Friday, 14 May 2010
Novosibirsk, Russia
Building up a rapport with the septuagenarian South African couple in the cabin next door to mine over the past few days. We’ll call him WAMC. He used to have business interests in Siberia selling machinery and equipment so knows this region slightly.
Each morning the train prints a few copies of the international news on a couple of A4 sheets of paper which is left in the ‘library’. Except they have a penchant for going missing. One is slipped under my door just before breakfast. It’s WAMC. My newspaper boy. It was the train’s sole copy of The Spectator yesterday. Words have been said by the crew to the effect of please replace the papers when you’re done. People are getting annoyed.
It’s the start of a lasting friendship with WAMC and his delightful wife which continues to this day, ten years on.
Not due to arrive at Novosibirsk until 1730hrs this afternoon so a day on the rails. Interspersed with a few platform stops. Of about fifteen minutes. As we’re being pulled along by the native train.
Like yesterday, landscape is a grassy, flat, featureless plain. And silver birch trees which look stunning against the bright blue sky. Small villages pass by. Consisting of wooden houses built in a ramshackle way. Each with its own garden which is only now beginning to be cultivated now the snow has melted away. Trees haven’t begun to leaf yet though. Flora and fauna still in winter mode.
Sit with the other blokes travelling on their own. The Leftie from the first day’s argument in Moscow. One who is ex-Army. And an Anorak. Keeps talking in depth about his camera club. And his car club. In that nasally way. Beat a hasty retreat.
Arriving at Novosibirsk station the first thing you realise is that the station is built to look like a locomotive. See photo below.
Two excursions available for Novosibirsk. Railway museum. Or. Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades opera.
Hmmm.
The first and last opera I went to was at the Bolshoi in Moscow in 2004. It. Was. Crap. And has put me off opera ever since.
Railway museum it is. Which includes a city tour. And the first stop is the opera house. A massive building and actually Russia’s largest. Possibly the world’s largest too. Designed in Stalin’s era such that military equipment like tanks and missiles could be driven on to the stage by entering the building one side before driving off the other side. The parkland in front of the opera house has big, solid and muscular statues including the ubiquitous statue of Lenin.
Railway museum is notable for its train carriage used by the Tsar at the turn of the last century. Very ornate. As you would expect. One locomotive has a huge snow plough attached. And by huge, I mean it soars up to about 15ft off the ground. Suppose it needs to be that big for the amount of snow they have.
Railway museum is near Akademgorodok. Siberia’s science city complex built in the 1960s. Until recently, Novosibirsk was a closed city that you needed special permission to travel to. All the scientists are given free housing in one of the many five storey apartment blocks we pass by. All look the same. All look in need of a good re-furb.
Dinner with a mix on the table. Couple I’ve not really spoken to. So it’s the usual small talk. Ask him what he did before he retired. “I ran Virgin Trains”, he replies. Oh. Ok then.
Other couple I have got to know already. Being on the same wavelength. Young at heart and good for a laugh. We’ll call her Lily the Pink. Anorak, grey and in his 60s, who I sat with at lunch, is in full geek mode with some Americans on another table. Holding forth about why he doesn’t have internet at home. Because he can go to the library and use it for free. They know him so well that he gets free cups of coffee from the library staff. And a biscuit sometimes. Americans must be wondering if this is English eccentricity. Lily the Pink leans over to me and tells me she has a nickname for him…
Rigsby.
(for those that weren’t in the UK in the 1970s…Rigsby was an eccentric landlord in a TV sitcom called Rising Damp, played by Leonard Rossiter. He kept trying to woo his tenant, Miss Jones, played by Frances de la Tour)
All burst out laughing. It’s so appropriate.
Returning to the train, meet Lily the Pink talking with LC (our guide) in her cabin. LC is told about Rigsby. She collapses on her bed in a fit of laughter. It gets better, dear reader. Her maiden name is Jones.
You’ll hear more about Rigsby, dear reader.
