Trans-Salami Express
by the lady who wants to learn to make sausage one day
Train 5 Dharkan (night 1), Mongolia to the Ruskie border
We haven’t even made it to the Russian border, in fact, we’ve only just boarded the train at Darkhan, but it has a distinctly Russian feel – and aroma – with half a dozen salamis hanging in every compartment.
I miss the beginning of the interchange, and come in at the point one lady is taking salamis off our curtain rail, dismantling the entire rail and trying to rehang them at the other side of the window. Rob is wondering what difference that will make and asks the attendant, who has arrived on the scene, if said salamis are for sale. Not at all, they belong to Salami Lady, who has strung her wares all over the train. We decide they are an unwelcome addition to our kupe, we don’t want to pretend they are ours just so she can avoid paying duty on hundreds of sausages, and ask for their removal, something the attendant works valiantly, but unsuccessfully, towards. Salami Lady is both strong and forceful. Rob points to dangling salami and mischievously warns that the children might bite them. Attendant translates, Salami Lady is obviously unimpressed at the prospect, but quickly finds a solution. Sunset may be over an hour away, but she pulls the blind down, obscuring her cargo from view. Aha. Salami Lady has just gone too far. Attendant asserts her authority, re-dismantling curtain track, gathering salami by the armful. From compartment to compartment she marches, ridding them of enough sausage to feed an army in a Siberian winter.
Disgruntled, Salami Lady trails up the hallway in the wake of her treasures….all the way to her own compartment.
And we hang up two salamis of our own <wink>
We also arrange our twenty-something packets of instant noodles, twelve loaves of bread, three packets of cheese, bag of dry-looking biscuits, wafer biscuits, raisins and beverage provisions under a lift-up seat.
Four nights and four days we’ll be on this train. Hoping reports that you can buy boiled eggs, fresh yoghurt, piroshki and cooked potatoes from babushki on station platforms when we stop are true, we are only carrying supplies for two days. Besides, there was not time to purchase more – Rob had raced around the market in barely quarter of an hour before closing-time, grabbing whatever he could lay his hands on, using up every last togrog.
We would have had more time – indeed, we had planned to leave earlier – but when our two “taxi”-cars had turned up at the ranch to ferry us Dharkan, one was full, requiring the driver to go home and unload. With seven passengers to fit in to each car, not to mention all our gear, we needed the bootspace and had no choice but to wait, watching our shopping time tick away.
And so we found ourselves on the Trans-Salami Express. Actually, it was the very last leg of the Trans-Mongolian line, and in the morning we would join the *actual* Trans-Siberian line at Ulan-Ude.
Just after we pass the ranch at Orkhon (we’d had to travel back to another station to board this train as Orkhon really is a hick town and only one train stops there, and not this one), Martin, who is still in Darkhan, calls us. It is snowing there. We had stood at the market together commenting on the temperature drop, smelling the snow in the air. We miss it by one hour.
Tags: food, postcard: Mongolia, postcard: Russia, transport, weather
rayres
i literally laughed out loud when i got to- “And we hang up two salamis of our own” !!! lol…
(all these comments in one night are making me look like a crazed blog stalker! 😛 )