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Other entries in Novosibirsk

Arrival Novosibirsk

It was about hour number 24 during my journey that I started feeling a little bit like a caged rat.  Many people extol the joys of traveling on a train for 7 drays straight between Beijing and Moscow, I am not one of those people. The biggest problem with this particular journey was the Plazcart Suck Seat. Plazcart is the open carriage class.  3rd Class. I did not run into any one who wasn't Russian in plazcart.

The Suck Seat:

Plazcart has 4 berths on one side and two that are stuck in the isle. The suck seat is one of the ones stuck in the isle.  Its the bottom bunk which coverts into a table for daytime. So here are the bad parts of the suck seat.

1. Your bed converts to a table during the daytime.  So sleeping in isnt as easy as it should be.

2.  The table itself has a rail that attaches to the car wall.  This rail takes up about 25% your bench space.

3. On the isle side there is a big metal bracket that is used for people to climb up to the top bunk.  In a tall person like me this obstructs your shoulder.  Between this obstruction and the table taking up your hip space it forces you to sit in a awkward diagonal sort of position.

4.  If you do want to stretch your legs and who doesn't when you are sitting around all day, the diagonal position from above will put your legs squarely in the aisle where they will get stepped on as people move towards the bathroom.

5. The side with the 4 berths has control of the speaker.   You might be thinking radio... oh no, we are talking ~12 pop songs.  The first 3 or 4 times you hear them are alright.  After 16 hours it gets old. Very Old.

6.  The side with the 4 berths has a window that opens and closes compared to the two side.. which the window on the aisle sied doesn't so that the top bunk can't literally roll right out the window.   On my train it was hot.. very hot, but Russians along with so many other places in the world seem to have a superstition about drafts no matter how much they are sweating.  In moscow I was always the only person wearing shorts.

Also to compound those factors my side was the sun side during the hottest part of the day and it was hot.. I wasn't wearing more than a t-shirt and shorts.. and I was sweating.  Think stuffy. Some of my favorite activities were playing Doorak (stupid) with Yuri, having endless discussions with Yuri that didn't seem to go anyhwere, gawking and wondering what new joys the beauty queens would introduce to the journey. At one point two of them were plucking eyebrows with a mirror for nearly two hours. The thing that really stands out in my mind as the best was going to the space near the smelly bathroom over the trash containers.. and sticking my head out the train window. It was cool the are was fresh and even more interestly I could actually read the kilometer markers counting up from moscow and with my guidebook I could plot exactly where I was and how long to the next station where the train would stop and I could get out and run around a little.

Of course as much as I may complain the journey was certainly very interesting and certainly very restful compared to the frenetic pace that I persued for Moscow and St Petersburg.

When the train did arrive in Novosibersk I was ready.  I had traveled though 3 timezones, ~3500km and despite it being 5:30 in Moscow.  8:30 in novosibersk was already starting to get dark.  Meeting me on the Platform was my long time Pen Pal,Victoria. For the purposes of this journal she will henceforth be referred to as Vika. We quickly went the wrong way off the plaform and had to turn around, went to the mini-bus stand. Missed what we thought was the last mini-bus. Went back towards the station and road the metro.  Yes interestinly Novosibirsk has its own small metro system. It should be noted that Novosibirsk is the third largest city in Russia, doesn't get very many tourists.  Has a very large footprint for its population of 2 million people. Like all of Russian the sheer amount of public transport options are impressive.  Unfortunetly for the tourist they are a bit hard to figure out.  There are large vans, half buses, full buses, Trolley type buses.  Its crazy.  After the metro we got on a minivan.  The ride to Academ Gordok was almost 40 minutes.  Academ is a unveristy suburb of the city and they have something simliar in all the larger Siberian towns.  After we arrived in was a 10 minute walk to the visitor dorm. The visitor dorm entrance on teh second floor was padlocked so you had to use a different stairwell go up to the third floor and then come back down.  Initially I thought Vika was leading me on a crazy goose chase.

I can say thats its nice to have connections.  The visitor dorm was more affordable than other accomdation and it was full of expatriate students of different nationalities mostly on 3 months programs learning Russian.  It was interesting to connect with some people from America and get their own personal take on Russian culture. It was certainly a diverse bunch. I shared some chocolate and stayed up for a while chatting and drinking.  The american students were drinking more than I had seen Russians drink and certainly had a little bit different attitude towards drinking, but it was certainly a good time.