Yesterday was another train day — a 13-hour run from Krasnoyarsk to Novosibirsk. Because it was another non-overnight stretch, we opted again for second-class and once again got lucky with a cabin to ourselves.

Now seems like a good time to mention the train ‘conductor,’ who plays a big role in your daily life aboard the Trans Siberian. Each car has its own conductor, a ‘provodnitsa’ in Russian, who keeps things moving along. She is typically a robust woman, past middle age, with a stern countenance. She opens and closes the doors at stops, checks your tickets, issues blankets and sheets, keeps the toilets (relatively) clean, and keeps her eye on everything. We are generally afraid of her.

You can also get a male ‘provodnets,’ but that s rare. Yesterday’s surprise was that most of the conductors on this train were surprisingly young women who did not fit the mold at all. They actually smiled a bit and seemed more approachable. Initially, I foolishly thought this seemed like a good thing.

Our last couple stops were off the beaten path a bit.  While most non-Russian tourists stop at Lake Baikal and a couple other places, not so many stop in Krasnoyarsk or Novosibirsk. On this train between those two stops, we in fact never encountered a single person who was discernibly not Russian. Our car was also very family-oriented. By that I mean there were a half dozen children who greatly enjoyed running up and down the hallway and making lots of noise. The only time I saw children start to get so rambunctious on a previous train, the provodnitsa materialized instantly and shut it down fast. I missed her today.

From Novosibirsk we are going to take a side trip to Tomsk, traveling there today by minibus. Meanwhile, here are a couple quick shots from Novosibirsk in Western Siberia, Russia’s third largest city.

Interesting architecture mix in Novosibirsk

Lilacs are just coming into full bloom in mid June

Nobody does Big Sculpture like the Communists did

Our hotel, the Novosibirsk, is actually nicer than its outward Soviet-style appearance would suggest

Who ever thought I’d spend a day in Krasnoyarsk? Anton Chekov called it the most beautiful city in Siberia, which I assume he meant as a compliment, so there’s a statue of him just a stone’s throw from our hotel. To give Krasnoyarsk it’s due, it is beautiful – or at least the part of it we saw -and it’s not a small city. With just under a million residents, it would be the 10th largest city in the U.S., after Dallas and ahead of San Jose.

Anton Chekov

Much of our day was spent walking to the Stolby Nature Preserve. Getting there, as they say, was half the fun. We weren’t sure exactly the route and so we kind of wandered for a couple hours. It’s amazing what you can see when you’re either lost or at least unsure of the relationship between your current location and your destination.

Like presumably any city in a former Soviet Republic, architecture is a mixture of old and beautiful, on the one hand, and monstrous, on the other. There was plenty of the latter – large apartment buildings that are just stunningly awful; the sort of thing where apparently getting it built had a lot more backing than doing it right. Sad playgrounds that are run over by weeds and just not maintained at all. Industrial buildings that may have been beautiful once but are collapsing eyesores now. The one shown here appears to be or have been part of something called KrasnoPharm; if it’s their pharmaceutical industry, Kendall Square in Cambridge has got nothing to worry about!

Soviet apartments

Sad playgrounds

We were amused to find, though, that apparently there are human resources available for some public works maintenance.  We found these nine workers sprucing up this single bus stop on our route, precisely four of whom were actually working.  You’ll be glad to know that when we came back after hiking in the Nature Preserve, it was … better.

Nine staff, four workers, one bus stop

To our surprise, we actually found the place we were looking for.  There was supposed to be a chair lift going up into the preserve, a 180 square mile park famous for its granite rock formations. As is starting to appear common we weren’t at all sure we were in the right place and after two hours were starting to think about packing it in. Suddenly, though it began to look as though we were in the right place, so we turned up into a valley that looked promising.

We were optimistic, when a young guy asked us in pretty good English where we were from.  We stopped to chat and ask him about the chair lift we were looking for; he explained that we were in the right place generally, but needed to go back and take a different street. Ultimately he drove us there, telling us about his year in Milwaukee and a couple side trips to Duluth; you could tell he thought I was something of an amateur for calling Duluth “cold.”

