So there we were, three of us, snugly ensconced in our tiny compartment with a three and a half day

I didn't free hotel motel discount coupons realize until several thousand kilometers from Moscow that this was the farthest East I'd ever been, and every passing second was carrying me still farther. Siberia is a long way from home, however you dissect the map. And yet by the end, standing over the harbor in Vladivostok, 9,289 kilometers and over six days by train from Moscow, it didn't feel like I'd come nearly so far. Journeys so big should come with a warning: this will make the world feel small.
I suspect that the American romance with trains comes partly from the fact that we don't use them anymore. free hotel motel discount coupons They recall both a nostalgic sepia image of our own nineteenth century, complete with steam engines and the heady rush of industrialization, and also the quiet efficiency of modern Europe, a mature and civilized journey through vineyards and cobbled towns. Then there's our obsession with the sweeping spaces of the frontier and the freedom of being able to hop in a dirty mustang and drive for thousands of miles in any direction. Well, Russia has enough wide expanses for several Americas, and the unknown mystery of the Far East conveys a enigmatic exoticism that appeals to the Victorian adventurer imperialist in all of us.
For Russians, however, the Moscow-Vladivostok connection is simply the cheapest way to get from points A to B, usually only a short length of the total line. People board and leave the train at every stop, making their trip of anywhere from a few hours to several days. It seems like tourists are mostly the only ones who ride the whole way. And of course, for the tourists, taking free hotel motel discount coupons the actual train is as much about getting over one's romantic notions as it is about indulging them; the practicalities and mundane indignities of travel go a long way toward keeping reality grounded.
Our adventure really began with buying the tickets. The plan was for me to fly from Germany to Moscow and meet Rachel, my friend from the US, and Ann, a fellow Fulbrighter in Russia. Together, we'd take the train to Irkutsk, almost exactly free hotel motel discount coupons halfway, stop for two days to see Lake Baikal, and then continue on to Vladivostok. We'd done our scouting and learned that, instead of purchasing tickets through a third-party, it was best (and cheapest) to buy directly through rzd.ru , the Russian Railways' website. We worked our way through the entire shopping cart procedure and summoned the gumption free hotel motel discount coupons to press that little "complete transaction" button, only to have our hopes dashed on the rocks of Russia. Apparently rzd.ru does not accept American payment cards, whether credit, debit, or matte-finish frequent-flier enabled executive platinum. As so often happens in Russia, I was left holding a wad of cash, unable free hotel motel discount coupons to find anyone to take my money.
(For fellow travelers, I later learned that if you live in Russia, a solution to this problem is to get a reloadable free hotel motel discount coupons Кукуруза or Qiwi card, which you can put money on at those little kiosks everywhere and use to buy train tickets or for other online transactions where American cards won't work. If you're not in Russia, I assume you'd just have to suck up the extra price and use a third-party website like trainsrussia.com .)
Fortunately, tickets are also available at any train station, and the only requirement is a conversation in Russian. Well, that and you have to actually show the passports of the traveling parties -- which was a problem, since none of us were in the same city, and one of us wasn't in Russia at all. Whether or not a passport copy will suffice is more or less a function free hotel motel discount coupons of the mood of the cashier, how long it's been since her last break, and if there was hot tea. Ann was the one making this transaction free hotel motel discount coupons for all of us, so I thankfully avoided the worst of it, but apparently while the lack of actual passports was not a problem, free hotel motel discount coupons the lack of patronymics (functionally, Russian middle names, made from the name of your father plus a suffix denoting your gender) was a different story. The lady first wanted to know where our patronymics were, so she could put them on the ticket, free hotel motel discount coupons and then, when informed that Americans don't have such things, asked why not. Silly lady. "Why" is a question that should not be asked in Russia.
In the end though, we did get our tickets, and we did successfully free hotel motel discount coupons meet in Moscow, and we did leave with our train promptly at 23:45 to the rousing musical sendoff of a canned symphony playing over the station loudspeakers. Trains are one of the very few things in Russia that are always precisely on time.
