Friends of the Rail Forum

Great train journeys: beer and boxing from Cologne to Moscow

In the first installment of his three-part overland adventure from Cardiff to Taiwan, Gary Merrill drinks Kölsch on the steps of Cologne cathedral, shares a cabin with a young boxer and breaks bread with a lawyer from Volgograd

* Gary Merrill
* guardian.co.uk,
* Monday June 23, 2008

The thermometer read 40°C (104F) but the room had an oppressive chill. I was exhausted and yet still I couldn't sleep. It was early morning on day four of a 22-day journey and I wanted to be somewhere else: anywhere but on the Cologne to Moscow sleeper train.

Travelling the 8,500 miles (13,679km) from Cardiff to Taiwan with no return ticket and without flying had seemed like a great idea a few weeks earlier.

Although I hadn't done any serious travelling since the mid-1980s, I had read Paul Theroux's The Great Railway Bazaar, was a devoted follower of Michael Palin and had taken inspiration from the international train traveller's website, The Man in Seat Sixty-One.

But until I boarded the Moscow train, I hadn't even considered that travel and I might not be natural bedfellows.

Punching my emaciated pillow and kicking the prickly, green-checked blanket to the foot of my bunk, I recalled my last meal, a mere four hours earlier, with hazy nostalgia. It was taken al fresco in the late evening shadow of Cologne cathedral with Gerhard, a silver-bearded, avuncular German writer, whom I'd met over a chilled glass of weissbier on the Deutsche Bahn ICE train from Brussels.

As we gulped the weak, pale yellow beer, locally-known as Kölsch, from dainty, cylindrical glasses, Gerhard ordered Bavarian liver loaf, fried potatoes and onions, and ham hock with mashed potatoes and sauerkraut. As a dramatist he saw just wide-eyed adventure in my journey. But, as I heaved my backpack onto the Moscow-bound sleeper, my optimism stayed in Cologne.

Compared to the three previous trains that had whisked me from Cardiff to Germany, the Russian train was a distant, aged and unfashionable relative. My pistachio green, airless compartment had three bunk beds and, apart from the light, none of the switches - heater, fan nor loudspeaker - did anything other than move.

The thermometer had three red bubbles, the tap in the corner sink dribbled tearfully, and, when I tried to recharge my phone, the socket just sizzled and promptly cut out.

In the corridor, people with lost-looking faces, oversized bags and desperate voices were still trying to find their quarters. A tight-lipped woman and a dark-haired boy appeared at the door. He was aged about 11, wore a red Pirates of the Caribbean sweatshirt and a resolute scowl. His mother pushed him forward and told me without ceremony, "You must sleep with my son."

I froze, but then realised she meant we had to share a compartment, not a bunk. I shook hands with Eddie and within minutes he was graphically reliving a fight he'd had at school. He spoke some English, so I asked him what he wanted to be when he grows up. "A boxer," he said as he pummelled the air. "My dad was a boxer, too," he proudly added. And what does he do now? "He's an economist."

When I climbed into my bunk at midnight, dark thoughts joined me. How will I cope with three more weeks of austere sleeping compartments, unpredictable food supplies and random roommates? Why did I decide to travel alone? Why didn't I just fly to Taiwan or, better still, stay at home?

On day four, as the train trundled and rocked lethargically through Poland, my fears and hunger grew. There was no restaurant car and I had neglected to pack emergency food rations.

Just before the Belarus border, a carriage attendant shoved two official forms into my hand. As I stared at the incomprehensible Cyrillic script, I knew that I was way out of my comfort zone.

But then Eddie's mother Natalia breezed into the compartment, patiently translated my immigration and customs forms and told me what to write. And when the train stopped at the border town of Brest, a gang of Belarussian women jumped on with baskets of food and drink.

They jostled for position in the corridor and thrust bread, meatballs, cheese, smoked fish and potato cake under my nose. The homemade aroma was irresistible and I dug in my wallet for roubles.

Another face appeared at the back of the scrum. "Try the potato cake," said Dimitris, a thirty-something lawyer from Volgograd. "It's still warm and it will go great with my chicken." His pale blue eyes beamed as he held up a semi-transparent red and white plastic bag, heavy with his purchase. Soon, the two of us were sitting on my bunk, clunking beer bottles, picking at sticky chicken, ripping bread and sharing stories.

Natalia and Dimitris's spontaneous gestures of friendship had given my journey a new, positive dimension. Fearful introspection had given way to excitement and I had begun to embrace the unexpected. But, as I took another sip of Belarussian beer, I knew that a much greater test still lay ahead: the 5,800-mile, seven-day journey from Moscow to Vladivostok.


