Here comes Carnage!

I’m Back!

Trust me to be on the Trans-Siberian with a complete monster when it comes to Alcohol. I set off from a very hot Moscow yesterday at 21:25, it is now 14:25 the following day and I still have nine hours till I reach my next destination of Yekinateburg which is the boarder between Europe and Asia.

I find my carriage and plonk myself down waiting to see who I’ll be sharing with. A few minutes later a tearful Russian lady comes and sits down. I’m guessing she had just left family in Moscow as a big group of them were waving her off when the train left. Then in came carnage! An old guy who is called Vladimir. He comes in with a tatty backpack and heaps of bags. After about 20 minutes of fluffing around and chatting to the old lady he finally settles down….. well that’s what I thought. Moments later he is shoving a drink in to my hand and telling me to neck it….. but not before I have made speech! I muttered something about new friendships made on the Trans-Siberian blah blah, I could of said anything as both of them only spoke a few words of English, they seemed like nice people so I thought I’d go along with it.
Now you all know I like a good drink but nothing had ever prepared me for this. I didn’t understand what he was telling me about the drink I had in my hand but every time I said vodka he shook his head and said Spirit. Now, how you drink this homemade devil brew is

1. Take a glass of water, take a sip and hold it in your mouth
2. Then take ‘spirit’ and neck it.
3. As you feel the burning in your mouth you quickly swallow it and drink the rest of the water. I have never felt anything quite like. It makes Absinthe seem pretty tame. After two more shots I was so pissed, we had only been on the train for about an hour! Only 25 hours left…… shit! How am I going survival this?

After a bit of a feast, with Vladamir pulling a massive smoked fish out of one of his bags and the lady pulling out vegetables and bits of a pig we sat down and tried having a conversation. I guess I come from a completely different world to them and I really don’t think they understood what on earth I was doing on a Russian train on my way to Mongolia.

I woke up to Vladimir shoving another shot in my face, bloody hell its only gone 9am. After the shot I was pretty close to being sick so after laying down for 30 minutes with a dizzy head I managed to crawl out of bed…. only to be face with another shot, this time he had some how managed to drag a Dutch couple in on the action. After another flipping shot he could see I couldn’t keep up with him so he made me the most amazing homemade herbal tea which he added Strawberry Jam and honey. It was incredible! If only I knew what was in the tea I could go on Dragons Den and make millions.

I then became the teacher for the rest of the morning with the help of the Lonely Planet phrase guide. I even tried to get him to say ‘Nice one bruva’ I don’t think he had clue what I was on about, but it was rather amusing to listen to him say it in his thick Russian accent.

Another random thing happen to me as well (as if). The Trans Siberian stops at many small station on the way, stopping for about 15 minutes you can get out, stretch your legs and buy some food and goods from the local traders. A teenage boy came up to me and tried selling me a sheep skin rug. When I opened my gob and said no thank you. He was so excited and spoke in perfect English, talking about David Beckham and how English football is best in the world (he might as well have been talking in Russian as I hadn’t got a clue what he was going on about). He then pulled out his mobile and started to film me so he could show his English class. It was a full blown interview, Asking where I’m going, doing etc and more importantly which football team I supported, I told him Arsenal (Is that good?) which he seemed delighted at. The most random thing he said was that he was from Turkmenistan and his name was Dennis! Surely you can’t be from Turkmenistan and be called Dennis? Surely, that is as strange as ‘Hi my name is Keith and I’m from Kazakhstan’ see, It just doesn’t work.

The rest of the journey was more chilled out as Vladimir had passed out from drinking to much of his home brewed rocket fuel so I had time to listen to The Mode ‘Greatest hits Live’ and the Howling Bells (cheers Stu again) before I too passed out. Waking up just in time to sort my shit out before I depart off the train, I was just about to leave when Vladimir woke up jumped down from his bunk and insisted he took my bags for me on to the platform. We said our goodbyes and I headed in Yekinateburg. I’m gonna miss that crazy old Basted.

