Transmongolian, part I (Wednesday, 26.8)

We were lucky enough to end up in a wagon filled with young people, so no granny would bother us if we were too noisy. Our booth was accommodated with one Russian girl, who was on her way to Ulan Bator to study. She did not speak any English, but I got it out from her by waving some hands and making onomatopoetic sounds, by emulating a train tsukutsuku-sound. Later on, after a few days of silence we got to brake the ice and I found out that her name is Anja and that she was Russian but had been living in UB for six years studying there economics. It was worth it, because when our train was at UB and she left early in the morning with me just managing to mumble a goodbye to her, she had left her e-mail address (although I have no idea what to send to her, maybe some pictures :) ).

Let me introduce you to the "länkkäri"people onboard our wagon (at UB some of them left): Malte Hellwege, Heike Koralli, Doro(-thy) (the German trio, one guy and two women, respectfully); Emil Andersson & Johan De Wall (the crazy Swedish duo) and in their cabin was also Padrig O'Neill from Oirländ (Ireland), who spoke also Gaelic; Claire Farrigton & Harriet Sharp from Hampshire, London were sharing their cabin with two Swedish girls (Ingrid Mobacke and Amanda Jacobson). Surprisingly many Swedish, and German were allover the other wagons as well.
Malte was this 34-year old guy, who was very observant of people and at the same time very talkative and funny. His goal was to ride a horse in Mongolian wilderness with minimum assistance, because this is an area that the tourists have not yet spoiled with their consuming presence. After Mongolia Malte would go to Beijing. Malte was a conductor and a pianist before quitting his job for certain reasons and taking this trip. Heike was this punk-listening and sweetly-smiling girl and Doro a well-informed and pedant German meister. Heike accompanied Doro, who was on her way to study in Japan, Tokyo. She had to read for some exams that would await her in Tokyo, so some reading and learning was to come for her. Heike planned to travel to Beijing, and after a few day would return back to Germany. She had this professional looking camera, which was bought cheaply for this trip. Emil knew his movie and game sentences and knew how to play cards, and I'd like to think there was much we could have shared in terms of our common interests. Johan was this young and wild guy with lots of good stories, and I personally liked his humour and sense of self-ironism. We could have shared so much "bad jokes", Johan! I was christened Johnny at some point of this trip, and is actually a quite nice English name for me :). Thanks! Emil & Johan together were on a leave from TeliaSonera technical support, just travelling. Their mission was to take pictures and write their blog in order to travel the six months (something to do with studying..?). They were planning on staying four days in Mongolia and then a month in China, after which some other Asian countries would follow. Padrig was the oldest one of the group, but did like beer a lot :) and he was also doing the Mongolia-Beijing thing. Me and Padrig were the only ones that had bought some vodka for the trip (OK, Johan got a bottle from the drunken Norwegian baseball-cap-in-a-wrong-angle guys, but that's another story). The cabin filled with Swedish and English women first kept to themselves, but after I went to break the ice we got to know them. It would have been unwise to share the same wagon for a week with someone you did not know but see all the time. Claire and Harriet were two medical students about to finish their studies by ultimately visiting Hong Kong and doing some medical stuff there(?) :). The plans of Ingrid and Amanda I did not quite catch, but they were going to stay in Ulan Bator for a while. Amanda appeared to be quite the photograph-artist.

The cabins had again four beds (in the second class), although this time they were a bit hard but that was just good for my back. Fortunately there were also three 220V plugs, even though it didn't help my laptop, which could not be loaded because the fuses of the wagon went off whenever trying to recharge the battery. Couldn't stand the heat. So no laptop in the train - nice! The last battery power went to playing some classical music (Ravel's Bolero) to Malte. The music continued the next time in the Leo hostel in Beijing, as I opened my laptop for the first time since, and scared the hell out of me and probably all the other people in the dorm :). Of course I could not mute my computer for 30 seconds since it was so slow, so I took the heat.. :P.

The Russian restaurant car was like 10 e/meal and the meals were not that good (pork schnitzel etc.) so we did not visit that place more than once.

Our wagon was situated in the middle of the 1st class and the restaurant car, so 1st-classers came and went all the time through our "slum alley" in order to get their culinaristic lusts satisfied. They probably were thinking what lowly lifeforms we were staying in those cabins, although the difference was not that big. They had shower, I heard. OK, maybe it would have been good, because I went 7 days without a shower (although nobody ever complained about it :P ).

Our Transmongolian train was no. 04, so it was the Chinese version. All the staff was Chinese, funny chaps though: always smiling at us and they sold us 0.6 L Chinese beer for 50 rubles (a bit over a euro), although it was for chinese taste (3.5 alc-%). E.g. from the stations where we stopped every 4 or so hours, one could buy 1.5 or 2.0 L of 8-% beer for maybe 90 rubles, so it was obvious where we would buy most of our beer. You could also buy salt-dried fish ("fish jerky"), noodles, chocolate, refreshments, lots of sugary things and so on.

Usual time-spender for our wagon was to play either the "I have never.."-game or Uno, with or without liquid punishments (cheap Russian stuff).