Long stretches of birch wood forests flank the railway line for hundreds of kilometers, and, in the absence of border crossings, or many stops, a sense of early shoots of ennui in fellow passengers (and I don't mean Robert).
A bit of a book club started earlier. Robert borrowed a "warrior" book (about cats, apparently) from Brenda, a grade 7 English teacher from the international school in beijing. He read it in a single sitting and returned it with gratitude. One of the other families further down the train had run out of reading material, so their son borrowed "warrior" from Brenda, and one of the other children did a book swap with Robert. I did my part and passed a lousy Tom sharpe book (which read as if it had been made for a BBC tv series) to Stuart, a teacher from shanghai.
Meals and stops en route are the high point of days like this.
The restautarant car is quite interesting, and is under the control of the Three Weird Sisters. one makes up the food, one prepares the trolley (beer, chocolate, chips - so no takers there) and one fabricates the bill. Whatever you order, or eat, seemingly regardless of the combination, volume or intrinsic value, comes to us$30. "a drum, a drum, the next punter has come.."
Actually the food is not bad at all. I had a most agreeable salmon sashimi salad, Robert a chicken fillet with sauté potatoes and I also had a large bottle of russian lager all for $30.
The russian beer is good, if not unpronounceable. Yesterday I asked for some Czech beer, but got a stern "russian beer" reply. Weird sister number three had Czech beer, but is clearly proud of her nation's bevvy.
Robert and I retreated into post perandial lethergy. Robert read two more books, I stumbled through a William Boyd. I find that William Boyd is never quite as good as Julian Barnes, and given my alphabetical ordering, the two authors fight for precious space in our bookshelf back in Singapore, so I'm afraid this one won't be coming back, and will be donated to the trans-Mongolian book club.
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Location:3394km from Moscow
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