Steve and I headed out to Riga at 3:00pm Saturday to catch our train to Moscow. We know we will be on this train for about 18 hours....and sharing a compartment with possibly two other people. We've loaded up on food and water, plenty of reading material and I've got a new battery in my mp3 player.
Our compartment mates turn out to be an elderly lady and her son. They speak less English than I do Latvian or Russian. So, we spend quite a bit of time just sitting and wondering what the other person is not-saying.
We really can't go to bed yet (our bench seats are our beds) because the border crossing will be coming up around 11:00 or 12:00. We don't know because we are the only ones that can speak English in this whole car, possibly the entire train.
First, you come to the Latvian border guards. They check passports, papers, etc and are fairly straight forward (of course, we are leaving Latvia). After they have taken care of the entire train (about an hour stopped on the tracks...no one is allowed to move around the train), the train continues onward for about another 45 minutes (just long enough to get drowsy).
We are now ready for the Russian border guards. Same drill but just a little more intense. They take your passport, check everything (visa, etc.) and then radio your name to guy on a laptop computer at the end of the car. First, it was kind of freaky hearing my name in Russian and then I was straining my ears trying to hear what reply came from the computer guy. I was ready to move into Jason Bourne mode at a moment's notice but the guy just said 'Da' and handed me the passport back. He might have seen me tensing up...I don't know but I'm glad an international incident was avoided.
With the paperwork out of the way, we bed down. Top bunks for Steve and me and the Russian/Latvian duo took the bottom. I really didn't think I was sleeping too soundly but sometime in the early morning hours, our suite mates left the train at one of the stops. At least, that's what Steve says.
We made it into Moscow by about 12:45pm on Sunday (around 19 hours if you are keeping score) and of course, our next train does not leave from that station. We tackle the Metro (subway) and head out to Station #2. It is one thing to be in a country and you don't speak the language. But when that country uses an alphabet completely different from your own, you can't even use context clues. Amazingly, we found the next station without too much trouble and stowed our luggage.
After a quick trip by taxi, we we were standing in Red Square. Lots of tourists and we were able to see a few sites on our few hours off the train. Beautiful scenes in every direction. Lenin's tomb was closed for some reason (do you remodel tombs??) but the State Museum was really nice. Besides Steve, I did not hear one English word spoken until I was in the museum and one of the museum ladies came over and started talking to me. She was upset about something but I thought she maybe just didn't like Texans. I'm just shrugging and grinning at her until a Japanese lady tells me in English, "You can't take pictures in here unless you buy a special ticket." I looked at the Russian lady and said "But everybody else is doing it." I felt like I was back in school making excuses to the teacher ... but she wasn't buying it. I put my camera up.
We made it back to the station, picked up our luggage and got onboard. This train was slightly nicer but for a big man, still a little confining. We kept waiting for our new roomies to show up but we were giving high-fives when the train pulled away and it was just the two of us in compartment #8. It's only about 22 hours to Archangelsk....can we make it?
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