Survival kit and helpful hints for the trip

Gary Merrill's tips on Trans-Siberian travel

* Gary Merrill
* guardian.co.uk,
* Monday June 23, 2008

· Food on the Trans-Siberian Express

You can buy food and drink from the restaurant car and the platform-vendors but it is also worth packing non-perishable emergency rations (flapjacks, energy bars, easy-open cans, etc.) Also, take tea bags, instant coffee, a Swiss Army knife and an unbreakable mug. Free hot water is available from the samovar.

· Hygiene

Take diahorrea tablets and laxatives. Add headache and motion-sickness pills to the first-aid kit just in case. Also, ear plugs will muffle snoring and early morning brake squeals.

There are limited washing facilities on the train so wet-wipes and a flannel are essential. There are electrical sockets in the corridors; take a euro-style (round pin) adapter.

· Extras

Obviously take reading material, and paper, pens, pencils, etc. Playing cards, backgammon and chess are sociable pursuits. If you share your food and drink and show photographs of your family and home you will break the ice with non-English-speaking room-mates. A Russian phrase book is invaluable, even if you just point at words. A map of the world is also helpful for conversations. A torch is useful for night-time trips to the loo.

· Money

For the journey, take roubles, preferably in small denomination notes. Even 1,000 rouble notes (about £23) are sometimes rejected by shop-keepers and platform traders. Credit cards are not accepted by the restaurant car and ATMs are rare at the station stops.

· Tickets and visas

The best website for international train and boat travel is The Man in Seat Sixty-One. The site is extremely informative, especially for European and Russian train travel. Use a specialist agency (for example, realrussia.co.uk) to book the Trans-Siberian Express and the boat to Japan. They can also arrange visas for Belarus and Russia. UK nationals get a visa on entry to Japan but you need to go direct to the Taiwanese Consulate in London for that country's visa.

To book tickets for the boat from Osaka to Keelung, Taiwan will require the help of a Japanese speaker. I tried unsuccessfully to book it in advance from the UK, and the shipping company's website is in Japanese only. Very few people make this journey and even the people at the Japanese Tourist Board office in Tokyo were initially bemused by my request.

Great journeys: Moscow to Vladivostok by train

In the second part of his overland adventure, Gary Merrill settles into life onboard as he crosses the wilds of Siberia

* Gary Merrill
* guardian.co.uk,
* Tuesday June 24, 2008

With my best smile in place, I handed my ticket to the commandant of carriage nine of the Rossiya, the plushest of all Trans-Siberian trains. The provinista (train car manager), Natalia Alexandriov, fixed me with a distrustful glare, tore my ticket in two and nodded me toward the carriage steps.

The sleeping compartment was reminiscent of a Blackpool guesthouse in the 1970s. With four bunks, starched bed sheets, uncompromising mattresses, an exhausted floral carpet, and green, tasselled curtains, home for the next seven days was comfortable but hardly welcoming.

My room-mate was Fizle, an old-school hippy incense importer and a fellow Lancastrian. She was also doing Moscow to Vladivostok in one hit. As we wondered whether the other two bunks would be taken, there was a sudden jolt and the Rossiya wearily pulled out of Yaroslavskaya station.

The restricted space and the basic washing facilities were akin to camping. And seeing the same few faces day after day, and noting their individual quirks, gave the train the air of a civilised Big Brother house. The omnipresent authority in carriage nine was, of course, Natalia.

Her lair was a tiny room with a wooden table, microwave and fridge. Here, she sat in her blue, nylon house-coat, either puzzling over sudoku or watching passengers suspiciously as they filled their coffee mugs from the enamelled samovar (or urn) at the end of the corridor.

For the first day and a half, the Rossiya made rapid progress, speeding past thin ranks of birch trees that hung like silver curtains in front of barely undulating, featureless green fields. Trackside clumps of pale yellow primroses and newly raked vegetable patches next to congregations of wooden houses testified that spring had arrived west of the Ural mountain range.

Whenever monotony raised its soporific head, a station stop would miraculously appear. Even the two-minute pauses – when passengers were not allowed off the train – were welcome breaks from ceaseless movement.

On the western part of the journey, the approaches to large conurbations, like Perm and Omsk, featured functional industrial buildings and concrete apartment blocks. At these stations, however, the passengers' senses were reinvigorated. While maintenance men trudged the length of the train, tapping the wheels with long-handled hammers in search of loose components, cameras were magnetically attracted to splashes of colour, particularly the blue and red livery of the Rossiya, proud war memorials, and the handsome, broad station buildings.

