BORIS - Midnight in Siberia: A Train Journey into the Heart of Russia - page 22

and those who operate them are always dressed impeccably. Provodniks stand almost at at-
tention, waiting for passengers to arrive. Our provodnik is a woman in her thirties. Her hat
and overcoat are emblazoned with three Cyrillic letters that—to an eye accustomed to Lat-
in letters—most closely resemble PZD. In Russian, they are the acronym for “Rossiiskie
Zheleznye Dorogi,” or Russian Railways, the massive government conglomerate that op-
erates the rails. The woman is holding a flashlight, ready to inspect tickets. Tickets. Not
itineraries. Sergei hands over our printout, reaching out gingerly, expecting rejection.
“Electronnye bilety, nyet.” (Electronic tickets. No.)
Sergei and I are immediately directed to a place where three other passengers are
standing—after-school detention for people who dared purchase electronic tickets. The
provodnik addresses our failing in greater detail.
“We can't accept these types of tickets until we verify your names on the passenger list.
Someone is bringing it over soon. It won't be long. And anyway, the air is fresh.” With this,
she inhales through her nose, quite dramatically, almost mocking our weakness if we are
somehow intimidated by the cold. She smiles.
“Breath it in. Enjoy. Wait.”
The temperature has dipped to nineteen degrees Fahrenheit. And the air, whatever she
thinks, is actually a blend of smoke from cigarettes and smoke from the train's burning
coal. After ten minutes, another provodnik brings our provodnik a list that seems to satisfy
her and exonerate us, and we're waved onto the train. Immediately we walk from the frigid
outside into a train car doing double duty as a sauna.
Russian trains tend to be cramped, sweaty, and chaotic. Most, like ours tonight, have
fading carpeting and matching fading curtains. We walk into our car and enter a long hall-
way, with a clock at each end displaying the date and time. The clocks are modern and
digital. But the list showing the various cities we'll pass through is on yellowed paper and
looks like it was printed in Gorbachev's time. Many of the engines pulling cars across
the Trans-Siberian route are powered by electricity. But trains on long journeys are often
heated by coal, and each time the train stops, conductors shovel fresh coal into a hole, an ar-
rangement that causes temperatures to rise and fall unpredictably—usually they rise, leav-
ing passengers sweating profusely. It's an astonishing paradox that you can be traversing a
forbidding landscape with howling winds, horizontal snow, and unimaginable cold and yet
be inclined to force the window of your train compartment open for relief from the swel-
tering heat inside.
The train's lavatories, located at the end of each train car, contain metal toilets, and
flushing involves pushing down on a pedal that opens a metal flap, revealing the
tracks—the receptacle area for whatever you're flushing. Walk past the lavatory, out a door,
and you find yourself in a loud, semi-outdoor space equipped with metal cups that serve
as ashtrays for smokers—in Russia, that's just about every passenger. The rules of the train