Moscow-Novosibirsk

On 21.06. at 1.10 p.m. the journey started from Moscow, Kazansky Station to Novosibisk. I took the metro to Komsomolskaya, where you can change to three railway stations. A bit strange, three railway and a metro station at one place...

The waggon was full. In my compartment there was Alexander above me, at the opposite of me Leonid and Vladimir above him. At the side upper place there was Dima and at the bottom place a woman, whose husband was in the compartment next to us. The couple was already a bit older and were fighting with  each other all the time.

Only in the evening I got into a conversation with Leonid. I told him that I originally come from the Altai region but live in Germany. He wanted to know what the media in Germany says about the situation in Ukraine and could not stop talking about this topic. Later Sasha and Dima came to us and we played cards. When the light in the train was turned off I put my headlamp on and we continued playing. We were waiting for the next train stop because the two guys wanted to smoke and as of late it's forbidden to smoke in Russian trains.
In the night it was very noisy so I had to use my earplugs to get some sleep. At 5 a.m., suddenly, I heard through the earplugs a loud, drunken male voice. I was so angry...
Sasha was sitting with Dima at the side table and had brought a bottle of vodka from the conductor. He was complaining about that he had to pay 700 Rbl for it. He poured the vodka into glasses and offered some also to me. When I looked at my watch I refused. It was 10 a.m.
As the men explained to me in the previous evening, it's now forbidden to smoke and drink alcohol in Russian trains. Both prohibitions surprised me, especially that one for alcohol. In my memory men always used to drink vodka in trains, all seat neighbours put their food on the table, ate, talked and played cards together.  And now it is forbidden? Anyway, this prohibition offers a lucrative (illegal) source of income to conductors. The conductor in our waggon sells a bottle of vodka at morethan a triple price (in a supermarket the price for a bottle is approx. 200 Rbl.). But for that the guys had also a deal with the conductor: Sasha was allowed to smoke in the train toilet.
When Sashas bottle was almost empty, two policemen passed by and asked them about the bottle. They wanted to know where he bought it. Whether he bought it in the train which he denied. He said he bought it at during the last stop at the train platform. If he told them about the conductor, the man would lose his job immediately.

Somewhen during the forenoon Sasha sat down at my side and told me about his life. Time being he is living near Moscow but before he lived in Tjumen, where he was going now to get his children, a 12- and a 5-year-old girls, to Moscow for the Holiday time. He cried when he talked about his daughters...

At noon time Sasha got another bottle of vodka and I drank a few glasses with him. Sasha and Dima narrated jokes and we had a lot of fun.

By the way, Dima is 25 years old and comes from Yakutiya (a republic in the northeast of the Asian part of Russia). He lived some time in Moscow but was unhappy with his life there. He was working on construction site and his income was very low. He spent almost all his money for an appartement and could not find a flatmate to reduce the costs. So now he was going back to spend the sommer at his friend's place. After the sommer they are going to sell the friend's appartement and want to move to St. Petersburg. He is thinking about doing an apprenticeship at police. He told me that he likes Germany and would love to migrate there and asked me about possibilities to do this. He was doing the train journey from the beginning to the end, from Moscow to Neringri and it took 5,5 days!

Later in the afternoon wegot new neighbours - a young couple, Dima and Anja. They were going to Tjumen, just like Sasha. Sasha spent some beer and we played cards altogether.

It was a funny, interesting and partly emotional journey. In a certain way it was just as I expected. On the first day I thought that it would be a very quite journey. But thanks to Leonid and on the following day thanks to alcohol and Sasha it became an exciting experience.
The last day was quite. In total I spent 2 days in the train from Moscow to Novosibirsk.
My cousin Natasha could not come to Novosibirsk to pick me up. So I had to take a local train (elektrichka) to get to her village Posevnoye. And it was sooo hot! Already before that I was sweating almost nonstop during 48 hours because there was no air-conditioner in the train. When I arrrived at Novosibirsk I saw at the thermometer at the railway station that it was 31 degrees. And this at 5 p.m. And in the local train it was even hotter. Despite all the windows were open there was nearly no fresh air coming inside because the train was not running but trailing and it seemed it stopped every 2 minutes.