Guess what: Across Siberia by train is a long journey. Our plan was to cover the 4265 km to the shores of Lake Baikal in 4 days and 5 nights, passing through Yekaterinburg in the Ural mountains after 994 km, getting of the train for a day in Omsk (902 km further) and again in Novosibirsk (527 km further) before reaching Irkutsk another 1842 km further.
However the distance is only one issue, the other is RZD, the Russian Railway company. Punctuality seems to be the one thing they really care about. To achieve it they stretch out the schedules by allowing twice the time that is usually needed so the trains either slow down artificially or even just wait on the tracks before cities to then roll into the station exactly the right minute.
‚Der Weg ist das Ziel‘ as we say in German – the journey itself is our destination – and I cannot help but smile at the Russian efficiency.
We had one leg of the trip in the 3rd ‚Platzkartny‘ class again – basically a wagon full of bunk beds. Not a lot of privacy, but it’s cheap and gives you the chance to observe all the Russian people on board. Two legs of the trip to Irkutsk we had to upgrade to the 2nd class ‚Kupe‘ in 4-bed compartments, as the convenient trains didn’t have 3rd class cars. The Kupe cars had nice red carpets, tablecloth, power plugs, fairly clean bathrooms and generally more space. The people travelling with us in 2nd class were generally businessmen or apparently richer families, but it was hard to find out more about them as none of them spoke English.
In every wagon there is one ‚Provodnitsa‘, who checks everybody’s tickets without a smile before allowing anyone to board the train. However, besides that, the uniformly dressed ladies also serve tea and coffee, sell water, bisquits and even Asia noodles, put new coal in the samowar, clean the wagon and wake you up half an hour before you need to leave the train. This is service indeed.
In Novosibirsk we dropped by the railway museum, which proudly showcases some of the history of the Transsiberian railway. Tsar Alexander III approved the idea of a railway line across Siberia to the Pacific in the 1880s. During the Russo-Japanese War in 1904 the still fragmented line (where ferries bring passengers across Lake Baikal) fails to send support troops to the Far East in time to stop the Japanese. The circumbaikal railway, Amur river bridge and other enhancements like electrifications were built in the following decades. Nowadays the Trans-Siberian is still the main mode of transport across Eastern Russia and becomes an ever more important mean for cargo shipment from China to Europe (several cargo trains pass your window every hour of the day).
By the way, what time is it? It is hard to tell, as by now we have crossed 5 time zones. Opening hours of the restaurant car are one thing, but train departure times another. Our ticket from Novosibirsk shows „5:15pm“ as departure time, but it’s 7:30pm now and we will still have to wait another 3 hours for our train. Why? It’s not because Russian Railways are not on time. It’s because clocks in Russian train stations are ticking differently. Here, inside the station, it’s only 2:30pm – Moscow time, apparently the measure of all things in Russia.
