On board for a three day train ride to Vladivostok, even the normally uptight Russians don their slobby clothes.
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Even the details celebrate the world's most famous train, the Rossiya.
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Along the way we pass Petrovskaya Savod, with its ornate Lenin pomp and Stalinist style train station.
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An eerie mist decends along the way.
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It is 75 hours before I reach the end of the line. Many passengers have been on for longer than that already, and watch the world go by.
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Russians can be quite friendly and giving, especially when it comes to food.
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This military couple from Krasnoyarsk (en route to Khabarovsk) share their food with this "crazy American."
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The provodnitsa swings by for her daily vacuuming of the couchette rooms.
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People stock up on their provisions at the little kassas.
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And the babushkas are out with their own delicacies.
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Kartofel pierogies are on offer, and are pretty good!
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Train-bound Russians aren't timid about displaying their beer guts or dressing slobby, but normally they're much more formal.
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This vendor has seen some hard times in her life it seems.
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People quickly shop for their freshly cooked foods before the next 4 hour haul.
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A military officer has his dog search for evidence of contraband traffiking.
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This sign tells you something that you really shouldn't try.
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Off we go! The Trans-Siberian maneuvers into the rugged terrain in the Russian Far East. Building this section of the line was an engineering triumph in the early 1900s.
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As we chug along, I scope out the relatively luxurious restaurant. It has excellent borscht.
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I meet two Danish tourists while there, Tina and Mette. Tina studies Russian at university, and has been planning her three-month trip for two years.
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The Trans-Siberian lives up to her expectations, and she completely loves it.
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Despite spending seven days on a train, I manage to barely finish one book. The train has a tremendous amount of mellow diversions.
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This little Russian is grooving to his old-school cassette Walkman.
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Others are merely catatonic from the constant sway of the train.
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At kilometer 8184, we cross into the Jewish Autonomous Region (!), and the time is now Moscow time + 7 hours.
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The swampy, mosquito-infested region on the contentious border with China was designated for the Jews in 1927. A perfect place, for sure.
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About 40,000 Jews from Belarus, Ukraine, Argentina, America, and even Palestine emigrated to this "promised land." A little Jewish community flourished for a short time. The harsh climate scared off about 2/3rds of them in one year.
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In the mid 30s, in another of his wild mood swings, Stalin stopped the project... outlawing Hebrew, synagogues, and all Jewish institutions. (Stalin's newfound anti-Semitism stemmed from the perceived betrayal of his Jewish rival and Lenin's old right-hand man Trotsky--who Stalin eventually had murdered.)
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At the first stop in the region, there is no trace of Jewish culture.
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Everything is pretty uniformly Russian... including the obsession with dill in every single food!
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This is one of the best train-stop meals I had on the whole trip.
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At a later point, the trains stops for five minutes in the Jewish Autonomous Region's capital of Birobidzhan. Amazingly, the station displays the city name in Hebrew! (Only 7% of the city's population is Jewish.)
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At the 5 minute stop, the never-to-be-messed-with provodnitsa refuses to let these Russians go outside for a smoke. She is not intimidated and chews them out.
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On my second day (day six of the trainline from Moscow), the train crosses a 2.6 kilometer bridge over the Amur River. This was the last part of the Trans-Sibererian route to be constructed in 1916, officially completing the entire Moscow-Vladivostok line.
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The train slowly thrusts toward Khabarovsk. The mineral wealth (and environmental degradation) becomes more and more apparent.
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Remnants of Soviet regalia remain everywhere.
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Khabarovsk is a major stop on the line. People come to greet family and friends after their long trip. Interestingly, Khabarovsk is a mere 15 minutes from the Chinese border.
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Needless to say, this guy is quite drunken. Drinking is a big past time on the train for Russian travelers (and tourists alike)!
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The city's train station is quite impressive.
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It has a distinct lack of Soviet influence, which is admittedly refreshing.
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This water pipe is built to accomodate through-going trains. Bizarrely, the water infrastucture pipes hot water to its distribution points--which makes no sense to me... and must be really expensive to maintain.
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