Like the serialized stories of Dostoyevsky or Dickens, the next few posts will chronicle my trip on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. This year has been one of freedom and exploration for me. There have been a number of places within Russia and the former Soviet Union that I have wanted to see for a long time, and I’ve taken advantage of my relative flexibility in this year to see them. One of the things that I’ve wanted to do for a long time was to take the Trans-Siberian Railroad across Russia, and I am pleased to say that I recently returned from a two-week trip doing so.
On Saturday the 3rd of June, I boarded a plane from Moscow to Vladivostok at Sheremetyevo Airport. I was tired of the constant cold and bad weather in Moscow, so I flew to Siberia, where it was sunny and warm aka actually summer. I’m surprised to have had to go to Siberia for summer weather as well. We took off after an hour or so delay due to late aircraft arrival and then made our war arching north across the frozen northern reaches of the Russian Federation. It was a bit of a trip to see the permafrost from the plane.
Permafrost.
Without issue, we landed in Vladivostok, and I didn’t have to wait too long for my bag, a backpack lent to me by my friend Terry. I then walked through the terminal to a train that took me from the airport to the central railway terminal in Vladivostok. From there, it was about a ten minute walk to the hotel where I was staying. I was exhausted. It’s an 8 hour flight across Russia, and we left around 4:00PM Moscow time. As I wasn’t tired, I couldn’t really sleep on the flight and arrived at what felt like midnight my time, despite it being 7AM in Vladivostok. Russia has a lot of time zones, and Vladivostok is 7 hours ahead of Moscow, so I was 14 hours ahead of New York time for some perspective.
I was able to go to my room early and collapse for a quick nap. I didn’t have much time to recover, because I was getting a tour of the center of the city from a friend of a friend’s brother. He met me in the lobby, and we set off the see the waterfront, a ship, a submarine museum, the WWII monument, the historic GUM shopping center, and the beach, among other things.
Vladivostok from my hotel window.
One of the highlights of the tour was a surprise car show on one of the main squares. I excitedly saw a display of a few UAZiki, which made me instantly very happy.
A little bit of Ulyanovsk in Vladivostok.
After our walking tour, which lasted a few hours, I went back to my room and crashed for a few hours. Feeling better from some sleep, I walked around the center again and got some dinner and headed off to the famous Mumiy Troll’ bar. Mumiy Troll’ is a cool rock group from Vladivostok, and they opened a bar in their hometown.
I was there a little early for the evening, but when I went in the place was dead. I was super disappointed in the bar, sadly. They had no Russian beer, so I had a Guiness. I then decided to have a White Russian. The bartender proceeded to then fill a glass with ice and a splash of vodka before pouring in a whole lot of cream. He had forgotten to add the Kahlua for a good two minutes.
The Mumiy Troll’ bar.
The next morning, I got up at had breakfast at a Soviet themed stolovaya. I then walked to the funicular to get to the view point of the city. Annoying, the funicular was closed for “technical reasons,” so I climbed up the whole hill to the view.
Central Vladivostok.
It was definitely worth it. I took a bus back down to the center and had lunch at the stolovaya because the three restaurants that I had tried to eat in where closed for unknown reasons.
USSR themed stolovaya (cafeteria).
After lunch, I took a taxi to Russky Ostrov (Russian Island), where is the home of Far Eastern Federal University. To get to the island, we had to cross a major bridge, now a symbol of Vladivostok, which is the longest bridge of that cable style in the world.
The Russky Ostrov bridge.
The university itself is a massive university campus the likes of something like Ohio State or the University of Illinois.
Far Eastern Federal University.
The plus of the university is that the campus has a beach on the Sea of Japan, which I stuck my feet into briefly.
The beach.
Running somewhat out of time, I got back on a bus to the center of the city to grab some dinner and get some last minute provisions for the overnight train ride. When stopping at a café for a coffee, I thought there was a language barrier between the Russian staff and the Chinese tourists ahead of me in line. I heard the woman ask if they wanted something with milk or juice. I just assumed that there was something wrong with someone’s English; however, I was super surprised when asked, in Russian, if I wanted my iced coffee with milk or juice. I can’t imagine why anyone would mix coffee with juice. I apparently could also only get an iced coffee with syrup in it, which I thought was strange. Apparently the staff doesn’t understand that they make more money off of me if I refused the sugar syrup.
The end of the Trans-Siberia: 9288KM from Moscow (5771 miles).