Local catering entrepreneurs vied for the passengers' attention. Some laid their modest offerings; homemade bread, roast chicken, blini and potato dumplings, on rough blankets. Others had simply loaded up supermarket trolleys with cans, bottles and packaged food, removed the prices and let passenger curiosity and hunger do the rest.

A brief night-time stop at Jekaterinburg marked the beginning of Siberia. For the next three days, the Rossiya clattered by impenetrable trackside ranks of leggy silver birches with hints of plump, dark emerald conifers.

The claustrophobia was frequently broken by endless, light brown steppe lying dormant beneath pale blue skies, blotted with stationary, high white clouds.

The scarcity of floral colour suggested that Siberia was still in the transition from winter. Despite this, at the Siberian station stops, the still heat of the Russian interior burned the skin within seconds and the silence echoed.

Throughout Siberia, the mood in the train was sedate. Some people dozed in their compartments, others played cards or chess. Others chatted, mingled or just sat alone with their thoughts, mesmerised by the magnitude of nature.

Some people sat on the corridor seats and read, only looking up when an elongated freight train whooshed air into the carriage.

Thanks to the monotony of the vista, imminent station stops were greeted with audible relief by the passengers. The pinks, blues and oranges of Krasnoyarsk's diverse architecture were equally refreshing, but after the Rossiya left this mid-Siberian city, platform vendors became increasingly scarce and were replaced by tiny platform-top shops, whose windows and shelves were jammed with multi-coloured cans, jars and packets of food.

Day four ushered in a major change of scenery. At dusk the train deposited many passengers at Irkutsk, from where they could explore Lake Baikal or take trains into Mongolia and China. For the next two days, the Rossiya wove tentatively around mountains shrouded in mist. We saw rivers for the first time in days. Silver birches were edged out by conifers, and substantial brick houses, with double-pitched roofs, replaced the concrete and wooden dwellings of mid and western-Siberia.

The topology slowed the train's progress and the altitude caused the temperature to plummet. At Obluchye, a tiny town built for the railway, most passengers preferred to stay on the train and watched more intrepid travellers dash on to the platform in the piercing cold and take hurried photos of a grand war memorial bedecked with huge bouquets of vibrant flowers.

On the penultimate day, we stopped at Khabarovsk. It was apparent, even before arrival, that this is a significant city. The tree-lined streets and elegant architecture reflect a presence that contrasts sharply with the rest of the region. In the midday sun, the allure of a golden-globed Orthodox church was matched only by the three blue spires atop the straight-backed cathedral.

From Khabarovsk and with the mountainous border with China visible to the south, the Rossiya accelerated. It sped along a deep green flood plain, over rocky rivers, through anonymous towns and raced Japanese cars on trackside roads.

The next morning, some 148 hours after leaving Moscow, the Rossiya pulled into a cold and dank Vladivostok station, three minutes ahead of schedule. We had crossed a continent and through dusty windows, we'd seen gradual changes in climate, vegetation, topography and architecture. But the sights were largely irrelevant; the most memorable moments occurred within the train.

Irrespective of nationality, education, linguistic skills or faith, the universal warmth of the people I'd met on the Rossiya made the journey unique. Everyone had a story to tell and I was never bored, nor infected by cabin fever. With every mile, I became increasingly comfortable with the true adventure of travel. This, I decided, cannot be found on the carefully researched pages of guidebooks; travel's greatest thrills come from random meetings in transit.

However, as I dragged my bags down the steps of carriage nine, one person defied my thesis. Natalia stood expressionless on the platform in her winter coat. With hands deeply rooted in pockets, she cast one last disparaging sneer from under her hood, turned on her heel and marched briskly toward the warmth of the station cafe.

Read Gary's full account of his adventure

Great journeys: Russia to Taiwan by boat

In the final leg of his flight-free adventure, Gary Merrill sails over the East China Sea towards Taiwan

* Gary Merrill
* guardian.co.uk,
* Wednesday June 25, 2008

On a steel grey, damp afternoon at the beginning of the third and last week of my journey, I watched a string of black smoke rise from the funnel of the MV Rus, the ship that would take me through the impenetrable mist of the Sea of Japan. I was agonisingly close to leaving Russia but I had no idea where I should check in, or what time the ship would depart.

