Costumes for Hire in Park

The shoreline for locals

As we leave St.Petersburg, I thought you might like to hear my impressions of this well-endowed city of approximatly 6,000,000 people (10,000,000 in the metropolitan area). Its jewels and pageantry are not lacking, and the glory of the Russian empire are embodied here. It feels distinctly Scandinavian in climate and culture, due to its position on the Baltic Sea. The city is perfect at this time of year.

Today, we took a break from the many museums and escaped from the city for a day by hydrofoil to Peterhof, the summer residence of Peter the Great. Peter chose this site around 1704 as a convenient location for his travels to and from other countries. Similar to Versailles, it has extensive gardens and palace buildings.

Gee Kin got a break from museum sickness, since it was a Monday and the palace buildings were closed. However, I did wrangle a quick, one-hour or less visit to the Treasury building. It was open and we were the only visitors in the tiny museum. Many of the gifts to and from other royalty were kept here.

The Admiralty, St. Petersburg

St. Isaac’s Cathedral

A Walk in the Park…

It was a lovely bright, clear and breezy day. Many families were in the Palace grounds spending the day together (along with the tour groups). On the way back, Gee Kin and I enjoyed the fresh marine air along the harbor, and stopped for a drink in the park near the hotel. We sat and watched local St. Petersburgers.

We found the Russian people very tidy, well-behaved and a very handsome people. Most of the young people dressed well, with just enough flair to be noticed. We couldn’t help but prefer their tailored look with the casual one in the States. But obesity is also a problem here, due to alot of bread and beer in the diet.

I still wonder why I hadn’t made a point to come here before. It is a long way to come, and unless you join a tour it can be expensive and the visa process is prickly. But it’s such a widely misunderstood country. There needs to be more direct interaction between the US and Russia. While this problem is also the case for China, it seems oddly apparent that more people have traveled to China and have greater awareness of its culture than Russia’s. Perhaps the sheer distance between the Russia and the U.S. has caused this poor link.

The other night, we went to a Russian folk dance performance. We were very surprised that we hadn’t seen one like this before. Their costumes, style of dancing, and mannerisms were new and intriguing to us. I vaguely remember seeing some dance troupe like this on the Ed Sullivan Show when I was growing up! How could I have missed exposure to this deeply ethnic and well-preserved culture my entire life?!?

In planning for this trip, I’ll admit that I was focused on the Trans-Mongolian Express and the journey more than the two end points (Beijing and Moscow). I wasn’t fully prepared for what I was going to experience at each end. It caught me by surprise, but in a very positive way. The Russian experience was very special, since I had not been here before.

The tourist industry is still relatively undeveloped. Despite the language barrier, the Russians were very friendly and polite to us.

Many local people do not speak English so it puts the onus on the traveler to communicate in the local language. Learning the Russian alphabet and survival words are somewhat essential. You won’t get English flipped back in your face if you struggle to utter a few words in the local language. This is a place where they really appreciate your efforts, so you will be warmly rewarded.

The Russian language is based on the Cyrillic alphabet, developed by the Bulgarians. They are very proud of it. It combines letters from the Roman alphabet, Greek letters, and a few of their own doing. I kept wondering why I felt like I was on Sorority Row in Berkeley. Gee Kin and I had a blast trying to decipher words in Russian. Here are a few to amuse you. See if you can guess what the words are. I’ll give you the answers in the next post.

1. PECTOPAH
2. NHTEPHET
3. MNHNMAPKT
4. CNTNbAHK
5. HYTOPNYC
(Note: I haven’t figured out how to add the Cyrillic Alphabet to my Keyboard yet. The N is written backwards).

All in all, I have thoroughly enjoyed our visit here. I hope you will consider coming and make a point to visit this fascinating country.

I wanted to get off…so was it worth doing the TME (Trans-Mongolian Express) from Beijing to Moscow? I explained in an earlier post about my pursuit of trains and train travel initiated by a stint at the Hong Kong Mass Transit Railway Corporation. Sir Edmund Hillary, when asked why he was climbing Mt. Everest, said, “Because it’s there”. While this obviously cannot compare to climbing Everest, taking the TME is certainly an achievable goal by any able bodied individual with a penchant for the absurd. In a good way.

