Day 24: Saint Petersburg to Helsinki… swapping tracks for waves

A QUICK QUIZ. How do you pack enough clothes to cover temperatures from 35 degrees down to 15 degrees, containing attire suitable for Asian beaches, European capital cities and dirty trains, and yet be able to carry them all? Oh, and along with a growing plastic tat mountain?

Don’t ask me. If I knew the answer to that, Kitty wouldn’t be walking round a chilly St Petersburg in cut-off denim shorts, my wife’s jeans wouldn’t have a faint aroma of wee thanks to a burst nappy, and the locals might not be affording me such generous “personal space”.

And so instead of researching Stockholm’s Old Palace, Mrs S spent this morning researching city centre laundrettes for when we arrive in Sweden tomorrow morning. It really is getting quite desperate.

 
My editorial assistant in short shorts… 

We’ve been nowhere long enough nor warm enough to hand-wash since leaving Southeast Asia, and Europe is just too expensive to use the hotel laundries. We got away with it on the Trans-Siberian where everybody kind of stinks but our reintroduction to civilisation has thrown our cleanliness and hygiene levels into sharp focus. The burst nappy/wee incident has only exacerbated this.

Accordingly, we hummed down the stairs of the Pushka Inn as soon as we woke, ducked by the Pushka café next door to scoop up some breakfast and then  clambered straight into our taxis where we thoughtfully wound down the windows.

My taxi took a bit of a leisurely route as we discussed Chelsea, Roman Abramovich, Finnish hunting and swimming in the Neva River with our driver, before arriving at Finlandsky Station for the high-speed tilting train to Helsinki.

 
There is something fishy about this breakfast…

 Mrs S had landed kerbside 10 minutes earlier and was hyperventilating given she had 80 percent of our bags, 66 percent of our children, zero percent of our money, zero percent of our passports and zero battery on her phone.

We got there early and had an hour to kill. So while I pondered the case of the strange looking man who was punching way above his weight in the wife department, the boys obsessed about chewing gum.

I guess it was to be expected, having grown up in Singapore where gum-chewing is almost on a par with grievous bodily harm. Since learning that there are countries where you can actually buy this stuff – and chew it – the mere thought of chewing gum has them twitching and salivating.

This despite the fact Jasper had already coming to a sticky end in Vietnam when his favourite Sugi Island T-shirt was ruined by someone’s discarded gum attaching itself to his rucksack and from there onto his clothing like some rabid spearmint virus.

 They were a great match, once. I guess…

 Jasper’s affection is unwavering and Ben cannot stop discussing it. Mrs S loves Singapore for making it illegal.

“Why don’t you stay in Singapore then,” Ben asks as the chewing gum debate enters a new phase.

“I would love to,” Mrs S replies.

Ben pauses.

“Me too. But that is not available,” he says.

More than physically moving the Shine family from Singapore back to the UK, our trip has already had a profound effect on the family.

Ben has really come into his own this last three weeks (when he is not tired or hungry). He has always been a very thoughtful boy with a superb sense of humour and unmatched comic timing, but over the last 10,000km his confidence has soared.

As for Kitty, she has become much more independent. She is talking more, scolding more and asserting her personality at every opportunity. This is not always a good thing.

Jasper too has grown. He has become ever more mature and ready to distance himself from the general craziness of Ben and Kitty. Even though he is only one school year older than Ben he is charging at top speed – too fast – towards teenage behaviour. Never more so now we are in cooler climes and he is living in his Singapore Barbarians rugby hoodie.

Anyway, they got their chewing gum, Kitty squawked and had sweets instead and I made a fool of myself asking the money-changer for Finnish money (“You know… the money they use in FIN-LAND) before collecting my, ahem, Euros from her and boarding the tilter to Helsinki.

Off to Finland…

For the first time since Hong Kong, all the signs are in English and the staff understand us entirely. I can barely describe what a relief this is. The travel is less exotic, but more enjoyable now. We can communicate properly, the borders are easily navigable, there is abundant food all the family can stomach and so our bottomless picnic bag is now redundant.

We take our place in the half-empty train and, unlike Russia or China, the staff are fine about us regrouping together given the train is not full.

We fly by gorgeous Scandinavian scenery – forest, wooden houses with painted shutters and carved edging. It is similar to the Russian countryside but more picturesque and appears less functional.

I sit a little apart and tap on my MacBook Air, Mrs S gives me daggers, Kitty melts down and the boys eschew iPads for card games… And then we are there.

