no book and no music and i didn't find a minute to get bored! (robbed certainly but not bored!)

First, being the cheap person you know, i had to travel "platzkart".. in "kuppe" it's twice the price and you travel in a closed 4 bunks compartment with 3 other people.. but in platzkart, the whole wagon transform into a big dorm and you just make friends with everyone, sit on every bed, talk to everyone, learn russian, play guitar for the whole wagon... it was great! (the only counterpart being that i had to sing "i will survive" about 200 times in 4 days! it'll teach me to not know any popular song!)

So I was the only foreigner in the wagon.. There was Andrei, whom i took for an american backacker when i first saw him, because he seemed to not talk much to others and had a "typical backpackers necklace"! (we all have our prejudice, right?)
But Andrei turned out to be a very nice Russian lad, no more american than you or me (although i'm not so sure about some of you!) and before getting off in Krasnoyarks, he actually gifted me his necklace as a souvenir from Russia! So now i'm the one with a typical backpacker's necklace!!
Aside from Andrei there were Gene, and Ravil (who kept asking "Tina Turner!" every five minutes!) and Ilkhome and Sergei and.... all super nice and helpful.. and eventhough none of them spoke a word of english we somehow managed to talk the whole time and i did end up learning quite a bit of Russian..

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