According to my ticket, departure time was 6pm. At 5pm, I eventually stumbled upon the shipping company's office, concealed behind an anonymous door on the top floor of a utilitarian, dockside building. My questions were met by sighing equivocation but at least I had discovered where I needed to wait: in the tomb-like basement with grey plastic chairs, bare magnolia walls and a tiny wall-mounted TV with a red-speckled screen.
At 9pm and without prior warning, a pair of double doors opened.

A diminutive, green-uniformed official began letting people over the threshold. Another hour of the divine comedy passed and finally, I was into the next circle of hell: Russian customs. Ninety minutes later, and eight hours after arriving at the harbour, I finally climbed the slippery, wooden gangplank of the MV Rus.

The 36-hour voyage passed pleasantly; the sea was placid and the weather benign. I had bumped into other, similarly confused western European travellers in the waiting room at Vladivostock and we dined and drank together on the MV Rus. The conversation, the Asahi beer and warm sake in the bar compensated for the bland food on board.

Lunch on the first day, for example, was a tiny bowl of insipid seafood salad, followed by watery and tepid solyanka, and then cold potatoes with a rubbery schnitzel that merely bent the thin steel knife. Meal times were strictly enforced and courses were delivered to the table irrespective of whether the diner had finished the previous one.

Surprisingly, I found Japan less of a culture shock than Russia. This was evident when the Japanese customs and immigration officials boarded the MV Rus. They set up desks and computers in the ballroom, told the passengers - in three languages - what was happening over the PA, handed out trilingual forms, and processed around 100 passengers courteously and efficiently within an hour.

In Fushiki, guided by Umon, a Japanese student whom we had met on the MV Rus, our rag-tag band of travellers trudged through the sleepy streets and found three box-shaped taxis, driven by white-capped and gloved cabbies. They took us to Takaoka railway station and, after buying tickets, we went our separate ways.

As the train glided through the flat coastal plain of western Japan, I chewed a snack of dried, vinegary octopus and watched the perfectly rectangular paddy fields pass by in precise rows. As we moved into central Japan the landscape became mountainous before finally, the train sped through the sprawling megalopolis of the east coast.

From Tokyo, a Shinkansen (bullet train) whisked me to Osaka where, with some trepidation, I boarded the Hiryu ferry to Taiwan, via Okinawa. The Sea of Japan had been tranquil but this route, on the western edge of the Pacific Ocean, past the Ryukyu Islands and into the East China Sea, is notorious for high seas and typhoons.

The Hiryu is a generation ahead of the MV Rus in every respect. The Japanese food was infinitely tastier; the bedding was softer; the beer colder; and the information was timely and accurate. There were very few passengers - the ship earns its keep from cargo - and the skeleton staff seemed to have several roles each. The deputy purser, for example, was also the cleaner, chef, waiter, barman and deck hand.

On the final evening of my 22-day journey, I sat cross-legged on the top deck with my map of the world and tried to guess the identity of the cloud-topped, jagged island closest to the ship. A band of shimmering gold stretched from the setting sun across the sea, which ruffled like deep blue silk. I decided that the island's name was unimportant; the serenity said it all.

I pushed the map into my backpack and noticed a dog-eared piece of newspaper. It was an unread article by Paul Theroux that I'd ripped out of The Observer before I left the UK. Back in my cabin, sipping my last cup of PG Tips, I was struck by Theroux's closing thoughts.

He wrote: "I think travellers are essentially optimists, or else they would never go anywhere." I then recalled my heightened anxiety on the Brussels to Moscow sleeper. As I had tossed and turned in my bunk, I imagined that every possible nightmare scenario - from capsizing boats to food poisoning - would afflict me at some point in my journey. In reality, the trip was plain sailing; not one of my fears came true. Indeed, whenever I hit a barrier, fate smiled with perfect timing. It delivered translators, calm seas, good health and, most importantly, companionship.

Although I travelled solo, I was never alone. From Gerhard in Belgium, to Dimitris in Belarus; from Fizle, Slavic, Joe Cheng on the Trans-Siberian; to William, Dominic and Umon on the MV Rus, whether these people realised it or not, these coincidental encounters had helped convert me from a pessimist into an optimist. It may have taken three weeks but I had finally become a traveller.

Interesting and intrepid trip. I wonder what the writer would have to say about a journey on Slosh Meyl, should he make one?

the late evening shadow of Cologne cathedral

On a train journey more than ten years ago from Vienna to London I remember sitting on the steps of the same cathedral very early one morning. We'd just come in on the overnight sleeper and had a couple of hours to kill before our onward leg to Brussels. The cathedral is close to the station.