There are essentially two classes of Russian train car, and which you choose depends free hotel motel discount coupons on both your wallet and what kind of journey you want to have. We elected for "kupe," the nicer of the two, in which you get a four-bed compartment with a door and a tiny table. This is better free hotel motel discount coupons if there are three or four of you and you'd like to be able to have some privacy and a little more relative comfort. However, unless you also buy the remaining berths in your kupe, you could be joined by a fourth person at any point during the trip. (This happened to us at a tiny stop in the middle of the night, and I think our new neighbor was more surprised by us than we were by him. Luckily he was a nice guy and we had a successful conversation.) The other option is "platzkart," essentially free hotel motel discount coupons an open-dormitory style car in which fifty-odd people free hotel motel discount coupons are all living, drinking, and snoring in one big room. I would prefer platzkart for traveling alone (so you're not stuck in a small room with who knows who) or if you're really into meeting as many people as possible. Definitely bring earplugs if you want to sleep, though.
free hotel motel discount coupons So there we were, three of us, snugly ensconced in our tiny compartment with a three and a half day journey to Irkutsk ahead of us. If three point five days sounds like a long time to spend in a moving room the size of a large closet, that's because it is (even if it isn't really, by Russian standards). I did a lot of reading. I did a lot of watching the scenery go by. I did a lot of squishing my head against the window in order to catch the number on the kilometer markers that count how far you are from Moscow. There's a certain knack to just throwing up your feet and enjoying the forced free hotel motel discount coupons relaxation of doing absolutely nothing.
At the head of every car is a boiler, which provides free hot water for tea or instant coffee whenever you want it. When you get sick of the view out your window, you can trundle down the narrow hallway free hotel motel discount coupons (train free hotel motel discount coupons legs are acquired after the first twenty-four hours), check the schedule of stops posted on the wall, enjoy the view out the other side of the train, and refill your mug with more tea. Whether or not you leave the compartment door open is a matter of constant re-evaluation, depending on the relative humidity and stench levels in- and outside your compartment. Four days without a shower is a long time, especially when the train temperature is around 80 degrees F. It can become a Sophie's Choice situation if the cabin is unbearably hot and smells of people, while the hallway is relatively cooler but smells unbearably of whatever antifreeze chemical free hotel motel discount coupons they pump into the toilets.
Surprisingly, our train came equipped with a mounted television in every compartment (not standard for Russian trains, but I guess the Trans-Siberian is special), so you can choose between fuzzy Russian cartoons, fuzzy Russian war movies, or fuzzy Soviet free hotel motel discount coupons comedy classics. We enjoyed a fair bit of Шурик (everyone's favorite Mr. Bean of Soviet comedy) as a distraction from the smell of our own armpits. Our compartment also had a power socket (also not standard), so we were able to plug in a laptop and watch movies off the hard drive when things got really desperate.
The train stops a few times each day, usually for just a couple of minutes, but there is a more substantial twenty to thirty minute stop every six hours or so. This is long enough to get a few minutes of fresh air, stretch your legs on the platform, and do some hurried purchasing of greasy pirozhki or vareniki (dumplings, essentially) from the babushki who are usually free hotel motel discount coupons wandering up and down the platform free hotel motel discount coupons with little carts of homemade food. It goes without saying that the train waits for no one, and there's no whistle when it's about to leave, so you have to keep your eye on the clock and make sure that you're back aboard before free hotel motel discount coupons the conductors haul the stairs in.
My overwhelming impression from the train, though, is the sensation of being in your own little traveling universe. Eventually, the hours stop having meaning, and the landscape just rumbles by outside, winter sun rising in one corner of the southern-facing window, making free hotel motel discount coupons a low arc across the sky, and setting a few hours later in the other corner. Everything is contained free hotel motel discount coupons within free hotel motel discount coupons the train, and even within your own compartment. Even weather patterns become local compartment-size phenomena, as water vapor condenses on the windows, drips down on your faces until the irritation builds free hotel motel discount coupons up enough to wipe the glass with a towel, from which it evaporates back into the too-humid air, only to condense again.
Time disconnects from everything, existing in two separate free hotel motel discount coupons streams and also not at all. The train runs on Moscow time, in which all of the stops are notated, but local time keeps progressing as you pass through a new time zone every day. You can't ignore Moscow time, but it bears less and less resemblance to what's happening out the window, and after a few days it's easier to give up and just exist in the wormhole. Neither time has much actual meaning, free hotel motel discount coupons as you sleep or nap or are awake at will.
Meanwhile, the train slips silently through free hotel motel discount coupons the pitch black night outside, except for the occasional pool of amber at a crossing that briefly hints at the shape of ghostly trees stretching back into the darkness, or the aural impression of an enormous bridge and river that you might be rumbling over or not, depending on whether any of it is real. Siberia free hotel motel discount coupons is enormous and empty in the day; at night it is a vacuum of reali