For starters and the curious, the best intelligence on this venture is through the website http://www.seat61.com. The author, whom I believe is British, has mastered every angle of all the trains throughout Russia. He gave me all the information needed to help me decide that this was worth it…for me and Gee Kin.

OK, so pros and cons.

First and foremost, you get to spend time with someone. Five and a half days of dedicated time will flush out your true selves and your relationships, good or bad. That’s a good thing.

Secondly, you get to put things in perspective. Food and pooping are important. Seeing early sunrises out the window with the sun and the moon at the same time with the world whipping by. In Chinese. In Mongolian. In Russian. Giving yourself time to look at colors of the sky when you never bothered to before. Making time of time.

Third, it’s a curiosity satisfied. The vast continent linking Asia and Europe caused and enabled human migrations and wars to be fought. Humans have stepped where I am stepping to create this civilization as we know it. The German traveler we met informed us that Ghenghis Kahn had traveled from Beijing to today’s Steiglitz in Germany. That’s a lot of horseback riding. The TME is a pretty good way to trace his tracks. Ghenghis-baby got the benefits of belonging to all of the above too.

Cons, well can’t think of too many for the big picture. A lot of small stuff, but why sweat it?
Yeah, there’s a few weird cultural inconveniences and this is not for anyone. Themanincar61 best describes these.
In the final analysis, I heard myself uttering more than once, “this trip is already halfway there?” And “I don’t want it to end!” We are already talking about Vladivostok to Ulan Bator via Korea or Japan. Overall, it must have been a good decision.

Photos above:

1. Birch woods along the Trans-Siberian-Mongolian Express
2. Endless birches by moonset

Ulan Bator

1a. Yurts in Mongolila

Yurts in Mongolia

A traveler we met at the hotel in Beijing asked us, “Why the Trans-Siberian?” It took us aback. After all this planning, it seemed an achievement just to execute. We were stunned. Hmm. A good question. So we dug deep into our memory tool chest. Surely there must be a reason that had crossed our minds decades ago. I found myself one, after some digging. “Oh”, I finally blurted. “I like trains” …”and I am going cross country on Amtrak”. It was pretty weak, until I later remembered that I worked for Hong Kong’s Mass Transit Railway System for three years during the time it was under construction. I became somewhat a railway nut during that time. Working in the monastic order can make you do strange things, like want to be like the big boys. So my railway brothers talked shop about British Railway and the London Tube like it was the state of the art. BART wasn’t exactly either, but at least it was new at the time. The British Civil Engineer who hired me told me, “we’re all guests here”, referring to the ex-pats in Hong Kong. My director, a Midlands engineer who had never been abroad before going to Scotland, found himself in Hong Kong with his wife and three kids. they could live like royalty in the Mid-Levels, send their kids to public schools in the UK, and take annual trips back home on the QE2. He reminded me that “we’re all basically “Wrailwray” men here, as a gesture of camaraderie. But despite the fogies, I did enjoy transportation planning. A recent UC Berkeley grad at MTR taught me about trip headways, modalities, and methods of predicting number of passengers. I even started to learn about all the railways in the world, both heavy gauge and light rail, and their special features. I still remember that rubber tires like the ones used in the Montreal system were quieter but prone to fires, whereas the squeaky steel wheels were more reliable. BART was never discussed because it was too new to evaluate, and there certainly was a bias toward British colonial interests. So, such is my explanation about taking the Trans-Siberian. It’s another reason for my hopeless love and fascination for wandering the world. Trains are soothing, and help you to think and reflect on life. It helps you to stop the world and get off the internet. PS. Another explanation is due: the Chinese system shut down my ability to post using Google and my WordPress hosting site. Apologies to those of you who were disappointed and could not view the images. I was unable to see the images on my end, so that was very frustrating for me. But I will repost them as soon as I get chance. Thursday, July 30, 7:30am

Can you read this one?

