Immediately we met our friend for the next four days, the older female attendant of the carriage known as the "Podvinista."
Her duties include ensuring riders' safety, comfort and cleanliness of the carriage. As well as trying to scam money as much money as possible out of people. Ours proceeded to set the ground rules early on by questioning anything about each passengers ticket ( i.e. corresponding passport numbers which is odd since the final destination of the train was still in Russia) that tried to board the train. Her aloof indifference to whether people got on or not made sure people knew that she was in charge, even though you knew she had no leg to stand on. One group literally didn't think she was going to let them on until 5 minutes before departure when she finally shrugged her shoulders and stood aside while they scrambled with huge packs for space in their compartments, giving no reason why she 'changed her mind.' We also made friends with the girl who sold stuff out of the cart, beer, soda, snacks -- namely beer. Found out her name was Tanya, and that she spoke some German and that was it. Communication was difficult from there on out but she hung out in our compartment nevertheless.
Claire and Sarah went to sleep but Andy stayed up and talked to her some more in between the cars. Too bad there were no windows because the air quickly gets rank on this train. At Vladimir stop, a 20 minute diversion, she gets off and tells Andy to come help her buy some more stuff away from the train around behind the station. It's two thirty in the morning and the train is quickly approaching the middle of nowhere. "No way," Andy says, "I'm staying right here next to this train."
Later after everyone was back on safely, the prodvinista was concerned about everyone's sleep. "Go to sleep," she said to us as she motioned with her head on her hands. It was kind of her but Tanya and her started yelling in Russian back and forth about how she should mind her own business and that we will decide when we are sleepy or not.
The next day was a full day riding. The scenery stayed surprisingly the same. Virtually none. Except for a few patches of open land, most of the time the scenery was blocked (similar to the non-openable windows) with either shrubs on either side of the tracks or trees or a high embankment with the train traveling through the bottom of the 'trench.' The stops we did have, we bought snacks and drinks and some interesting dumplings -- which is where I think the mutton began.
The next day brought strikingly similar scenery, and the houses that we did manage to see (through the shrubs, trees or embankment) were remarkably similar. Simple peasant wooden houses amidst large swaths of land.
At this point I needed to charge my camera, and it is also at this point I realized the difference to the prodvinista between using the outlet for 'shaving' or for 'charging.' There is a switch they can turn on which feeds power to all the outlets in the carriage. They usually leave it off and I quickly found out why. 50 Rubles per 1/2 hour, she wrote on a piece of paper. Which of course, she would pocket quietly -- the entire train runs on electricity so it's there aplenty and no skin off her. It was outrageous also because I didn't know how long I would need so I negotiated with her and worked out a price. However, she started making it more difficult because she wanted the time to begin immediately and we were coming to a stop that I needed to film. She essentially said, "sorry, it begins now," after my pleading. She finally relented a few minutes extra after, however and I managed to get some time back as she checked about 20 minutes into my charging and asked if it was working. "No," I said, seeing that it was indeed charging. She went back and fiddled with something then didn't return for almost aother 30 minutes when she said that was enough. She already had my money and she didn't give change. And this is how the war started.
Later that night, Andy had bought a giant smoked fish on the platform to share with everyone. The podvinista must have followed her nose because she throws open the cabin door in disgust as we are all devouring this fish and gives everyone in the group a dirty look. Later, we met others on the train and had a party in our compartment, but didn't care at this point -- forget 'cultural differences' -- we were tired of being 'nice.' The prod. had thrown down the gauntlet. So the party grew and grew and got more and more loud -- so much so that by the time we reached Novosibirsk, Andy had pulled out the video camera and was filming the prodvinista walking around, provoking her, which she seemed to not enjoy although she did try to extort money for being filmed. I mean come on, isn:t it a free country?.... Later, as everything was dying down, the police boarded the train told us to stop.
No one in the carriage seemed to have sympathy for her though as she jacked up everyone's price of beer way high. For the next two days, we would wonder if she would intentionally keep the air conditioning (remember the windows didn't open) at a border line anemic level so it never really got cool, so that she could sell more cold beverages at inflated prices. Or maybe she would just charge people to turn the air conditioning up...
The next two days brought about another astonishing non-change in scenery. Perhaps the most surprising thing about this long leg of the journey was actually the LACK of diversity. It seemed like hour after hour, day after day, we would have the same obscuring views of shrubs, trees, and embankment with the very occasional glimpse of open land with the same exact wooden peasant houses. Even the faces of the people that we would see selling dumplings or noodles or beverages on the platform, didn't really change that dramatically over the course of four days. It was astonishing actually.
The podvinista would prove to make some money off our car but not really. It seems like everyone in our group bought everything from the people selling on the platforms at the stops. Which, some were whispering is probably why the air conditioning remained tepid all the way to Irkutsk. She also seemed obsessed with the floor runners on the train corridor for some reason -- this tacky pink and blue striped long piece of cotton that was supposed to protect an even tackier carpet -- every day, twice a day they would carefully place it back down the length of the carriage and stretch it. Also, at every stop they would wipe the white poles on the outside of the train where people would grab to descend to the platform. we appreciated their meticulousness, but would have preferred it directed at the filthy toilets they tortured people with by keeping locked way longer than they were supposed to outside of stations.
Finally, we made it on the fourth day to our destination - the remote, former Siberian trading town of Irkutsk where we would stay for three days and visit Lake Baikal. As we got off the train, we didn't know how to say farewell to our friend for four days, the podvinista. It turned out not to matter anyway -- she had mysteriously disappeared entirely as soon as the train had stopped.
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