This last weekend my girlfriend Nastya and I went to Kiev for a quick weekend vacation. We were only in Kiev for a few days, but I think we were able to see just about everything the city had to offer as far as sightseeing is concerned. I think the most impressive sight we saw was the Rodina Mat (Родина-Мать in Russian), and the war memorial built nearby. Everything there had a sense of grandur, and weight. Walking through the tunnel that housed the war memorial you felt small and inclosed standing next to 10ft tall statues of soliders, and surrounded by 3ft thick cement walls in any direction. I think the memorial did a great job of conveying the the glory and the tremendous pressure that those who fought in the Great Patriotic War probably felt. (Interesting fact: The Great Patriotic War is viewed as a separate conflict from World War II, and took place from June of 1941 to May of 1945)
If any of you reading my blog have questions about our time in Kiev, feel free to ask me, but I'm not going to be writing about the trip as a whole for the main bit of this entry. I started writing about everything in greater detail, but actually started to get a bit bored. The trip was incredible, and I had an excellent time, but it just seems to lose a lot of it's luster when I write about like a school report, listing everything we saw in order.
So I'm going to write about something a little different...
TRAINS!
I had never taken an actual train to travel anywhere before coming to Russia, but now I have had a little bit of experience with them, and I think it's time to give trains some attention.
Hang in there for a second with me, I promise it's more interesting than a late night ad trying to get you to buy "to scale" models.
Traveling from Moscow to Kiev by train is an affordable alternative for budget travelers (by which I mean broke-ass college kids) and, if you take the sleeper train, can get you to the heart of Kiev in time for breakfast if you leave the night before. I had taken a sleeper train once before from Moscow to St. Petersburg and found it to be a rather enjoyable experience, albeit an uncomfortable one. I had failed to take into account though that this time we would be crossing an international border, rather than just traveling from one city inside of Russia to another, and what differences that might make in the experience.
When Nastya and I arrived at the Kievskaya train station it was another cold spring day in Moscow, so we were both warmly dressed when we got onto the train at the start of our journey, which would have been great, except, in good ole' Russian fashion, they had the heaters blasting at full strength.
This prompted me to write a little fiction for myself, while I was passing the time. Despite the snow outside, and the fact that everyone was speaking Russian, I started to imagine that I was baking in the heat of the Colombian sun, with my sexy Russian spy accomplice/girlfriend, while we took a train ride to a meeting point with a contact in the Colombian drug cartel. It was just a way to let my mind run free a little bit while we were slowly cooking in the train, but it turned out later that my fantasy might have leaked into reality a bit more than I would have liked for it to.
After being woken up for passport control at the border Nastya and I were sitting on her bunk on the bottom rack while the border guards did some initial inspections. Suddenly, two of the guards come up to where our bunks were and started pulling up the carpet to reveal a small hatch in the floor. They then proceeded to open this hatch and started pulling out large bags that had been taped closed. At this point it was about 2am in the morning, and the only thing my sleep depraved mind could think was "holy crap, this is so awesome! I wonder what's in those bags... what if it's something crazy like drugs? Oh no, what if they think it's mine?!" I admit now that it would have taken quite a stretch for anything like that to stick, but my state of mind was not being helped by the fact that a group of four guards further down the cart had be arguing with some other passengers who were drunk, and had been rather obnoxious throughout the night. One of the guards decided that whatever was in the bag wasn't that important, and put them back, while the four guards down the way started kicking the passengers at the end of the cart off the train.
These guys were drunk, not all together happy about being kicked out at the border, and far from quite about their displeasure. The went down the cart yelling obscenities at the guards, and demanding to see official papers. We could continue to hear the protests of the passengers once they were outside of the train and the passport checks had continued. I was a little worried they might try and pull the same thing on me in an attempt to get a bribe to stay on the train, and while they did regard my passport with enough suspicion to scan it, and double check all the facts, they left me alone for the most part. By the time all the checks were done our drunken cart-mates had managed to bribe their way back on board and were toasting to their good luck for being able to stay on the train.
Once we reached the second passport control point upon entering the Ukraine the train attendent started trying to extort one of the drunk passengers, and the drunk passenger lost it. I should mention that the train attendent looked a lot like the guy who played Bronson in the movie of the same title, if Bronson had spent less time in prison gyms, and more time killing bears with his hands in the Siberian wilderness.
If any of you reading my blog have questions about our time in Kiev, feel free to ask me, but I'm not going to be writing about the trip as a whole for the main bit of this entry. I started writing about everything in greater detail, but actually started to get a bit bored. The trip was incredible, and I had an excellent time, but it just seems to lose a lot of it's luster when I write about like a school report, listing everything we saw in order.