So finally we made it to the Stolby Nature Preserve, and it was totally worth the effort. Beautiful views, some great hiking trails, nice weather. The guidebook made clear that there are an abundance of ticks in the woods there, just two days after Mark had gotten his first woodtick ever while hiking around Lake Baikal, something he was none too keen on.  Then when I saw a snake on the trail it was clear we weren’t going to linger up there.  But it was beautiful.

The trail

The view

The rocks

The city

Lunch, before we went up the chairlift, was a treat, too. We sat on a balcony overlooking a beautiful little river and town. Blini with caviar, lightly pickled herring on rye bread, some venison-filled dumplings. That can make a man happy.

Our lunch view

The trip home was amusing. There is a bus stop at the bottom of the chair lift, and we figured it would take us somewhere near the city center, so we got in one that came just as we were getting there. We didn’t know really where it was going, but we knew it would start in the right direction and just figured if it made a wrong turn we’d get off; at worst we’d be out the 65 cents each.  Turns out it dropped us off across the street from our hotel. In other words, 135 minutes outbound and maybe 15 minutes back. I love it when things work that nicely!

We have landed in the East Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk after another 18-hour haul on the Trans Siberian. We boarded the train in Irkutsk at 6:30 a.m. and stayed on until our arrival here at 11:07 p.m. I hate arriving places at night, so it helped that in these long Siberian June days there is still a little light around 11 p.m.

The highlight of the day’s journey was meeting our next-door cabin neighbors, Tiffany and Damien. They are doing some traveling after living in Beijing for seven years, though she is from the San Francisco Bay area and he is from Antibes, France. Damien does mostly field work in anthropology and archeology, while Tiffany has her own practice in art acquisition, increasingly focused on contemporary Chinese art. They will be returning to China later this summer. By bizarre coincidence Tiffany has recently applied for a job at the M+ museum in Hong Kong, where she met our friend Lars, who is the director. Sometimes, even on a train in Eastern Siberia, it is a strangely small world.

They taught us to play a fun French card game called “Tarot,” which uses a deck of cards that includes all the regular cards (with French names like “roi” for “king”) plus an additional face card in each suit (the “valet”), plus 21 special Tarot cards, numbered 1 through 21, and something like a joker that is called “l’excuse.” We spent a good few hours learning and playing. Tiffany won the first game, really crushing Jim and me. I was actually leading the second game when we decided to call it quits for the evening.

Tiffany, Jim, and Damien after hours of playing “Tarot”

On previous stretches of the Trans Siberian railway, we have opted to spring for the first class car, meaning that we have a private cabin for two, which is pretty nice for sleeping at night. Since this wasn’t an overnight stretch we decided to save some dinero and take a chance in a second class car, meaning you are in a cabin for four people. On the plus side, you save money, and there is always a chance you’ll meet interesting people. On the minus side, you lose some comfort, you might worry about your stuff if you sleep, and of course you never know who you’ll get as coach mates, or what kind of mess they’ll make, snoring they’ll do, or smelly food they’ll eat.

We hit the jackpot, since our two extra seats (like many on the train that day) remained unoccupied the whole day. In the next-door cabin Damien and Tiffany weren’t so lucky. They roomed with a middle-age local guy, who, frankly, had some serious B.O. issues. (I’d heard about this problem, but did not fully appreciate it until I passed by him once in the hallway. It was bad.) And he lay across one side on the cabin sleeping for vast stretches of the day. No wonder they were so eager to hang out in our cabin and teach novices to play Tarot!

After spending a day as tourists in Krasnoyarsk today, we’ll do another, somewhat shorter, full day ride tomorrow to Novosibirsk. We’ll board early in the morning again, but this time we’ll arrive in the early evening after only 13 hours. Once again, we’re gambling on the second class compartment. Let’s hope for the best.