Trans Siberian Part 7 - Crossing the border

New Friends

I was sharing my cabin with a German named Wolf, his fear of flying meant this was his second time on the trans siberian that year.  A born cynic, he spent the first evening lambasting my traveling decisions "6 days!, 6 days!" "Why are you doing this?" Wolf had this unusual quality, he was a man who talks quite a bit yet somehow comes across as someone who says little.

Somewhat eccentric, for here he was, traveling through Siberia in winter, back to Germany, without even a scarf, just his worn brown corduroy jacket, wooly jumper and shirt.  

Wolf

His plan on the train was to not eat, smoke or drink, for the entire trip.  This didn't last a day.  

A Good man Wolf, couldn't have asked for a better room mate, but that first night, as he arranged his vitamin collection I thought, "Christ, what have I landed myself in?"

 No doubt he thought something similar.

China

Construction

That first night, we talked til about one or so, while I arranged my sheets and then settled into my first night of gently rocking sleep.  The dark of the cabin all blue, with intermittent yellow flashes.  It was warm, and a lot more comfortable then I thought it was going to be.

The following day was spent passing North towards Russia, looking out on a terrain of ice.  China presented one with the spectacle of another world - vast cities one had never heard of, in the process of being born, tens of skyscrapers glittering by, another 40 or so on their way up, wreathed in orange and green scaffold.  Vast blocks of Soviet flats springing up out of seeming nothing far out on the icy plain.  At one point, Harbin I think,  we passed over my first frozen river, vast, interlaced with jetties and docks, frozen into disuse.

One felt like some alien visitor, visiting capitals and wonders of a different planet.  As though one had never heard of New York, and there it was, bold as brass, passing by on the ice, beyond the heat of the wagon, a glistening surging world of its own, passing by without touching. One is almost afraid to touch it.

Chinese Tower Blocks

Other cities wholly draped in the green net of the scaffold, ready to be revealed with just one whip of the hand, a pull of the cloth and PRESTO! another capital.  Mind boggling.

Frozen River

Thing about China was, there wasn't much wilderness.  We were traveling for an entire day, yet we were never out of sight of some sort of structure for more then a few minutes.   So Dense for such a vast land.

Wolf was very impressed by the voracious construction.  I was a little scared of it.


I slept in that first morning.  I was just thinking of going for some food when Petra popped by.  We chatted with Wolf then popped down to the dining car.   I had some rice, she had beef and peppers and we talked for hours about Havel and such.  Very very smart girl.

 We arranged to meet again at 5, which we did, with Wolf, and whiled away the night playing Chinese Chess and drinking very cheap beer.  Petra had picked up a Chinese chess set in Beijing and we all went on to while away many an hour with it on the rails.  By Moscow I was grand master, but at this particular point I was still finding my feet.  However, this didn't stop the Chinese waiting staff from swinging in and helping Petra.  They were celebrating the end of their trip, the dining carriage would be replaced during the night, and so they were hanging about playing cards, smoking laconically.   As Petra was the girl, they whispered moves to her, obvious casual moves, that had me check mated in moments, time after time after time.  Hardly fair on my first few hours with the game.

Petra and her laconic Chess coach

So we ate wonderful sweet and sour pork, and Wolf broke his fast by ordering Mushrooms and Peppers over and over and over again til the kitchen closed.  It was a good night.  Our last in China.

Me and Wolf being beaten at Chinese Chess

When we finally got to bed it was only for a few hours.

Day 7 Monday the 10th of December 2012, 03:07 - Chinese - Russian border

Jesus, this is ridiculous.  Sitting at the frozen border, soldiers outside in cold war gear, toilets are closed, soldiers appearing at the door, searching our bags.  One, and older smiling guy kept saying "see, Ireland", "see, look","kofi kofi" he pulled out a 100 yuan note "see, look, kafi".  We think, Wolf and I, that he was looking for a bribe, in his inimitable friendly way.

Apparently its the first time they've ever searched bags on this train, so said Alexi who has done this trip 3 times a year for years.  He helped me pick the lock on the toilet door to get at my phone, which was charging in there.  I was afraid it would be 'confiscated'.

All very exciting.

