: the adventures of valerie :

whew!  finally off the 70 hour train.  itching for internet, itching from not having showered for nearly 4 days, but all-in-all it wasn't all that bad.  i'm in krasnoyarsk now, how random is that? somewhere in the middle of siberia.  it's one of the options for timezone settings in my ipod though, so it MUST be somewhere important, right?

once again, one of my first observations is that i would be completely lost without frances.  it is impossible to get by with just english and hand signals here.  however, frances did nearly get us in a dangerous situation.  imagine us, the only 2 foreigners, in a "platzkart" traincar with 54 beds, mostly russian families.  stuffy, dried fish, beer, and BO stench is everywhere because the windows only open a crack.  very angry "provinista"(train car manager lady, who is the stereotypical short-haired stumpy-legged frumpy middle-aged russian woman who just shouts at people).  we made friends with a couple college boys, one of who spoke some english-- sweet kids, and we had a great time laughing and trying to communicate with them for the first 2 days of the train ride.  frances and i teach them how to play a card game, which they both proceeded to win 2 times in a row. frances proclaims loudly in russian: "well at least we won the cold war!" in the quiet train car.  she then continues to say something i don't understand, but i can see the people around us look very unhappy. turns out she decided insulting putin (who the russians LOVE) would also be a good idea. hm. luckily, nothing came of it and they told us "there are a lot of russians in this car." 

another random factoid: they all call elton john (who is very popular here) "sir gay"=sergey (common russian name). get it? he's knighted in england, and he's gay. i had a good laugh about that one, because i've heard it from a few different people already!

so many more things to write about!  the scenery was beautiful-- we are about halfway across russia now, and mostly it's just been flat with lots of birch trees, rivers, and scattered industrial development. lots of cranes, endless smokestacks, and old russian ladies walking along the train tracks with bags of onions. 

we have yet to really meet any backpackers, so it's just the two of us bumming around siberia. people have been very excited to talk to us and practice their broken english, which is a welcome change from the bustle and disinterest of moscow. 

i'll try to get to my emails finally this weekend, as we will be here until monday morning. email me your updates kids!