I wonder how it feels to have a globular cluster on your arm

Moscow was cold.  It was also the October Revolution anniversary, so everything was shut, and there were lots of soldiers with guns slung about their shoulders.  As I couldn't get to the Kremlin, I decided to try something different, a Russian bath house.  I paid my money and was shown into a large lounge, which had banquette seating in bays around it.  Each seat had a coat hanger and most had a very aged Russian lady in various states of undress.  Usually I am too shy to take my clothes off in front of strangers, but at last I had found somewhere where I didn't look too bad in comparison and was able to whip everything off, don the strange, felt, Smurf hat and join a queue.  I wasn't entirely sure what I was queuing for, until the door opened and it turned out to be a very large sauna, with two floors of slatted, pine seating.  Women jostled for spaces, some lying down, some sitting in Buddha poses (it was hard to know where to look safely, I spent a lot of time admiring the ceiling).  The door slammed closed and a blonde woman of military demeanour, standing almost to attention, one had behind her back, started ladling water into a very large oven.  She got into a groove with this, and pint after pint was going onto the hot coal.  The heat hit me like a wall.  The women started languidly beating themselves with birch sprigs, sweat rolling down their bodies.  I had to move half way down the stairs when I thought my skin might actually start to blister.  The military lady put the ladle down.  I was relieved, until I saw her pick up a bigger one, and start rhythmically topping up the oven again.  She then picked up a towel and started to 'helicopter' it around her head, shifting the suffocating cloud of heat towards me.  Just before I thought I might faint, I headed out of the door, I thought I heard a mild tut-tutting behind me, but the ambulance people would have let out more of the heat.  The cold tub looked very inviting, and I eased myself in, and enjoyed bobbing around a bit.  After a shower, and marvelling at the women covering themselves in mud, or foaming suds, I tried the sauna again, but it really isn't my thing.  Give me that Siberian snow any day of the week.

While sitting in a café in Moscow, I gazed out of the window and wondered why the view wasn't moving.  Then I remembered I wasn't on a train.

The hotel was wonderful, with great food, and the shops were full of fun things, like astronaut gear, intricate chess sets and Faberge eggs.  Sadly the Cosmonaut museum was closed, so one day I will have to go back, but I might give the sauna a miss.

I did manage to see the outside of the Kremlin and St Basil's Cathedral and the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior the next day.  I also dived into a subway station to admire the architecture and visited an art gallery.  My favourite exhibit was a naked, plump lady lying on her front, a bronze sculpture.  I burst out laughing to see one of her buttocks had been patted so often, it had a wonderful shine to it.  She was a sight for sore eyes.

I left Moscow on the Paris Express.  Happily my Irish friends from the Trans-Siberian were in the next carriage again.  The Paris Express sounded so luxurious, but was pale in comparison to its Russian counterpart.  I also had to spend the first night sharing the cabin with an elderly German gentleman, which felt very uncomfortable.

I was surprised to realise that the journey from Moscow to Paris is half as far as the Moscow to Beijing leg.  We were going faster, but it was still a three day journey.  I enjoyed the views, mainly farms with meandering animals and occasional people - one vignette was of a mother looking down at a toddler, both bundled up in thick anoraks, and the toddler obviously having a tantrum and refusing to move.  You can go anywhere in the world, but people are people wherever you are.

Paris was even colder and a bit wet, and it was also their Remembrance weekend, so again lots of things were closed.  I did get to see the Eiffel Tower (which never seemed to get any closer as I kept walking towards it).  I enjoyed the Louvre, although the Mona Lisa was much smaller than I expected and not as exciting to see in real life as Klimt's 'The Kiss' was in Vienna.

I finally boarded the Eurostar to London, and was met by my neighbour and driven home. 

A comment many people made about the trip was how brave I was to do it.  I never felt threatened and found all the strangers I met to be helpful and generally friendly.  It was just a train after all.

One final memory I will recount is lying on my train bunk, somewhere in Siberia, looking up out of the window at night.  I could see Orion, and as I was thinking about his globular cluster (I did an online astronomy course once) when I saw golden sparks flying in an arc.  They were coming off the wheels and points, and looked magnificent.

It had been the journey of a lifetime, and I really understand now what it means to watch the world go by.

