Irkutsk – Vladivostok

We’re about 4 hours and 250kms north of Vladivostok, having spent the last 3 days on the train. For reasons known only to the Russian Railways ticketing system, for this part of our trip we couldn’t just buy First Class tickets, we had to buy Business Class tickets. These are really just First Class tickets that are more expensive because they apparently include ‘services’. Same carriage as last time, but with a couple of extras thrown in – glossy magazine that we can’t read as it’s in Cyrillic, little guest pack with paper slippers, toothbrush, sewing kit, shoe shiner thing …. and meals. Er, actually it’s ‘meal’, as in one meal a day, but we only realised that after the first 24 hours. Thankfully we had been a bit sceptical about the included ‘meals’ and bought food (& drinks!) before we got on the train in Irkutsk, otherwise it would have been pretty close to a 3-day fast. Which might not have been such a bad thing, but we can work on our holiday weight loss program when we get home.

To anyone who is reading these posts and thinking of travelling on the Trans-Siberian railway, don’t bother with Business Class if you have a choice (we didn’t), just get First Class tickets and bring your own food.

For a lot of this section of the Trans-Siberian railway, the track goes just north (and then east) of the border with China. We’ve probably seen China out of the train windows at times. This section of the line, east of Lake Baikal, is much busier than to the west. Lots of freight trains, a few passenger trains, and lots of railway workers. Any little boy (or girl!) who wants to be a train driver when he grows up just needs to learn to speak Russian and move here. The Russian railways must be one of the biggest employers in the country.

We’ve had several stops a day, and whenever we can, we get out of the train to walk around a bit and see if there’s anything interesting around the place. Most stops are 15 – 20 minutes, and last night we followed 2 of the catering attendants as they ran to the supermarket to stock up on supplies for the restaurant car on the train. When I looked in their trolley, it seemed to be full of cans of beer, but there might have been some food hidden somewhere. We were more restrained and bought a block of chocolate, a drink and a packet of chips.

There have been people selling food on the platform a couple of times. This morning they were selling some kind of dried fish and containers of ‘caviar’. The night before last, we followed people up a little lane past the station and found 2 ladies doing a very brisk trade selling piroshki, boiled eggs, cooked chicken pieces and other Russian comfort foods.

There has been some flooding in some areas we’ve passed through in the last day or so – some of the rivers in Eastern Siberia are huge, and when they break their banks, the floodwaters stretch out for many kms.

So … tonight we arrive in Vladivostok. By the time we get off the train, we’ll have travelled 9289kms, crossed 7 time zones and spent a total of 6 days on the train. I’ve read 6 or 7 books, Greg has taken loads of photos and videos. Every afternoon that we were on the train, we would lock the door, pull down the blinds and watch an episode of one of our latest favourite TV series – Under the Dome, The Killing and the first ep of the US version of The Bridge.

The Station clock says its 3:10am, but its bright sunshine!. All stations work on Moscow time, the local time was 10:10am

The dangers of carriage surfing

Two thirds of the way

Lenin at sunset

Babushkas selling food outside the station

Near the birthplace of Genghis Khan

5 workers – 1 working 4 watching – a common sight in Moscow

Both of us grew up during the cold war, and the Soviet Union was the enemy with 10,000+ nuclear weapons and thousands of tanks stationed in East Germany. The Soviet Union was a strong powerful country.

Russia, which is 75% of the former Soviet Union, seems a much poorer country. Russia’s GDP per capita is about a third of Australia’s. Russia’s total GDP is about 15% to 33% bigger than Australia’s but for 143 million people versus Australia’s 21 million. I suspect it will not be more than 5 to 10 years before Australia’s GDP exceeds Russia.

We see so much inefficiency here. Unemployment is meant to be similar to Australia’s, around 6%, but there are so many people employed in meaningless jobs. We went to a supermarket today (not a very big one) with not one, but TWO security guards. Every supermarket has a security guard, and sometimes someone watching video surveillance full-time as well. We pass a shop selling kitchen goods in the mall up the road which has two shop assistants and the shop is the size of a large walk-in robe. Next door there is a jewellery shop with four shop assistants, and no customers most of the time. There are shopping areas about 750 metres away from us that are full of tiny little stores (3 metres by 2 metres) that sell hardware, fruit and veg and similar. There must be 50 stalls, and again almost never any customers. There is a market next door with a couple of dozen little stalls selling fruit and veg, all similar, and most of the time with no customers. There are supermarkets everywhere, there must be ten supermarkets  of various sizes within 1 km of our apartment.

There are tiny little shops in many subway underpasses. Really tiny, 2 metres long by a metre deep, selling everything from shoes to taps. Shopkeepers eking out a living.

There are police on every metro station (usually at least 3) plus people monitoring video surveillance.  At the train stations and other places there are many examples of security theatre.  At Saint Petersburg station there were body metal detectors that people had to walk through. Of course the metal detector went off all the time, because ordinarily people are carrying metal all the time (coins and phones etc). The guards did nothing when the alarms went off, and to make it more ridiculous Saint Petersburg station had several entrances that you could go through without going through any detectors. We went through a metal detector at an entrance to a shopping centre yesterday, and as usual the metal detector beeped, but the guard did nothing.

At the main shopping area near us some workman have been replacing some paving with new paving. This has been going on since before we got here on Saturday. It is so pathetically slow. I am sure an Australian paving crew would have had it all done in 3 days, but this drags on so slowly, with lots of workers standing around and hardly anyone working.

It rained heavily yesterday (and the day before), a tropical-like downpour that lasted maybe 15 minutes. The roads flooded, but because there is almost no drainage, the water just sits in deep pools on the road, until it evaporates. Thefootpaths are bitumen, but so uneven and not built with a slope so the water drains, and the footpaths are covered with deep pools of water as well.

Russia just seems so third world in some respects. It seems to have more in common in our experience with Vietnam – a third world country – than a poor European country like Portugal. This is our experience in Moscow, the rich capital where people are so much wealthier. It’s going to be interesting in the poor parts of Russia.