Woo Hoo, Party Train to Kazan!

To buy a train ticket to Kazan, I walked into the Sputnik Aviakassa in Ekaterinburg, one of the city's almost-pleasant rail and air ticket offices -- roughly approximating a travel agency, except that all the women are dolled up in that scary-sexy librarian way. My Russian skills, now developed enough to get me to the right room at least, predictably and invariably send me to the wrong Natasha. I was taken by hand to where the trains are negotiated -- there someone would surely help me procure my ticket (which, as it turns out, is equivalent to a sleeping board next to a rolling outhouse in aromatic August). While conversing entirely in Russian, Alexandra, the raven-haired babe with the uncomfortably low-cut white blouse, painstakingly recorded all my requests (well, not all of them) in a well-used hardbound ledger (nothing here is fully computerized, nothing). With her speaking at mach V by phone to a disembodied train expert, the plans were finalized, smiles and spasibo's exchanged, buying of ticket nearly complete.

Not quite, this is Russia after all. Creating a head-scratching level of bureaucracy, no one in this country who sells you something can actually handle the money. All transactions, whether at a restaurant or on the bus or at the drugstore, require at least three persons [the buyer, the seller and the miserable shoot-me-now harpy who runs the register or credit card machine]. Up the dusty stairs, stopping at each floor to ask the ubiquitous and bored security ogre in the red cap about the cashier's office, receiving the appropriately negative grunt. I finally reach floor 4 where I encounter The Beast in the Plexiglas Bunker. Even if she were speaking perfect English I would not be able to hear the hazy heavily-refracted apparition behind the ten inches of solid clear plastic, much less this crazy language that no one will ever be able to master. I could not understand her, could not even see her beyond the little drawer-chute peephole in which she demanded my information and my money. Finally I guess I nodded my head yes and no in the right pre-determined configuration, like unlocking a mysterious easter egg from a video game [yes, yes, no, no, no, yes, yes], and my purchase request was granted.

Back down to Alexandra's desk, all bureaucratic needs filled, the negotiations complete. Opening a steel box which she pulled slowly from under her desk, she plucked out an ivory velvet baggie and unveilled a glimmering, chromium circular stamp, attached to a long black wooden handle. The sign that either I've been in this nutty country way too long or that my nutritional reserves have been exhausted is that this whole procedure seemed in slow-motion and unnecessarily erotic. I felt myself blushing as Alexandra twisted and pressed the stamp firmly into the black ink pad and then wwwhacked it down suddenly onto my receipt with a startling and satisfying clap, cracking a half-smile as several of her body parts jiggled asynchronously. Whew, I was on my way to Kazan, which all of a sudden had a strangely sexy overtone to it.

The crashing, sobering reality came next.

I finally dragged myself off Train 229 in the Russian city of Kazan at 3:17 am this morning, the sun yet to arise, sleep still encrusting my orbs and god-knows-what flourishing in my hair. The one-day, seven-hour trip in the kupe compartment, strategically situated next door to the urinal, was nothing short of miserable. I felt and smelt the vibrations of piss and poop for a full day. To top that I watched in frozen disgust, not able to get far enough away, as my cabinmate choked down a copious trapezoidal flap of flimsy, damp, brownish meat in the most sickening, gut-spilling manner conceivable [swallowing more than he could properly ingest, ejecting part of it back out with a gurgling-gagging sound, then repeating until it was all ingested]. In darkness with a shitty map, I tried in vain to find a hotel room this morning, the search lasting six hours -- so many hotels will not accept foreigners --and, although this city inhabits nearly a million people, a shocking shortage of accomodation remains.

Finally I found a room in Hotel Tatarstan, a typically Soviet monstrosity that specializes in discomfort. Somehow I made it to this internet cafe, purely by accident and, as usual, I'm the only one actually doing anything besides playing ear-crashing games in this humid, hot videodrome.

My mood is suprisingly good, the city looks rather beautiful right now and the Tatarstan air smells delightful, an after-effect perhaps of having my nose wafted with blasting bursts of alcohol-laced urine for the prior 27 hours.