Watching the World Go By

On 1st November I made my way to Beijing Station, dragging my heavy bags along.  After some confusion I found the stately waiting room for the Trans-Siberian train.  Intrigued, I watched the other passengers arrive in ones, twos and threes.  Some were buying large quantities of instant noodles from the kiosk, others were trying to pacify bored children.  The train came in, and I had butterflies of excitement.  It was very long and a sort of racing green.  Once embarked, I was absolutely delighted by the cabin, exactly how I had hoped it would be with rich, red crushed velvet (worn) covering the seats/bunks and wooden panelling (mock) on the walls.  It was all a bit tired, but loved (which reminded me of something, but I couldn't quite place what). There was a tiny wardrobe, and a door to a shared washroom.  A slightly less than enthusiastic dribble emerged from the tap, but I didn't mind such trifles, I was on the Trans-Siberian railway!  Me!  The top bunk folded down and I could spread out on the lower bunk, like it was a settee.  A little table separated me from a single seat, with a traditional net luggage rack over it, which I stacked books and useful things on.  I strung my fairy lights up and unpacked - putting things in the under-seat storage and nest-building  - this was going to be my home for six days after all.

The train chugged out of the station, we were off!  I sat with my nose pressed against the window, and stayed there for about three days (well, apart from being in bed at night).  And what I saw, what I saw!

As the train moves away from Beijing, it passes through tunnel after tunnel.  Between the tunnels were flashes of deep gorges, valleys with waterfalls, sparkling rivers winding round mountains.  I'd just catch sight of something magnificent, when the window went black again..... and then flash, out into daylight again and another green valley.  As the sun started to set, I could see a regular pattern silhouetted across the top of distant mountains, against the pink sky.  I gasped when I realised it was the Great Wall again, stretching out of miles.

After some trying hours at the China/Mongolia border in the middle of the night, we journeyed on into the Gobi Desert.  Here were plains, with wild horses stampeding across the grit, kicking up sand clouds behind them.  Here were herds of camels, almost comic with their double humps, swaying gracefully as they sashayed along.  Here was the lone herdsman, riding bareback in traditional dress.  Here was me.  In the Gobi Desert. 

Time to pinch myself again.

What was truly surprising was that all this was as nothing to the views we were about to see.  The train climbed slowly up a great incline, and rounded a bend in the track.  As the train crossed the top of the ridge, the vista opened up into one of jaw-dropping beauty.  The sky was bright blue and almost shimmering, not a cloud to be seen. The mountains went on for miles, ridge after ridge, each in a different shade of brown, pink or ginger, or gold.  It was mesmerising.  There was nothing else to be seen, just mountains and sky.  No people, no animals, no buildings, no trees or plants.  Just the Gobi Desert in raw glory.

It was too good to last forever, and eventually we pulled in at Ulan Bator, the capital.  Weather-worn women were selling noodles and water from rusty supermarket trolleys.

The train carried on, at what felt like its cruising speed of around 30 miles per hour.  The carriages each had a samovar providing endless boiling water, and the wonderfully decorated restaurant car served good meals.  We each had a thermal jug, so could make endless herbal tea, and also use the hot water for washing at the basin.  The other passengers were pleasant company.  A couple from Ireland were particularly friendly, and some men from New Zealand further up the carriage.  A sort of train etiquette developed, where if people felt chatty, they would stand in the corridor, lean on the rail at the window and wait to see who wanted to talk.  Alternatively, people left their doors open, so you could put your head in and exchange the time of day.  A general topic of conversation was where we might be.  It was nigh on impossible to work this out after a day or two.  The train timetables were indecipherable as we kept crossing time zones, and all the station signs were in Cyrillic script.  One day I wondered why no one else was eating dinner, to find it was 4pm, not 6pm.

Anyway, after the Gobi Desert we had another disturbed night passing through the Mongolia/Russia border.  It was cold and annoying and we passengers huddled together in one cabin, hoping our passports would be returned and that we wouldn't be taken to a Gulag somewhere.  I eventually got to sleep, and in the morning, raised my blind to see..... snow!  From the blazing sunshine of the desert the night before, I had woken in Siberian snow!  The train inched its way around the southern side of Lake Baikal, giving us lots of time to admire the distant, snow capped mountains, and the huge expanse of water lapping quite close to the rails.  After passing the lake and brightly painted a shacks with half frozen streams weaving around them, we arrived in Irkusk, somewhere else exotic I remembered from the game Risk.  Never in a million years would I have ever thought to be there.  