So I'm going to write about something a little different...
TRAINS!
I had never taken an actual train to travel anywhere before coming to Russia, but now I have had a little bit of experience with them, and I think it's time to give trains some attention.
Inside of a Russian sleeper train
Hang in there for a second with me, I promise it's more interesting than a late night ad trying to get you to buy "to scale" models.
Traveling from Moscow to Kiev by train is an affordable alternative for budget travelers (by which I mean broke-ass college kids) and, if you take the sleeper train, can get you to the heart of Kiev in time for breakfast if you leave the night before. I had taken a sleeper train once before from Moscow to St. Petersburg and found it to be a rather enjoyable experience, albeit an uncomfortable one. I had failed to take into account though that this time we would be crossing an international border, rather than just traveling from one city inside of Russia to another, and what differences that might make in the experience.
When Nastya and I arrived at the Kievskaya train station it was another cold spring day in Moscow, so we were both warmly dressed when we got onto the train at the start of our journey, which would have been great, except, in good ole' Russian fashion, they had the heaters blasting at full strength.
This prompted me to write a little fiction for myself, while I was passing the time. Despite the snow outside, and the fact that everyone was speaking Russian, I started to imagine that I was baking in the heat of the Colombian sun, with my sexy Russian spy accomplice/girlfriend, while we took a train ride to a meeting point with a contact in the Colombian drug cartel. It was just a way to let my mind run free a little bit while we were slowly cooking in the train, but it turned out later that my fantasy might have leaked into reality a bit more than I would have liked for it to.
After being woken up for passport control at the border Nastya and I were sitting on her bunk on the bottom rack while the border guards did some initial inspections. Suddenly, two of the guards come up to where our bunks were and started pulling up the carpet to reveal a small hatch in the floor. They then proceeded to open this hatch and started pulling out large bags that had been taped closed. At this point it was about 2am in the morning, and the only thing my sleep depraved mind could think was "holy crap, this is so awesome! I wonder what's in those bags... what if it's something crazy like drugs? Oh no, what if they think it's mine?!" I admit now that it would have taken quite a stretch for anything like that to stick, but my state of mind was not being helped by the fact that a group of four guards further down the cart had be arguing with some other passengers who were drunk, and had been rather obnoxious throughout the night. One of the guards decided that whatever was in the bag wasn't that important, and put them back, while the four guards down the way started kicking the passengers at the end of the cart off the train.
These guys were drunk, not all together happy about being kicked out at the border, and far from quite about their displeasure. The went down the cart yelling obscenities at the guards, and demanding to see official papers. We could continue to hear the protests of the passengers once they were outside of the train and the passport checks had continued. I was a little worried they might try and pull the same thing on me in an attempt to get a bribe to stay on the train, and while they did regard my passport with enough suspicion to scan it, and double check all the facts, they left me alone for the most part. By the time all the checks were done our drunken cart-mates had managed to bribe their way back on board and were toasting to their good luck for being able to stay on the train.
Once we reached the second passport control point upon entering the Ukraine the train attendent started trying to extort one of the drunk passengers, and the drunk passenger lost it. I should mention that the train attendent looked a lot like the guy who played Bronson in the movie of the same title, if Bronson had spent less time in prison gyms, and more time killing bears with his hands in the Siberian wilderness.
Rather Large and Very Scary
The passenger tried throwing a few punches but the train attendent got the better of him, putting him in a head lock, and dragging him to the other end of the cart. I don't know what exactly happened, but my guess is the attendent got his money, because they let the guy stay on the train again. There were no celebratory toasts this time though. I imagine they were trying to make as little noise as possible so they didn't attract anyone else looking for a little extra cash.
The whole time these two shake downs were happening, my mind kept going back to the spy fantasy I had written for myself earlier. Hidden contraband in the floor compartments, corrupt officials, and the whole time I was just playing it cool. If I'm being honest though, Nastya is probably the one thing that kept me out of trouble. She was able to respond much quicker to the guard's questions than I was, and they didn't seem to like me asking them to repeat the questions a couple of times so I could get the full grasp of it. Regardless, I went back to sleep feeling like an undercover badass.
Our train ride home was thankfully much less eventful, but we did also have two huge cats in the bunk next to us, so maybe they scared any would-be trouble makers into submission.
I'm convinced they were ocelots. No amount of proof will convince me otherwise
All this is to say: if you're looking for a more exciting way to travel next time you're going on vacation, give trains a try. You might get to have your own ocelot filled spy adventure.
Seriously though, check out the resemblance
(It's a picture of a cat on the back of a bus ticket that I drew)
