After Ekaterinburg, I moved on to Perm. I’d opted to travel by train – I can’t remember if I’d looked at planes and discovered it wasn’t possible or if I just thought they were close enough to do it but for whatever reason, I made that decision.
I could have bought the ticket online beforehand but I opted to buy it when I arrived in Ekaterinburg. Ticket machines at the station speak English so it was probably easier than doing it in person at the cash desk. I had to buy it from the long-distance train department, which is upstairs above platform 1, whereas more local tickets are sold from machines downstairs. You have to put your card in and enter your PIN before you even start, which is quite disconcerting. You also have to have your passport or some form of national ID handy. Then you have to take a guess at what class of ticket you want to buy. I went for the cheapest. When I added it into my spending spreadsheet that evening, I discovered I could probably have upgraded but Belinda Pollard pointed out on Instagram that third class was probably best for a single female traveller as it meant you weren’t risking being stuck in a room with an unspecified number of strange men.
Finally, the machine sells tickets on Moscow time and only tells you local time right as you’re about to touch the “buy now” button. I’d planned to get the 06:44 train but that wasn’t on offer. An 11:30ish one looked quite good, up until that moment when it decided to tell me about the local time thing and I discovered that I wasn’t going to reach Perm until 8pm. So I went back to the 04:44 train which was actually the 06:44 I’d been looking for all along.
Tuesday dawned…. well, dark. I’d not taking a liking to Ekaterinburg in the dark. Too many boy racers screeching up and down the streets, too many male chanting voices that first night that might have been men watching a football match or it might have been a riot or it might have been a revolution. And then there were the fireworks that launched from the street below my apartment at 4.30am that first morning. I didn’t want to go out in Ekaterinburg in the dark. The metro doesn’t open until 6am and while getting to the train on time worried me a bit, there was no sense in going out in the dark and standing outside a closed metro station for twenty minutes.
I’d been informed that railway departure boards don’t speak English. They do. Identifying my train and my platform was no problem. I found my carriage with a bit more difficulty – only about one in four seemed to be labelled – and presented both ticket and passport to the provodnitsa, your combined attendant, steward, commander and empress for the journey. She took the ticket off me, much to my disappointment – that’s valuable scrap for my scrapbook!
I’d been expecting a seat but when I found my seat, it was a bunk and my neighbours soon made me understand that it was a top bunk. So up I scrambled. This wasn’t the plan at all but clearly I had little other choice. It wasn’t a comfortable perch, what with having half of my luggage up there, along with three sets of half-rolled bedding. My neighbour made me come down again.
It’s amazing how you can get on without speaking the language. I discovered that this formidable lady’s name was Olga and she spoke no English but she showed me how to store my luggage underneath the bottom bunks, how to make the bed (that’s a roll-up mattress; you don’t just lie on the bare bunk) and then how to climb into it. Take your shoes off – of course you take your shoes off! – store them under the seat and then hop up using the lower bunks and the table, not the footplates at the end of the bed.
And so I settled down. Actually, it had been a very early morning and I hadn’t slept at all. So I got as comfortable as possible in my bunk and had a nap. Down below me, Olga’s husband, whose name I nearly caught but which I’ve forgotten now because it was a month ago, was coughing and making disgusting noises. I put in my headphones but I knew it was going to be a long journey and I hated him. I still hate him. He looked and sounded like my grandad when he was in his eighties but on closer examination later on, he was probably only in his sixties, if that, but he seemed so frail. I began to wonder where this couple was going, why, and how many would be returning to Ekaterinburg.
I was only going three stops from Ekaterinburg to Perm over the course of about seven hours. But the train had started two days earlier right up in the north and would finish up about a day after I got to Perm in Moscow. It looks like it should be one train coming down from the north to meet the roughly east-west lines, probably at Tyurmen but it’s one continuous route covering nearly a third of Russia’s width. If I’d thought Murmansk was northerly and remote and tourist-unfriendly, the terminus at Novy Urengoy must feel like it’s on another planet. Take a look at this route – Ekaterinburg and Perm are in red.
I could just about see through the top of the window from my bunk. I got impressions of gravel and birch trees and pines and workmen and that was about it. But after Kungur, Olga made me come down and I sat on her bed and tried not to be too revolted by her husband and just enjoy the view from the window. Our bunks were perpendicular to the direction of travel; we had a window at one end and the corridor at the other. On the other side of the corridor were bunks parallel to the direction of travel and there was a couple sitting there. I don’t speak Russian but I knew enough to know that Olga was explaining that to this woman and I was pretty sure they then had a discussion about their own respective language educations, whereby neither of them had learned much English. I’m very good at “station” and “knowing when I’m being talked about”.
As we approached Perm, Olga produced a packet of documents and began filling them in, consulting letters and passports, giving her husband things to look after and then taking them off him and scolding him for losing things. I think. I began to get concerned. Was this some kind of rail version of the landing card? Should I be doing admin too? What was she doing? Were they moving to Perm? Was this something to do with a new job, maybe? Hospital care?
And then I discovered why the provodnitsa had taken my ticket. It’s so that she knows who’s alighting where and what bunk they’re in. She came along with a handful of tickets to give back to me and to Olga and her husband, to tell us that our stop would be next and to get ready. Handy if your stop turns out to be the middle of the night, to be woken by a watchful sergeant who knows you’re in 22A.
I’m very glad Olga was also going to Perm because it meant she was going to sort out the bunk and that meant I could copy her. Take off all the sheets and pillow cases. Bundle them up and take them to the provodnitsa who asked us to put them on the empty bunk in her compartment. Roll up the mattress-thing. Pile it all on whichever empty bunk is most convenient. Haul Olga’s husband to his feet so I can retrieve the luggage stored under his bottom bunk. And then thank Olga for looking after me – I know she didn’t understand the words but I know she understood what I was saying. I’d never have figured out the bunk on my own, I wouldn’t have known where to put the luggage or how to get into the bunk comfortably, or indeed out of it, I’d have crouched painfully for seven hours and arrived in Perm with a permanently dented back and I’d have left my bunk as it was without any idea how to sort it out.
In short: if you’re going to travel by long distance train in Russia, get yourself an Olga. You don’t need to speak Russian. She doesn’t need to speak English. You’ll manage. Just get an Olga.