Rushin' 'round Russia: Night Train to Tomsk

There are two different kinds of sleeper cars on Russian trains. OK, there is actually a third type, the open-plan “platzkart” car, but I don’t have any knowledge of those beyond what my former students told me, some of whom rode the train for four days to get from Kyrgyzia to St. Petersburg. (Verdict: “Nightmare!” though others who didn’t ride as long said they can be lots of fun if you get a good group of people.) Of the two that I have ridden, one (“coupé”) has four beds to a compartment, two up and two down, and the other (“lux”) has only two to a compartment. I had “lux” accommodations on my trip from St. Petersburg to Moscow. I had a roommate for about ten minutes, until the train left the station, at which time the conductor came by and told my roommate he could move to an empty compartment. On the train from Omsk to Tomsk I shared a compartment with a woman in her late 50s (?) who was on her way from Italy to a small town about two hours away from Tomsk where her husband lives. (I didn’t quite catch why she was living in Italy, or maybe she didn’t say.) Five days travel in all for her, with lots of luggage, some in the luggage car and some not. She and her husband are Ukrainian by citizenship, but Russian by nationality. She was born in Nizhnyi Novgorod, but her family moved to Kiev in Soviet times for her father’s work, while her husband was a native Siberian. Both of them are working on getting their Russian citizenship, which will be pretty pro-forma in their case, but they still have to go through all the paperwork and bureaucratic slowness. In the mean time it has been hard for her husband, a graphic artist, to work because it is illegal for him to advertise his services, she told me, as long as he is not a citizen. She pulled out her ASUS laptop to show me some of his work, wall paintings for building foyers. When she found out I was an American she mentioned the current tensions between Russia and the US, but we decided that the problem was with our respective governments and not with the people. That’s a polite way to not talk about the issue, I think. I didn’t get as much sleep as I did on the train to Moscow. But I didn’t have the personal slice-of-life experience then either. I wonder what awaits me on my much longer ride from Novosibirsk to Kazan next Tuesday.

Train station in Omsk

I woke up to snow in the Tomsk region

After lunch with a member of the congregation here and a little walk around this part of town, I’m now settled into my hotel on the 5^th floor of one of the buildings of Tomsk State University. It’s a renovated version of a common kind of Russian hotel that I have stayed in a number of times over the years. It’s making me nostalgic and a little ashamed of ever having complained about places like this. My tiny towel? No problem. It got me dry this morning just fine. Leaving the key with the floor attendant when I leave during the day? No problem. That’s the way these places work. And I didn’t even have to give up my passport this time. (Rules for registration have change. I was registered in Omsk and had my passport back in a couple of hours.) Time to turn in. Tomorrow I preach and lead a communion service for the Lutheran congregation here.