Jeremiah's Strange Times

Moscow Awoke in a sweat.  Some difficulty finding the shower.  I found Petra on the well worn sofa outside our room, beneath poorly hung posters and sagging maps.  She was struggling with the bureaucracy involved in crossing the Baltic states back to Czech.  The Baltic route, through Latvia and Lithuania did not require the expensive visas passing directly through Belarus did, but it did require an overnight stay in Vilnius to avoid passing through a few miles of Belarus at its North Western point.  So here she was debating on whether or not to fly to Warsaw or carry on to St. Petersburg with me.  So it was, as her card didn't work, that our first task in Moscow was to find a Baltic air office.  So off we went. "Moscow very clear and cold this morning.  At the major intersection where Baltic Air was supposed to be, we found nothing, nor anything new enough to suggest it had been here within the last 10 to 15 years.  So we asked around....

"Day 11 - Friday the 16th of December 2012.  The Trans Siberian.    Approaching Nizhny Novgorod. 10:40 (GMT + 4 Moscow Time) We've just slid into Moscow time, so our week of continual jet lag has come to a close. This morning we were still GMT + 6 but now we are +4, so that's exciting. Hanging out   Didn't write yesterday.  Busy/ not so busy day.  Petra, having not appeared the night before, visited fairly early in the morning.  We hung about doing nothing but falling asleep in our stuffy compartment while Wolf showed us something of his Motown collection from his USB." Drinks in the dreadful dining car   " At some point we roused ourselves and headed down to the dining car for an overpriced beer from the grump.  Petra and I then headed back to her cabin to fetch some rice wine.  We happened to be stopped somewhere, and as we searched for the bottle of somewhat dubious liquor, a drunk Russian tumbled in, smellin...

Onwards to Lake Baikal It was only 14.30 (GMT + 9) when we finally got going from Zabaykalsk.  From here to Moscow there was little to do but settle in and enjoy the ride.  That day we would skirt the edge of the Mongolian plateau, all snowy grey grass stretching off and down to the horizon, to the eventual sandier emptiness of the Gobi under the sun and the Himalayas somewhere far off to the South west.  The Mongolian Plateau I don't think I've ever been so Geographically aware as I was on that particular day, something about the wideness of space.  So aware of drawing a line across the surface of the world.  Great distances.  There was an almost foolish desire to see them as empty, just types of land, known land.  Grass then mountains then India.  Like streets in a city.  Known quantities in this great unknown.  My mind raced to place it in context.  A low resolution context.  Simplified.  On our way agai...