Peace and quiet…

Mayhem. Spot the difference…

We pull into Helsinki and head to the taxi rank. Every Scandinavian cliché is at play as first up in the rank is a young blonde cabbie who speaks perfect English and scoots us round to the South Harbour for our boat to Stockholm.

We are a couple of hours early and no Left Luggage locker can accommodate the size of our bags so we settle down in a café for coffees and sandwiches before we hit the seas.

A high school teacher from Chicago with General Custer hair and John Lennon glasses shares his unwanted views on Asian tourists with us, and advises us that our children are tired and “just need a playground”.

He doubts we could have arrived in Helsinki from St Petersburg by train (“well, you gotta have taken some sort of ferry”) before he looks it up in his guide book (“oh, okay, you *did* come by train), as though we got our kicks from duping strangers about the rail networks of Europe.

He then begins to share his feelings on the Trayvon Martin case before, mercifully, another hour of my life is spent and we can board the Silja Serenade.

Your kids need a playground!

Where to begin?

They call it the Silja Serenade, Mrs S calls it a Motorway Service Station (though do bear in mind here that my lovely wife’s nostrils involuntarily flare at any accent north of Regents Park). My view is that when Newport Pagnell’s Welcome Break features jugglers on stilts, a spa, a sauna, jacuzzis, buffets, bars and tax-free shops and casinos, all set against a Scandinavian seascape, I’ll fall into line, but until then this will have to be one of those rare occasions where we disagree.

That’s not to say I don’t see what she’s getting at, mind.

Ferry mayhem

Three-quarters trousers were the norm, and tattoos were aplenty. Plus this was a place of big appetites and even bigger back fat. And boobs.

They drank beer, they drank vodka, they drank gin, they drank cider. Their stomachs were scored with livid stretch marks like streaks of lipstick, and none of them got out of the jacuzzi once to have a pee. They staggered from port to starboard before we even left harbour. And the men were no better.

But everyone was having a fantastic time and there was no hint of menace in the air. That is where the Silja Serenade and Blackpool differed.

We toured the magical seventh floor, we walked the corridors, we hit the swimming pool and the Jacuzzi. We giggled at huge naked men in the sauna and supped pre-prandials on the sun-deck. We chit0-chatted, we un-wound and we dined well.

We then lost ba-bee.

Let me repeat that.

We. Then. Lost. Ba-bee.

Let me put this in context. On the surface ba-bee is a scrappy, smelly piece of pink rag with a lambs head attached.

Even a boil wash seems to have no discernible benefit to his appearance or smell these days. He is the soft toy equivalent of a boozer with chronic liver failure. The damage has been done and everything we do now is just careful maintenance.

To Kitty, though, Ba-bee is the world. He is pure catnip. She cannot relax without ba-bee, she cannot suck her thumb without ba-bee, she cannot even listen to stories without ba-bee. She certainly cannot sleep without ba-bee.

Me and my ba-bee…

So imagine, if you can, the panic when we discovered Ba-bee was missing.

We went though the stages of grief. Actually, I only went through the first stage – denial (did she even have ba–bee?) – before skipping straight to PANIC.

All bets were off. “Boys, you can have LITERALLY ANYTHING YOU WANT if you find Ba-bee,” I told them panic-stricken, while trying to juggle a squirming Kitty and pay a waitress dressed like a ship’s captain 99 euros for a fairly-average-but-not-too-bad-meal.

The bloodhounds were off. Both headed straight back into the Kidz Club (yes, it was with a ‘z’)  their tails up and noses down. Meanwhile, Mrs S was retracing our steps from the last three hours asking everyone she encountered in a uniform if they had found ba-bee.

The first sweep was unsuccessful but we Shines don’t give up, and again the boys went back into the play area.

The first I knew of any development was when Ben bolted over to me with good news to impart. The details were sketchy but the gist was ba-bee had been found lurking on a sofa by the on duty woman in Kidz Club. We could all breathe again, and our chances of getting a good night’s sleep had spiked.

Not for Mrs S, though. She is still really pretty ill. It may even be a variant of man-flu it is lingering so long. What it meant was her head acted as a kind of maritime baromoter/spirit level so her inner ear alerted her every time we changed course.

For the rest of us, though, it was time to quit while we were ahead – for tomorrow we face Stockholm and the laundry.

Reunited. At last…

Day 23: Moscow to St Petersburg. Eventually.