Except being woken at 3 in the morning. 3 hours here, 6 at the Chinese border.  Apparently the Russian soldiers are dicks.  Not entirely looking forward to it.

The man who took our passport was part of a pair of border officers.  Skinny, thick rimmed circular glasses.  The very stereotype of a Chinese intelligence officer.  Like a film.  The border itself was like a film.

Border trouble

The Russo Chinese Border

 Alexis offered to take us outside to a small shop while we waited for our passports to be cleared.  We made an initial exhibition out into the cold, but Wolf was freezing without any semblance of winter gear so headed back.  I continued on with Alexis, Mr green in his big green puffer jacket.

Inside, in the mostly empty terminal building, behind some screens on the vast grey upper floor, were several small tables laid out with a cornucopia of random goods.  Stockings, waving cats, Vodka in penis shaped bottles, mandarins ( i bought some) bottles (I bought a tea flask), suitcases, nuts, slippers, and much more.  I headed back out onto the floodlit snow to see our train wheeling away (to get its dining car changed) so went back inside to wait for Alexis.   Petra appeared, we had a chat, then I went back to the train to find Wolf folded over the sofa, sleeping like a baby.

The Border

With nothing else to do I went to see if I could find Petra.

I crunched down the outside of the train to her carriage, there she was, banging on the window and waving.  In I went.  I found her in her pyjamas, alone in her cabin.  A Chinese soldier had just left, he'd walked in, closed the door behind him, hugged her, then kissed her on the cheek.  He'd just left.

Naturally I stayed there to make sure she'd be alright.  It was well I did.

About 10 minutes later the door slid open a crack to reveal a single eye above a scarf, disguising our friends features.  He just looked for a bit.  I said "Hello, Merry Christmas" and he opened the door.  He was about the come in when his walkie talkie buzzed, and he hurried back out to answer it.

I closed the door, locked it.

Half an hour later the door started jerking, jerk, jerk, jerk,  then a pause, then a knock.  I had to open it of course, this was a, no doubt, armed soldier in the Chinese red army for heavens sake.  So I did.  In poor English he demanded my name, asked where I was staying, the asked for my passport.  I said I didn't have it, it was still being processed.  Then he pointed and said, rather harshly, for me to leave.  "Go. Go Now!".  "No" said I, I'm staying right here.

It sounds so simple written down, but there was a palpable sense of danger in the air.  Maybe he merely wanted to me to go back to my carriage so as to be there when passports were being handed back, maybe not.  But it felt dangerous.  It felt like, by saying "No" that I'd stepped over the edge.  It was one of the scariest encounters of my life.

He responded by laughing, then getting out his walkie talkie and calling someone.

I told Petra to put some clothes on, and we pushed past him and started up the train.  Back through the train, through lit carriages and darkened carriages, the latter, the scariest of the lot, we were sure he'd be there, lurking at the top of the train, ready to loom out of the dark.  We were in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night, it felt like anything at all could happen to us.

Back in carriage No. 1, the attendants, seeing I had brought a passenger with me, began shouting in Russian, I brushed past.  They could have their ire.  Right now that didn't matter.  Back to Wolf, awake now, woozy, shocked by the tale we told him.  Moments later my passport was handed back and back down the train we ran, again the wrath of the attendants at our heels.  We arrived just before the official carrying Petra's documents knocked on her door.  They were not happy to see me.

I showed them my passport, they radioed through an inquiry, nodded, stared at me suspiciously and left.

Our friend was back.  Walking past the door with another guard, staring in.  He then took a position outside the window, standing on the snow staring in at us.  We closed the shutter.  Then opened it a crack.  Through this crack he stared in at us.

Peering through the crack in the blind.  The guard.  Note the eye on the left.

 It was crazy.  Simply crazy.  We sat there for an hour or so til we got moving.  Petra tried to take photos of him, but when a camera was produced he took to his heels, though she did manage to get one or two shots. It was scary really.  Bored armed kids in the snow in the middle of the night, molesting young ladies.

I stayed until we moved off again.  Just in case he came back for more then a hug and a kiss.

Our friend observes

By the time the sun was coming up we had passed through the ostentatious Chinese border gates and into the Russian frontier town of Zabaykalsk.  We had finally arrived in Russia.