The Sixteen Second Snowman
Tuesday, April 21st, 2009by Rachael
Day 4 on Train 5, ending up in Moscow
Our compartment is still pitch black when Mboy6 stirs for the toilet. As he cracks the door open light streams in and I catch a snatch out the corridor window of – wait for it – birch trees protruding from snow patches. Surely not! I wait for boy to return so I can look again and confirm my growing suspicion that this country is one big forest. Yes, indeed it is.
Unable to drift back to sleep, even in complete darkness and with lullaby train motion rocking, I steal out to the corridor seat with knitting needles for company.
Is that steam blowing past the window? Or fog? Neither. It’s a white-out snow storm. Ten metres away car headlights bear witness to the otherwise invisible vehicles on a road paralleling our tracks. I call the awake Mboy6 and Tgirl5, and in silent early morning wonder we watch. Black wooden houses are sandwiched between the white ground blanket and their thick white roof coverings. Huge clumps fall dramatically from pine trees, which yesterday seemed to be reaching for the sky, but today droop downwards under their burden of snow. A two-tier bridge (cars on top, trains underneath) spans a river, huge arches supporting it, with adventure-inviting stairs following each arch.
Snowflakes splatter on the window. Icicles are forming on the train.
One Seller Lady pushes past. And another. We must be coming up to a station. I check the timetable on the wall – sure enough, Gorky (not that it looks anything like that in Cyrillic!) is coming up at 06:42. Quickly I rouse sleeping children.
”Grab your jacket, this is a 12-minute stop and it’s snowing!”
To the amusement of Russian Platform Officials and fellow passengers peering out from the comfort of their blankets (some of which, by the way, have been sold off by train attendants on platforms along the way…although later we suspect that they were not in fact train issue blankets, rather that they were given to our wonderfully-for-them large group to *look* like we were using them and avoid duty charges…..this would explain why we were told to use them on top of the other blankets and not to give them to anyone, but I digress)….the children stomp and squint and marvel and wake up abruptly. Unlike Tiananmen Square, where they positioned themselves carefully to enhance snowflake (singular) catching possibilities, here they are covered within seconds.
The softness surprises, even when squeezed. The patterns puzzle – are they really all different? Look at this one! It’s so pretty!
The Provodnitsa (attendant) signals we should reboard. Having now observed that they are very conservative about keeping their foreign cargo on the train (even though they let Seller Ladies jump on after the train is moving), we figure we have time to make a snowman.
Brushing snowflakes off clothing with frozen fingers, shaking our heads dry, we return with a chorus of, “Thanks for waking us up Mum” sounding.
In another five hours there’ll be another stop. It will still be snowing and we’ll do it all again, this time for 23 minutes, with gloves. And we’ll even throw snowballs at Grandpa’s window. Hopes are high that it will be snowing in Moscow.
“KIWIFAMILY” says the sign welcoming us to the end of the line. Tatiana, mother of three, is holding it, shivering in the fresh breeze, waiting to take us complete strangers to the family’s two-room apartment in the suburbs where we will sleep for two nights.
But first we need to purchase tickets on to St Petersburg. Although we had heard this process can be quite a mission we were not prepared. Not for the two hour wait. Not for the cashier who would neither smile nor even look at us, an inconvenience to her day. Not for only being able to buy eight tickets at one counter and having to queue again to get the remaining three at another counter. Not for the fact that we were issued the wrong tickets and then had to start the process all over again to have them reissued. And mostly we were not prepared to pay 1,500 roubles for a ticket we had been told would be 350. GULP.
No wonder they say Moscow is the most expensive city in Europe.
At least the metro is cheaper. And mind-blowingly magnificent. Larger than London’s Underground and New York’s Subway system combined, the extent is phenomenal, the labyrinth of wide corridors and frighteningly long escalators linking platforms complex enough for a lost soul to wander and never emerge to daylight again. We don’t get lost, following closely behind Tatiana as we weave our way in an un-rememberable path from one line to another.
We draw to a stop, scared back from the edge of the platform by the horrendous horrific howling thunder that hurtles past. Tatiana notices children with hands over ears, mouths wide open, one with eyes shut tight.
”You don’t have a Metro?” she politely enquires.
Uh, that would be no. We don’t even have above-ground-train-tracks linking each suburb in our city, we barely have a bus service. No, we certainly don’t have a Metro.
We have, however, used a few metro systems this past half-year. But none of them roared at us. And none tried to clamp us in a vice-like grip.These doors don’t shut – they don’t even slam decisively. They unforgivingly punch together with a ka-boom such as you have never heard before (unless, of course, you’ve been on the Moscow Metro, in which case you’ll remember exactly what I’m talking about – especially if you almost got caught – in that case you’ll have no chance of ever forgetting and will consider yourself fortunate if you manage to put an end to your nightmares about guillotines and oversized mousetraps).
Have you heard of a storm in a teacup? That’s just what it’s like when the train takes off –the noise is amplified rather than dampened as it screams up the line. Maybe that’s why most people read on the train – no chance for conversation! (Sidetrack: apart from Hong Kong, most of Asia seemed to be a literacy-desert. Uncommon was the sight of someone reading a newspaper or book or comic or brochure or map or anything at all. The contrast here is significant.)
We have a few stops to continue our efforts at getting to grips with the Cyrillic alphabet, and then we’re climbing the stairs up out of the earth. Cold air is blasting down and then a shout of triumph sounds, “It’s snowing”!” Not train-station-earlier-today-snowing, more like look-hard-but-it’s-true-snowing. The snow is not tempting (nor prolific) enough to keep children outside and they all settle in with new-found friends and playmates. Girls, who had been missing doll play, are in their element until the traditional Russian dinner is ready: borsh and black bread followed by post-Easter eggs and raisin cake, all served on hand-made-by-our-host’s-sister Gzhel dinnerset.
Sixteen of us squeeze in close companionship into the kitchen.
At dinner’s late-for-us conclusion Tatiana suggests a visit to the Exhibition Centre, and we need to be quick because it closes at 10pm <wink> We don layers, and just as well. It is cold. Starkly beautiful in the last of the sun’s warmthless rays, the buildings are illuminated and the wind whips by. It is cold, colder than Mongolia cold. At last! Without a doubt, below zero!
rayres