Wow, it was so nice to wake up and not have to go to school today. I slept in late and then got up and finished packing and my host mom gave me enough food to feed a small army to take with me on the train. It's about 18 hours to Nizhny-Novgorod (south-east of Moscow and majorly south-east of Petersburg) on the overnight train, but that's really only one meal that I was going to miss. Anyway, it was a lot of food, that actually mostly got eaten as people moved around the train. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
The train. We met in a big group at the station and then piled onto the train. We went third class, which mean by platscar. I'm sure that most of you have never been on a sleeper train, and I wish that I'd remembered to take a picture so that you could see how this works. Anyway, the train car is divided into little compartments with four bunks (two on each side, on top of each other) and a table on one side, and the aisle and two more bunks on the other. The aisle runs through the whole car and everything's open--no doors and no privacy. This actually isn't as bad as it sounds. We were in a new car, which meant that we had special bio toilets that didn't close when we went through the sanitary zones. I'm not sure how this works, but it was pretty cool to be able to pee whenever I wanted.
I ended up sitting with Clark, Phoebe, and Jonathan for this first leg. Which was pretty fun. We ate a lot of food and talked a lot and then Phoebe brought out the booze and we started passing. Margaret came back when we opened the champagne, but instead of getting mad that we were drinking on the train (after she told us to wait for the hotel), she held out her cup. And no 18 hour train ride would be complete without "truth or dare" and "never have I ever," and gave me the opportunity yet again, to realize why playing these games is always a bad idea. Whatever. It's not like I really care if I'm one of the first to get out—it just makes me interesting. Or something. Anyway...
I snagged the bottom bunk, but didn't end up getting a whole lot of sleep, what with people moving around all the time and then a fat man getting on the train. This fat man set up his bunk and then passed out. This wouldn't have been a problem (after all, that's what you're supposed to do at night on the train) but he had set his cell phone alarm and it kept going off, but he wouldn't wake up. So there would just be this super loud beeping noise. And at first we couldn't figure out where it was coming from, but then the fat man woke up and turned it off. But it turned out that he had just reset it, because it started beeping again five minutes later. Anyway, everyone wanted to kill him by the time the lights came on and the train attendant was yelling at us to turn in our bed sheets.
Other than the horrible realization of waking up in the morning and realizing that I was still on the mother fucking train and we still weren't to Nizhny-Novgorod, it was a pretty chill and pleasant time on the train.
The train. We met in a big group at the station and then piled onto the train. We went third class, which mean by platscar. I'm sure that most of you have never been on a sleeper train, and I wish that I'd remembered to take a picture so that you could see how this works. Anyway, the train car is divided into little compartments with four bunks (two on each side, on top of each other) and a table on one side, and the aisle and two more bunks on the other. The aisle runs through the whole car and everything's open--no doors and no privacy. This actually isn't as bad as it sounds. We were in a new car, which meant that we had special bio toilets that didn't close when we went through the sanitary zones. I'm not sure how this works, but it was pretty cool to be able to pee whenever I wanted.
I ended up sitting with Clark, Phoebe, and Jonathan for this first leg. Which was pretty fun. We ate a lot of food and talked a lot and then Phoebe brought out the booze and we started passing. Margaret came back when we opened the champagne, but instead of getting mad that we were drinking on the train (after she told us to wait for the hotel), she held out her cup. And no 18 hour train ride would be complete without "truth or dare" and "never have I ever," and gave me the opportunity yet again, to realize why playing these games is always a bad idea. Whatever. It's not like I really care if I'm one of the first to get out—it just makes me interesting. Or something. Anyway...
I snagged the bottom bunk, but didn't end up getting a whole lot of sleep, what with people moving around all the time and then a fat man getting on the train. This fat man set up his bunk and then passed out. This wouldn't have been a problem (after all, that's what you're supposed to do at night on the train) but he had set his cell phone alarm and it kept going off, but he wouldn't wake up. So there would just be this super loud beeping noise. And at first we couldn't figure out where it was coming from, but then the fat man woke up and turned it off. But it turned out that he had just reset it, because it started beeping again five minutes later. Anyway, everyone wanted to kill him by the time the lights came on and the train attendant was yelling at us to turn in our bed sheets.
Other than the horrible realization of waking up in the morning and realizing that I was still on the mother fucking train and we still weren't to Nizhny-Novgorod, it was a pretty chill and pleasant time on the train.
posted by hillary at 2:45 AM
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