Still in Siberia

It was almost 9 o'clock when the sun finally came over the horizon and shone through the line of birch trees that invariably line the way along the tracks. We were somewhat east of Mariinsk, and four time zones from Moscow. The snow here is carved by the wind – not drifted, but carved and shaped. Once again, it is apparently very cold, although we have no thermometer. We pass towns and villages that make us wonder, what do people do here? Most of the housing one sees is ramshackle. Industry is mostly invisible. Winter lasts nine months. And yet, people live here.

Svetlana came “this morning” to invite us to come to lunch in the Pectopah. No, not today...we were in the midst of breakfast coffee and oatmeal.

Now is when a bit of tedium sets in. The sameness of the landscape begins to wear at you. We look forward to the each next stop, and check the schedule to see how long before we arrive. It is a chance to get fresh air and stretch one's legs. The train operates on Moscow time until we cross the Mongolian border.

The day passed with chit chat and the occasional stop at obscure places. Krasnoyarsk is probably the more recognizable, unless it's Nizhneudinsk or Ilanskaya. Most stops are about 20 minutes, but others stretch to 45 minutes, or an abbreviated two minutes. The pounding of the ice removal crew has mostly stopped. The humidity is lower and the snow more ice crystals than drifting flakes, so they don't blow up or collect on the equipment as we cannonball down the line at about 40 mph.

At Krasnoyarsk Brian was treated to a water and ice show. The fellow refilling the potable water you're warned not to drink hooked the hose up incorrectly. When he turned it on at the in-ground fixture the hose broke free of its fitting on the car and sprayed water, which instantly froze. He got the hose turned off and tried again – with the same result. As always, it seems, the third time was the charm. Brian also noticed he opened the flow with less gusto than earlier.

Dinner was a dry-cured beef sausage Brian bought on the platform at Ilanskaya station, with some bread and cheese. The sausage was appropriately fatty, and had good flavor without heavy garlic Brian also bought an ice cream bar from the platform kiosk for 50 rubles, about a dollar. He really likes Russian ice cream. It's very dense and less creamy than ours, but it doesn't seem to ever melt.

It gets dark early and we spend the remainder of our time before bed eating our dinner and reading.

One of the challenges in this journey is time. The train keeps Moscow time throughout its travels. As you travel further east, train time becomes more detached from “real” local time. So, Ilanskaya is four hours ahead of Moscow. Train time says 12 o'clock noon, but the local time is 4 o'clock PM and dark. By the time we reach Mongolia the difference will grow to six hours. We try to “live” by local time so we don't get hit with “jet lag” in China. Six hours is a lot to reconcile, and we don't have enough days in Beijing to make it right.