The first leg of my train adventure was on train 001, the fabled Moscow-Vladivostok train.
Train 001- Moscow-Vladivostok.
Unlike some, I wanted to use the train to get off and see some major cities along the way in Siberia instead of riding 7 straight days on the train. For the ride, I was going in third class, platskart, the whole way. I wanted to mingle with lots of Russians, and I somewhat accomplished this task. When I handed my ticket to the provodnitsa, the conductor, she asked if I spoke Russian and signed a huge sigh of relief when I said I do. “Thank God,” she said. Apparently, the Trans-Siberian is super popular for foreigners looking for adventures, most of whom who don’t speak any Russian. This strikes me as very strange, as Russia isn’t really a country that is great to travel to if you don’t speak the language. A few people speak English, but most of the people one would encounter on the train don’t, and speaking with the real Russians is part of the appeal of the journey.
Getting onto train 001.
The first night in the train, from Vladivostok to Khabarovsk, my immediate section of six spaces was full. It was myself, a father and his young son, two Czech guys, and a Russian student from Far Eastern Federal University, who was a cheerleader heading home for summer break. The Czech guys started to talk to me and we had a good conversation with Zhenya, the student, for a while. The Czech guys were drinking a lot, which is forbidden on the trains except in the dining car, and eventually attracted the attentions of a random Russian guy from somewhere else in the car. He came up and insisted on speaking to us in broken English, which the Czech guys couldn’t understand at all. The Russian guy, Sasha, just wanted to mingle with some foreigners, which the Czechs didn’t understand. They didn’t know what a rarity it is for Russians to interact with foreigners, especially in the Russian Far East. One Czech guy forgot that he told Sasha that they were form the Czech Republic, and the second guy got spooked when Sasha said something about the Czech Republic. The second guy then got paranoid. He thought that I knew Sasha and turned aggressive and yelled at Sasha to leave. He then said to me, “we don’t want any trouble,” as if I had some connection with Sasha and we were trying to pull some sort of scam. It was weird. In the morning, they basically didn’t say anything to me as we got off the train in Khabarovsk.
The Khabarovsk train station – the largest in Siberia.
In Khabarovsk, I got off the train and walked the fifteen or so minutes to my hotel. The woman who checked me in was super nice and gave me a ticket for breakfast that day. It was a decent place to stay, but was super Soviet in that there was a lady on the floor, with whom I had to leave my key when I wasn’t in my room. After showering, changing, and having breakfast, I set out for a whirlwind day in Khabarovsk. I walked down the main road and through a Chinese Market (clearly all of the items were 100% legitimate Adidas and Armani products, no counterfeit items at all) to eventually make it to the riverfront on the Amur River, which serves as the border between Russia and China. In Khabarovsk, I was only a few kilometers from China.
The Amur and the steps down to the central beach in Khabarovsk.
From the river, I tried to go to the military museum, which was closed for no reason. The door was open and I walked in to buy a ticket, however the woman at the desk said it was closed and wouldn’t explain why. Instead, I walked across the street and spent some time in the Regional Museum, which was pretty cool. They had a large series of fish tanks with some of the famous Russian fish such as the sturgeon. They also had a lot of stuffed animals eating other stuffed animals.
Om-nom-nom.
After the Regional Museum, I walked off to see the local history museum. A bored docent was pleased that I spoke Russian and gave me an impromptu tour of the first floor of the museum. After my unofficial, but informative, tour, I walked to a nearby shopping center. The food court had a Mexican restaurant run by an American. I was able to get a real burrito for the first time since Murmansk, and the hot sauce was indeed actually spicy.
Happiness is a good burrito.
From lunch, I walked back to a different area along the waterfront.
Downtown Khabarovsk.
I went to see the main cathedral, which is allegedly the second tallest in Russia after Christ the Savior in Moscow.
Tallest cathedral in Siberia.
Eventually, after more walking, I wound up at a different mall food court near the hotel where I got an excellent dinner of Korean food. I then walked to the store to load up on provisions for my next train leg, almost 58 hours between Khabarovsk and Irkutsk. All in all, I walked a total of 14.4 miles in Khabarovsk. I crashed hard that night, and got up and had breakfast before walking to the train, which left around 8:00AM. The long train journey and my adventures in Irkutsk and Lake Baikal will be chronicled in another post.
An American in Ulyanovsk 