The first day ended at the border between China and Mongolia, and not Ulan Bator. It’s still another eight hours from now (6am local time) to the Mongolian capital. The customs and border patrol took only a short expected amount of time with passport inspections, but a disruptive night from 10pm to 1am was caused by the need for each train car to be retrofitted with wider gauge wheels to fit the Mongolian track system! During the stop, each car was disengaged, Chinese wheels removed, and Mongolian wheels installed. While this might sound unbelievable and hideous, it happened. The car attendant explained to Gee Kin that the tracks are 2 inches wider in Mongolia.The three hour stop allowed just enough time for 30 workers to descend on each car systematically, pound the hell out of each connection between wheel and car, move each car to the Mongolian track, and reconnect everything (about 15 cars) again!

The landscape has changed to a wide plain with beautiful, seductive lighting at this time of the early morning. As I was about to take a few shots, I saw a herd of camels! It reminded me of the Silk Road trip last year. I wondered whether these noble animals originated here or were transported from some central Asian steppe or further beyond. A good Wiki question if only I had internet.

Now about the “I” word. If you ever get this post before Moscow, it will be another miracle. (the first one was the train reconfiguration). We had heard rumors that there was internet on the train…but that was the Russian train. We are on a Chinese train. Not that there should be that big a difference, but to be honest, we chose the Chinese-run train Beijing-Moscow for chauvinistic reasons and for nominally better (or possibly worse) food. So much for that thought.

But before I talk food, let’s get to the heart of the matter. What were we thinking??? A Sunday ride through Silicon Siberia? I had forgotten how I had the shakes checking into my guest house in Dresden last year. It took a rocket scientist (oh, OK, a lab scientist) to set me up with a modem connection that he figured out was cheaper to buy at the local Fry’s for 25E than to pay 100E deposit for one through the housing agent. After that momentary fear of being off the grid, my mind lapsed. No internet, no bloggie.

So if I emerge from this trip after five days of going dark, I will be a new woman. Damn the torpedos and the internet. We are one.

The free first night’s dinner (whoo-whoo!) consisted of one bowl of rice, cauliflower, and 2 huge Chicken meatballs. The best part was sitting with 2 other travelers, German brothers from Hamburg and Frankfurt. The physicist had just been to San Francisco and the other was a marketing director for big-name brands, so we had plenty to talk about. They had interesting views of the Greek crisis and how Germany was going to deal with it.

Looking back at yesterday’s posting, I felt saddened by my draining optimism. Everything on first blush always looks good, right? A few slight technicalities… the toilets are closed during station stops, so you have to plan your peeing strategy. I knew this from the first time we traveled cross-country Beijing to Hong Kong with the kids a generation ago. Still the same. The outlet is just outside our compartment over a fold-out bench, so it would be very handy to babysit the devices as they are being charged. Oops, the outlet doesn’t work. But let’s not get cynical. We had a decent meal gratis, and there’s still hope abound for getting upgraded. Stay tuned.

Thursday, July 30, 2015, 6:40am

We are four hours into the first day’s adventure and I just saw the first yurt of the trip! At the same time, the Beijing smog has finally disappeared. It was indeed very ominous during the entire stay in the city, and the sky only just became decipherable as we know it. The initial mountains and abundant tunnels outside Beijing lasted for about an hour, until lush terraced fields and valleys of corn and wheat took over. The first yurt led to a wide valley and truncated concrete piers were telltale signs of a high-speed rail line underway.

The valley also reflected sparse yurt-shaped graves and modern human settlements attached to farmland. Cows, horses, goats and sheep begin to appear in small herds and power lines string the landscape as far as the eye can see. Huge stretches of flat farmland are indicative of future scenery.

Despite our four-berth compartment not being air conditioned, there are only two of us so far. From Beijing to Ulan Bator, it looks like we will be alone. Our near-disaster plan to book through Travelchinaguide left us without tickets five days before the trip, with everything booked on both ends! While there are a number of ways to book the Trans-Siberian, we chose to use the Chinese service. This may not have been the wisest, but we did. As Gee Kin discovered that the pinch point was between Beijing and Ulan Bator, we are hoping that we can upgrade from a four- to a two-compartment with a shared toilet. So far the train itself has been very comfortable and with all the amenities necessary—a Western toilet in each train car, an electrical outlet, lights, hot water, and bedding. We were given complimentary tickets for a lunch and dinner each, but haven’t ventured outside the compartment yet.

As the sun sets, we will check out dinner service and the big “I” word…whether internet service is available or not. Farewell for now.

JULY 29, 2015, 16:37.