We passed through more picturesque valleys and then came into pine forests, interspersed with birch trees.  I had been warned about this.  I think it was one forest, that went on for three days.  The snow was managing to blow little drifts into the joints in the train.  The guards were endlessly shovelling coal to stoke up the boilers, and boy, did we boil!  The train got hotter and hotter, and as the windows were sealed, the only relief was to go and trample on the little snow drifts at the joints.  This was a very noisy place to stand, and also slightly alarming, as your feet would involuntarily drift apart.  As I knew there would be lots of trees, I had downloaded podcasts and music to my phone, and sat and read, and drank herbal tea.  Occasionally the view was punctuated by a train passing in the opposite direction, but not often.

Eventually we stopped at the capital of Siberia, Novosibirsk.  It was a teaming, modern city with glass high rise buildings and curving motorways jammed with rush hour traffic.  It was also dark, and very cold.

From here, the views became more urban, with more freight trains passing, and industrial buildings cropping up.  We finally pulled in at Moscow, and none of us wanted to leave our cosy train.

Places I've Never Been

I grew up in a time when it was unthinkable that anyone would be able to visit China.  As a primary school child I remember we all once took part in a musical drama based around a green tea ceremony.  I enjoyed the songs and thinking how completely exotic it all was - green tea for goodness sake!  My only other awareness of things Chinese were some willow patterned china plates my parents had showing blurry images of strangely shaped buildings with curled up corners, and wobbly looking bridges, which were enchanting.

When my nephew sent an invitation to his wedding in Shanghai, saying he would understand if no one went, because it was so far away, I knew I had to go.  So it was that I found myself on a plane with several members of my immediate and extended family, all very excited as we flew into the unknown.

Apart from the joy of seeing my nephew get married, the other draw of the trip was the chance to come back on the Trans-Siberian railway.  Something that had hovered around in my head for some time.  Again, I remembered from my childhood people mentioning it in rather respectful tones, and it carried with it an intriguing mystique.  I decided to come back all the way to London by train.  What a crazy idea!

Shanghai was immense.  Our first view of it as the plane banked to land took our breath away.  It spread for miles in every direction, with massive sky-scrapers and blocks of flats as far as the eye could see.  I was expecting it to be big, but it exceeded all my expectations.

The wedding was wonderful - a real privilege to take part in a REAL TEA CEREMONY - who'd have thought it!  There was lots of fun first, with the groom having to persuade the bride to come out of her room, and completing challenges with his groomsmen.  The bride looked really beautiful in traditional costume, and my nephew very handsome in his.  Everyone was on good form and we enjoyed dancing the night away to a live band in the city somewhere - who knows where!

After a few days of great fun, visiting traditional markets and modern malls, eating weird and wonderful things (lots of tentacles and suckers - I wasn't brave enough for the duck's tongues), going up really tall towers and generally enjoying the views and sunshine, it was finally time to break away from my family and get on the train.

I went on the super fast train to Beijing.  Fields flashed past the window, telegraph poles, paddy fields, shacks, sheds, roads and distant tower blocks.  The sky was a weak yellow, giving way to darkness.

Beijing Station was very confusing, but as I came out with the crowd, a 'man in black' blocked my path.  A little scary until he tried to pronounce my name, then I knew it was OK.  On the drive to the hotel, I looked out at all the shop fronts with strange characters on the signs, and all the people busy with their lives.  The car pulled in to what I thought was a scruffy layby, but turned out to be the hotel drive.  I was very relieved to have arrived safely and was able to turn a blind eye to the cockroaches having a bit of a party in the bathroom.  After Ronald the Rat in Malawi, Colin the Cockroach was no problem at all and there were green tea sachets on the side, GREEN TEA!  Imagine!  Me!

There followed two really fantastic days sight-seeing with a small group.  The Summer Palace was just like I'd stepped into one of those willow pattern plates from home, the Olympic Park looked just like it had on TV some years ago, Tiananmen Square - I had to pinch myself - and the portrait of Mao.  The Forbidden City with its expansive courtyards, one after another, after another.  Most of all though, the Great Wall - how amazing was that.  Our feet skimmed the tops of trees on the chair lift up.  I could walk along the flagstones and duck down into the watch towers and admire the views of rolling hills disappearing into the horizon through the arch shaped windows.  I drank some jasmine tea while on the wall and took time to try to take it all in.  The Great Wall of China, me!

I wasn't too sad to leave the hotel after a couple of days.  The diet of soggy chips or soggy pak choy was a bit grim, and each time I loaded my plate I was worried one of Colin's friends would appear to wish me a good morning.  I mainly settled for the egg fried rice.

The other thing about leaving the hotel meant I was bound for the next stage of my adventure.......