8 November
Spent last night getting myself syked up for my longest train journey today – something like 49 hours to Irkutsk. Had a really nice stay in Khabarovsk and preferred it to Vladivostok on the whole. Now have a similar length of time on the train.
Sharing with 2 guys at the moment – both in their 30s I would guess. Not much conversation from my skin-head companion. He's a militia I think. Offered me some of his fish which I politely declined because it looked about 3 weeks old. Offered him some of my Cadbury's in return. The other neighbour went off to the restaurant car about 3 hours ago to get steadily drunk. He rolled back into our wagon, just as conversation was beginning to develop between the skin-head and I, and dragged me off with him to have a beer. He ordered 4 before realising he was 20minutes away from his stop. Asked me for a cigarette – when he saw that my cigarettes were from Hong Kong (white filters less common here I think) he wanted to buy them off me. I insisted he take them as a present but he thrust a handful of rubles into my hand before disembarking and leaving his scarf and the flowers he bought was his wife in our wagon. (Skin-head later took these when he disembarked and presumably gave them to his wife.)
Well that was a bit of an ego boost: Went back to the restaurant car for dinner and to read my book (which is inconveniently called 'The American'). The waitress was very nice and we chatted a bit about things in Hong Kong. Then two French guys came in and neither of them spoke or read a word of Russian. There was no English menu so the waitress asked me to translate for them (into English of course). I jokingly asked the waitress if she had a menu in French first. If they understood this then the French guys certainly didn't find it amusing - presumably because they felt that every restaurant carriage on every train should have a menu in French. After a few exchanges between me, them and the waitress they ended up with some kind of variation on fish and chips which I am happy to say they enjoyed!
Most of the rest of the journey there were only 2 of us in the compartment - me and a very nice lady called Valentina who was also heading to Lake Baikal for a holiday. We got on very well and spoke a fair bit (although I am definitely running out of vocab). She certainly fed me very well and I felt embarrassed at having only dried mangoes and Japanese nuts to offer her in return.
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