for everything from warming milk to
making instant noodles and porridge.
We discerned that the
providnista
,
or carriage attendant, was the first
friend we needed to make. She was
fiercely protective of her carriage,
kept it spotlessly clean, and possessed
valuable bits of information such as
the wait time at each stop. No one
seemed to order anything from the
restaurant car and it was best to bring
your own food supplies or buy
piroshki
,
bread and dried fish from the platform
vendors. It was completely appropriate
to open up a bottle of vodka and
drink your way through the entire
journey! Isaac came to be endearingly
called
malinki malchik
,
or little boy, as
he swapped toys with Russian kids
his age, popping in and out of the
neighbouring
kupes
and running the
length of the train car.
Cultural connections
The first stop on our Trans-Siberian
route was Kazan, capital of Tatarstan
–
an autonomous republic, and a
city with a multicultural mix of
Tatar Muslims, ethnic Russians and
immigrants from former Soviet states.
From Kazan, we crossed over the
Ural Mountains to Yekaterinburg,
situated on the border of Europe and
Asia. Yekaterinburg is best known for
being the place where the Bolsheviks
executed Tsar Nicholas II and his
family. The compromise, we learnt,
about travelling with a young child to
cities that were undoubtedly culture-
heavy, was to interject church and
museum visits with trips to parks and
pop-up fairs, which seemed to be
everywhere in the summer months.
In Omsk and the remaining cities
on our itinerary, we had arranged
homestays through a cultural
exchange agency. Olga, an English
language teacher at the Omsk law
school, was the first of many local
English-speaking families who
graciously welcomed us into their
homes and helped us understand how
the Russian psyche was shaped over
years of Soviet policies. Olga’s tiny
apartment, and each one we stayed at
thereafter, were all part of the housing
construction boom funded by the
Soviet government from the 1950s
through to the 1980s. On the outside,
these Khrushchev-era building
complexes were stark and decrepit,
but inside, these homes preserved the
stories of families who lived through
the austerity of communism.
In her small kitchen, between
making
blinis
for Isaac and bowls of
borscht
,
Olga recounted the hardships
her generation had endured. Her
grandfather had been executed shortly
after the 1918 revolution and Olga
had grown up sharing a cramped
apartment with her parents and
grandmother, who had little choice
but to work at state-owned factories.
Olga’s concerns extended to the
current state of affairs; yet, despite all
of the uncertainties, she was hopeful
for better days.
End of the line
From Novosibirsk we headed to
Krasnoyarsk, a city of 900,000 people
in the centre of Siberia, and then
on to Irkutsk to dip our feet into the
icy, clear waters of Lake Baikal. The
last stop on our Trans-Siberian train
journey was Ulan–Ude, capital of the
Buryat Republic. Unlike other cites we
had visited in Russia, Ulan-Ude had
a distinctly Buddhist history and the
Buryatis’ oriental features reminded
us of the spectrum of ethnic groups we
had seen in this diverse country.
As we travelled into the heart of
Russia, gone were the stoic faces we
had encountered in Moscow. Isaac’s
presence always helped break up the
initial awkwardness and conversation
flowed relatively easily, considering
that most of it was in basic Russian
and English. We met generous locals
who were always happy to show off
their city, like the time the church
caretaker at an Omsk cathedral
offered to take us up to the bell tower
to see the gleaming onion domes up
close, and the museum manager at
Novosibirsk’s railway museum, who,
swayed by Isaac’s charm, opened up
the museum to us even though it was
officially closed for the day.
Our month in Russia undoubtedly
altered our preconceptions of family
travel. Completing the Trans-Siberian
may have been what spurred us on
initially, but at the end of the journey,
we realised that it had made us into
the fearless travelling parents we had
always wanted to be.
It was completely appropriate to open
up a bottle of vodka and drink your way
through the entire journey!
January 2013
49