Once getting in to Yekinateburg I headed to my hotel. I found a taxi and ask him to take me to The Park Inn hotel. He seem to know what I was going on about so I hopped in. On the way there he is on the phone to someone, I see my hotel on the other side of the road and point to him, completely ignoring me goes passed my hotel about 100meters and pulls over next to a disco strip club. He hands me the phone, I’m like what the hell is going on?
‘Hello’ I say down the phone. A deep Russian voice speaking in perfect English says to me ‘What can we get you’ I reply with a rather shaky ‘err could I go to my hotel please?’ ‘Put the taxi driver back on’ I hand him his phone back and he gets out and opens the boot and gets my bag out dumping it on the floor like I’ve done something wrong. I pay the guy, he gets in his car and speeds off leaving me on the side of the road to lug all my stuff to the hotel. I’m not sure what on earth that was about!

This is the first hotel I’ve stayed in since I started this trip so I was looking forward to my own room for once. Plus this hotel is only one year old so its nice and modern. Mmm A hot bath and I can shave this bloody beard off. I’m sorry to all the beard watches out there.

This is a tribute to Mr Dawson

Waking up very late the next day (my the bed was so comfy) I decide to get up and do some sightseeing. There really isn’t that much to see and do in this city, There are the normal Lenin statues and war memorials dotted all over the place, there is on famous church that dominates the city called The Church of Blood and I must say its rather impressive inside and out.

The rest of my days in Yekinateburg where spent shopping for food for my next train journey (about 50 hours to Irkutsk).

2 days later and I’m back on The Trans Siberian, what randoms might I find in my carriage this time. Well for the next 50 hours I get to share it with a mute who looks like Greg Dyke and is eating the biggest smoked fish I have seen which is stinking the whole train out. The other guy I was sharing with got off about 8 hours in thank god because he was doing my nut in. He really could have been a character out of Little Britain. With only one gold tooth in his mouth which he was very proud to show me and do a hand gesture to tell me it cost a lot of money (If it cost so much why didn’t he spend the money getting new teeth instead?). He stunk the place out with a cocktail of booze and BO and every time a girl walked passed or was on a platform he would do the international ‘thrusting hips’ sign and get very excited. As I said he only lasted about 8 hours before he got off. Ha ha, I then see him on the platform with his wife (A Russian Vikki Pollard) and about 6 kids. See, the UK isn’t the only one to have chavs.

I am now half way to Irkutsk (24 hours left). I can hear you all say ‘Sam, what is Siberia like?’ well gang, so far I’ve seen trees, more trees…… oh wait there is a bit of grass…. oh we are back to trees again! brilliant!

5 Responses to “Here comes Carnage!”

1. Stuart William says:

   July 3, 2007 at 5:32 pm

   Thats a CLASSIC blog, especially the beard pictures, made me laugh out loud at work, at which point I had to show everyone else in the office haha!!
   Did you invite Vladimir back to England one day? I reckon he would enjoy Brixton
   Arsenal though Sam – tuttut – suppose it couldve been worse you couldve chosen Southend/Ipswich/Wycombe
2. hannah says:

   July 3, 2007 at 10:11 pm

   I laughed out loud many many times during that blog! Brilliant. I want to meet Vladimir!!!!!
3. Ivan says:

   July 4, 2007 at 2:57 am

   Saaaaaaaaaaaam
   The funniest entry so far. I keep picturing you trying to keep up with Vladimir (pictures??????? where the hell was your camera!!).
   The set of pics of you shaving is bound to become a classic.

   Keep enjoying it mate.
   Take care
4. Jenny says:

   July 5, 2007 at 4:52 pm

   Sam you now need to move from shaving beard to cutting hair. Don’t they have hairdressers in Mongolia?

   Am I in Mongolia?

   x
5. Grubby says:

   July 11, 2007 at 10:16 pm

   hahahahaha, those pictures go from David Blaine to Lemmy from Motorhead to Poirot to Hitler… Classic!!