Travel anecdotes

Those moments of shock, surprise or simple serendipity that remain long in the memory

Trans-Siberian encounter

 “Nastrovya!”, the clink of glasses that accompanies the clarion call resounds around the carriage compartment.

  The Trans-Siberian Railway teaches the traveller patience before it teaches you geography. Days loosen and stretch until time becomes elastic, measured not in hours but in cups of tea liberally dispensed from the samovar at the end of each carriage, and the unreadable station names pronounced through cracked loudspeakers. Outside the window, the world slides past in long sentences of birch forest and peasant-smudged villages, interrupted only by the sudden appearance of a town that seems to have materialised solely to sell smoked fish, tomatoes and instant noodles from the throng of babushkas lining the platform as the train pulls in for a brief moment of leg stretching.

  By the fourth night, the train felt less like transport and more like a floating country. Compartments became neighbourhoods, corridors became streets. You learned who snored, who drank, who had a guitar, who had stories that grew longer the later it got. Somewhere east of Yekaterinburg, my corridor acquired a group of Russian soldiers, returning from leave, their uniforms half-unbuttoned, caps stuffed into bags, the sharp lines of military life softened by motion and fatigue.

  They adopted me quickly discovering my nationality made the only non-Russian on the entire train. This was done with the easy confidence of men who assume that the world, if not friendly, is at least negotiable. Vodka appeared without ceremony, decanted into mismatched cups and glasses and one unfortunate teapot. Toasts followed, each one more elaborate than the last, to mothers, to comrades, to roads that never end, to the fact that the train was still moving and therefore so were we. Language mattered less than rhythm: clinking glass, nodding head, the universal understanding that refusing was impolite.

  The night thickened. Cigarette smoke clung to the narrow space despite rules posted in three languages. Someone sang an old army song, low and melodic, and for a moment the carriage felt suspended between places, between duties, between past and future. Their faces, flushed and open, lost their hardness. One showed me photos in his wallet—home, a river in summer, a dog with an expression of heroic loyalty. Another spoke about the railway itself, how it stitched the country together, how you could fall asleep in Europe and wake up near Mongolia and still feel, somehow, at home.

  At a stop whose name I never caught, we spilled briefly onto the platform. The stillness of the air hit like a reprimand. The loosening of joints creaked with heavy sighs. A woman sold pastries from a crate, steam escaping as if from the earth itself. We ate with bare hands and laughed too loudly, as my attempts at stilted Russian met with sympathetic back slapping. Russian footballers playing in the UK were thrown out as a call and response game with my return being the name of the club and trying to pinpoint such on a folded map in my rucsac.

  Exhausting this I gave up my small Russian knowledge of political leaders. “Gorbachev” I offered, to be met with a collective response of groans, twisted faces and thumbs down. Feeling I had ‘blotted my copybook’, I quickly suggested “Brezhnev” only to be met with a similar retort. Not sure of modern leaders, I proposed “Stalin”.

  “Diktator” they chorused with even greater disgust.

  Floundering at this point I submitted “Yeltsin” rather tentatively. Fearful of the response I was relieved to be met with...

  “Yeltsin good”. Then as if gaining a new found confidence, the senior officer came back with, “Margaret Thatcher”.

  “Diktator” I cried with gusto. This was the moment where nationality mattered not one jot. They fell about laughing with deep belly laughs… people are the same regardless of where you find them.

  When the whistle blew, there was a collective, exaggerated urgency, a mock panic that ended in relief as we tumbled back aboard.

  Later—how much later was unclear—the vodka ran low and the conversation grew philosophical in the way only exhaustion and alcohol allow. They asked why I was traveling so far. I tried to explain something about distance, about wanting to feel the size of things. One of them nodded solemnly, as if I had confirmed a suspicion. “Big country,” he said, tapping the wall of the train. “Big nights.”

  Eventually, one by one, they folded into sleep, boots still on, laughter fading into the mechanical lullaby of the tracks. I lay awake longer, listening to the train carve its way through darkness, carrying us all—soldiers, wanderers, secrets—across a continent that refused to be rushed. In the morning, there would be headaches, apologies, strong tea. But that night belonged entirely to motion, to the fragile fellowship of strangers bound together by rails and a bottle, hurtling east through the vast, indifferent grace of Siberia.