DAY 299: As a tourist, you don't really have to worry about the Russian mafia, so my Lonely Planet guidebook says; they are only involved in high-scale crimes involving big business or bribing police or politicians, like the Italian mafia in The Godfather. Whether or not it was the actual Russian mafia that harassed me on the second leg of my train journey when three drunk Russians sicked fake or corrupt cops on me I don't know, but that's not to say the actual Russian mafia is alive and well, not only in Russia, but around the world. I learned all of this at my family-run B&B's son Nicolai, a fine 23-year-old Russian guy with very good English.

I didn't run into Nicolai right away as I was up at eight in my Mongolian yurt in the B&B's backyard. I walked along the shore of Lake Baikal to get to the Ecological Museum after its opening, before the crowds. There I saw not only more bullet points about Lake Baikal but taxidermy stuffed animals of the indigenous creatures of the region included wolverine, lynx, ducks, wolf and chipmunks. Also on display were dried up or formaldehyde-preserved indigenous fish, like perch, sturgeon and Baikal's endemic Golomyanka, a small clear fish with no scales. But the main reason to go to the museum was for its new aquarium where indigenous fish and indigenous nerba seals swimming in a big tank of the lake's freshwater.

After the aquarium I went to the fancy Hotel Baikal with its fancy hilltop view (picture above) and rented a bike for an hour to cruise by the lake with the cold lake winds, and to run some errands (i.e. fulfill my postcard duties). I stopped by the B&B to get my address book where Nicolai was outside hanging out. "I wanted to ask you if you know anyone that will marry me so I can go to U.S.," he asked. "Married and handle the papers."

"Uh, I don't know really," I said, walking up the path to the yurts.

"I think maybe I'll have to spend ten thousand or fifteen thousand to get a wife."

I was sort of in a rush -- my rental was only an hour -- so I was off to talk to him later.

After mailing out postcards, returning my bike and grabbing a lunch of smoked omul fish, fried rice and pine nuts (right off the pine cone), I went back to my Mongolian yurt for a one-to-one with the young Russian. He and his mother ran the B&B in the summer, a fairly well-off one compared to the shabby ones down the block, with a new house on the property being built for higher guest capacity. Nicolai's father was quite the real estate entrepreneur, going into the business almost immediately when it was permitted after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, after the times that were a bit more, well for lack of a better term, Communist.

"I still remember in the eighties when our family had to get a ticket for meat and you got five kilograms for the family [for one month]," he told me. But his industrious hard-working father used the tools of capitalism to his advantage, building a local real estate empire where he'd just collected rent from tenants and use that money to build more housing or office space in Irkutsk. His business partner became quite prosperous too, leaving Russia with his family to live the good life in an affluent neighborhood in northern New Jersey outside New York City -- only to be pursued by the Russian mafia sect in the metro New York area.

"They said give them half of all his property or they will kill his wife and children," he told me. The guy, still bright industrious thinker found the loophole in this, renting a Jaguar instead of buying one (technically it's not his property), but the Russian mafia saw through that.

Nicolai was not without problems with gangs of his own. A former foreign exchange student in Iowa for three years of high school and six months of college, he had been surrounded by other foreign exchange students in the same program, particularly Hispanics in the division of the street gang, the Latin Kings. They had come to like Nicolai and wanted him to join up as their Russian muscle, but he refused. With their pressure and his homesickness, he returned to Siberia to be with family -- only to regret leaving the States five years later. He was now desperate to return, even if it meant buying a wife for the paperwork, so he could make money in the States as a truck driver.

The day was going by fast so I bid my Siberian friend goodbye. He told me that I'd have to come back to see the better areas of Lake Baikal -- Listvyanka didn't do it any justice -- and I agreed. Before I knew it I was on a bus back for Irkutsk. The one-hour 4:45 bus didn't leave until 5:00 and took 90 minutes, which would have put a cramp in my time schedule if I hadn't gave myself some padding before my train departure.

My last order of business in Irkutsk was to return the key to Nina's apartment -- which I wanted to give to her before I left for Listvyanka -- but when I arrived back there she was no where to be found, and there was no way to leave a key in the foyer and lock the door from the outside. I couldn't even slip the key under the door because a wooden flap fit over a small ledge in the floor like a Tetris piece.

Great, this is Nina's revenge.

In a frenzy I called all the local contacts I had as "Mr. Jinx" watched me from the floor. None one was around, but luckily I managed to stick the key on the side of the door, in between the door and the frame, and dashed off to the train station. There, Nina was waiting for me to get her key back, and with body language I told her where it was. She bid me goodbye in Russian and body language, although I don't know if she was saying "Good luck" or "Later, asshole."

IT'S FUNNY HOW I COMPLAINED that the Trans-Siberian Railway wasn't the international party I thought it would be because for my fourth and last leg of the journey -- my "official" last leg since technically I'd continue southbound into Asia on the Trans-Mongolian line -- was every bit the way I imagined. In my car I heard the languages of German, French, Spanish, English and of course, Russian. Unlike the Russians on my previous legs, these Russians spoke some English, so a language and culture exchange was inevitable. I shared a compartment with three Russians, Valentina, (another) Nicolai and Alexander, an Asian-faced Russian who was a cop in Irkutsk on his way to visit family in his hometown of Ulan-Ude, our destination. We pretty much played Twenty Questions with each other over beers to see how life was like on the other side of the world. Funny, whenever Alexander stumbled on his English, he'd say, "Umm... " and then smile. I knew exactly how he felt.

As I rode the train through the night with my friendly compartment mates and the friendly young British couple down the hall, it was good to know that with a whole new gang of Siberia to be with, it didn't have to be all violence and money.