The Trans-Siberian Weight Loss Plan

From my handwritten journal:

Having traveled on Russian trains several times before, I knew what to expect for sale: candy bars, cheap beer, mean looks and lukewarm mineral water, inexplicably carbonated and translated as "water with gas." And, oh yes, the ever-important supply of hot water, hawkishly tended to by the cabin prodinitsa (aka, She Who Shall Be Obeyed). Knowing that my total time spent on the Trans-Sib would sum up to be several days, I had planned ahead in Moscow, pillaging the supermarket 5 metro stops away of dry goods. I purchased what I believed to be honest-to-god vegetarian instant soups (they had pictures of carrots and onions, rather than the cartoon pig, chicken or cows, whose minced bits presumably await moistureless within). So confident I was in my preparation, complete with white standard plastic Eurobaggie, that I schlepped it all the way by air to Ulan-Ude. There I augmented the stash with Instant Quaker Oats and trailmix. This, undoubtedly, would make me King of Train #7, Wagon 2, and I walked smugly Saturday morning towards the train, confidant that babushkas and damsels alike would be throwing themselves at me in order to share in my freeze-dried cornucopia. Longtime readers will not be surprised that I, of course, left the bag back at the hotel.

So,instead of arriving as the Prince of Prefab Provisions, I boarded this Russian train, where sharing one's food is part of the social contract, the dejected empty-handed court jester.

My kupe compartment, capacity four, has two inmates already: Sergei, the Gorbachev lookalike sans skin-peninsula, from St Petersburg; and Inna, the grandmother of unknown profession, who was highly adept at the fake-spit-to-ground-while-hand-waving maneuver, ready to yank that move out of the holster at a moment's notice. They had been on the train since Vladivostok, two days prior, giving it a lived-in smell that I shan't soon forget. An odor somewhat reminiscent of an embarcadero or the seafood side of the supermarket. It turns out, luckily for me, that Inna was transporting salted dried fish to Novosibirsk, presumably as "gifts" to all those who had wronged her in the past.

Although assigned one of the better lower bunks, my Midwestern decency dictates that I cannot have elderly Russians falling on me in the middle of the night, so I happily if sheepishly take one of the upper bunks. The second idiotic move of the day came when I tried to enswathe the pillow with the presanitized case (optional, but well worth the 40 rubles). I'm not sure exactly how the cumulus cloud of feathers came about, but the goosey snow sent Sergei and Inna quickly into the hallway. I will likely never get the microfeathers out of those black pants, nor out of my respiratory system. The sneezestorm that followed was epic, a snot-and-tear machine-gun attack like I hadn't produced since a boy in the Ozarks.

So, twenty minutes into my Trans-Siberian shunt and I'm already working on untouchable status.

Soon, however, our train is hugging the banks of the majestic Lake Baikal and it is even more amazing than I had predicted. Incredibly, this otherworldly blue "Pearl of Siberia", the planet's deepest lake, holds 1/5 of the world's freshwater, more than all five Great Lakes combined. We even spot some nerpas, the only freshwater species of seal, happily basking in the sun, not far from some ivory-skinned bikini-clad Russkas, undoubtedly working on their first sunburn/encephalitis combo of the year.

Traveling along the Trans-Siberian is eerie. Everyone's watches are set to Moscow time (for us, 4-5 hours offset), which itself is disorienting, and being couped in the chugging train for so long produces odd behavior in these crazy Russians. Whenever we would make a stop at some town, usually about four hours apart, everyone would pile out and just stand and mill about, looking at the train. Perhaps they were hoping that *this* city would have a convenience stand for soda, beer or something to read, oh god anything that is different. And there is nearly always nothing, save for the enterprising shirtless man selling,you guessed it, dried fish.

Sergei and Inna, more out of pity I think than anything else, insisted on me sharing in of their goodies, though I had nothing but alcohol swabs and a dumpshit grin to furnish. They know, but likely don't fully understand, the word vegetarian, as I am offered many dishes that clearly contain beast, though admittedly a minority component. I do have some hot tea and Inna insists on me taking sugar -- rather, she doesn't ask, she just drops five cubes into the goblet as she enigmatically makes the bicep motion while pointing at me. She also demands that I nibble/consume several beige, biscuitlike spheroids, popped from a bag emblazoned with a cartoon mouse. If I had seen this in the store, I would have surely thought that this was (a) made from mice or, more likely, (b) rat poison. Since rodents are not, from what I understand, drawn to rocklike dry cookies soaked in pure liquid sucrose, I was sure that I would be okay. But that was all I could ingest in the entire day and the sugar rush took me down for three hours.

Krasnoyarsk is only 10 inchworm hours away and, as we penetrate the Siberian night, I hear a thunderstorm arriving. I feel a good sleep coming on.