The night train to St. Petersburg leaves platform 5 at the station in Moscow at 0119 hrs. Were booked in to a 2nd class compartment up towards the front of the train. Strollimg past the female guards in their stylish red berets in the twenty below temperatures, glancing through the curtained windows of the other carriages, we see people settling in to their quarters, taking off outer layers and readying bedclothes. Our second class compartment has four beds - two bunks at chin height on the side walls and two bench seats below them that turn into beds, caravan-style. A young woman with her two-year-old son, Dina, is also booked in to our little room. Allowing for the dim light in the cabin, I still believe that his are the darkest eyes Ive ever seen. Large, round, rich circles of what looked like pure black to me in the circumstances. We reckon its best for us all if we vacate the space for a couple of hours and let her get settled with the child while we check out the restaurant car. Anto leads the way. Through the freezing connector area over the linkage and on through the heavy door into the next carriage. Anto stops and stands in front of a mirror at a forty-five degree angle, about a metre and a half inside, In the mirror I can see a young woman with short blonde hair, fixing herself in her pajamas. Shes not impressed with the middle-aged man standing in front of her, holding the door open for me. But like Anto I can see no way forward through the forest of duvets and soon-to-be sleepers. We retreat from the scowl Anto receives from the blonde lady and something that sounds like Clear off to me. We check though and sure enough the only way to the dining car from where we are is through the dormer forest. On we go down the narrow path, overgrown with bare feet and shoes and sticky-out limbs, through six dormitories-on-iron-wheels til we reach the less densely populated dining car where we find an empty table looking out into the darkness and the snow covered sidings of small-town rural stations. Antos been looking forward to this moment for twenty years he says as he orders a bottle of half-sweet champagne for us from the smiley waitress with the pink hair. I have a little bottleen of the local vodka for the day thats in it and by the time we finIsh up and make our way back the cluttered path to our quarters the mother and boy have alighted at their destination and we crawl into the bunks for a few hours sleep as the train rocks its way towards St. Petersburg.
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 21:14:14 +0000
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