YOU’D THINK that having ridden the world’s railways for around 10,000 kilometres over the last three-and-a-half weeks, and the fact that we were about to board our first European train, that the Shines would be fairly nonchalant when it comes to reaching stations in strange cities.

Well you would be wrong. But even so, both Mrs S and myself were surprised by the level of voice-warbling stress that crept into our planning and execution in catching the 158 from Moscow to St Petersburg. 

Having knocked off Red Square and the Moscow Metro the evening we arrived, we allowed ourselves a slower start to the day in the Mercure Arbat — braving the almost indescribably chaotic breakfast (no cutlery, no coffee, lots of staff but no clue) before getting our plans together.

 Trawling for tat on Arbat Street

We’ll plan well in advance and ask reception now to book us a taxi, after struggling with cabs the evening before, we thought, congratulating ourselves on our foresight.

Amina was standing behind the counter in her slick black uniform, a picture of professionalism.  

“Hi there, we need to check out at 12pm and will want a taxi to Moskva Oktiabrska station, please,” Mrs S told her, breezily. “How long will it take, do you think, because our train to St Petersburg leaves at 13:30pm.”

Amina raised her eyebrows. “Taxi will take five minutes,” she smiled.

“But that’s not possible. All trains for St Petersburg leave from Leningradsky not from Moskva Oktiabrska.”

Okaaaaaay.

“Well our ticket says Moskva Oktiabrska,” I pitched in, helpfully.

“Do you have ticket?” Amina asked.

So upstairs I troop again to the little hotel safe where I extricate the SNCF-issued ticket and, sure enough, it says Moskva Oktiabrska to Sankt Peterburg G.

“Never heard before,” Amina says, sticking to her guns.

“Well can you call the station and find out?” Mrs S asks, attempting to break the deadlock.

See Amina, it bloody well says OKTIABRSKA 

“Only have number for Metro. Do you have number on ticket? Is Russian ticket?”

No is French ticket but is Russian train and Russian station I thought, but instead continued surfing the Mercure’s wifi and soon found enough recent references to Train 158 leaving from Moskva Oktiabrska to feel comfortable that we are right and that Amina must have been off school that day.

“Ok, listen, we’ll take a taxi at 12 to Moskva Oktiabrska please. And check out at the same time. We’ll just go for a little walk now and be back to check out soon.”

Amina smiled but she didn’t look very happy.

We swung through Arbat and its souvenir shops, and our tat-ometer clicked away enthusiastically as we snapped up matryoskha doll Christmas decorations, fridge magnets and a pair of lurid fake fur Russian hats – orange for Ben and jade green for Jasper.

The heavens opened as we were at the farthest point from our hotel and we walked briskly back the hotel.

“I know problem with train,” Amina said triumphantly before I could even get in the door. “Your ticket say Moskva Oktiabrska, but train leave from Leningradsky. It same thing.”

I cannot tell a lie. This failed to clear anything up for me.

“They are the same place?”

“Yes, same.”

“So if we get a taxi to Moskva Oktiabrska we can get the 158 to St Petersburg?”

“Yes. It same place as Leningradsky.”

“Ok, we’ll still do that then, Amina. Many thanks for your help.”

We lucked out with the jolliest taxi driver in Moscow for our trip to the station and while he wouldn’t actually drop us at Moskva Oktiabrska/Leningradsky (well, why would he?) he did motion in the general direction of it as he turfed us out of his car on the side of the road opposite.

After tramping over rubble, through puddles, up and down broken concrete steps and into a dingy waiting room, we were finally there.

Boy am I glad to see you

We passed through a metal detector manned by an armed guard dressed in what looked like black riot gear. Our bags passed through after us and we moved up the platform towards where the front of our bullet train would be departing.

Some 40 minutes before we were due to leave, lights illuminated on the doors to indicate they had been switched on and were primed to be opened.

This prompted an American woman of a certain age to spring into action. She had adopted an imperious stance on the platform, flanked by her husband John and a youngster who looked like, and behaved in a sufficiently fawning manner to be, her grandson.

“Jaaaaaaaaahn, leave them there. Let the man do it,” she instructed her husband as he started to help the balding Russian porter struggling with her enormous cases.

It had been said in a tone which suggested it was not the first time today she knew what was good for John, and had told him.

 ‘Jaaaaaaaaahn’ looked pretty sheepish but did as he was told – he’d clearly been in this situation before, and it didn’t do to cross this matriarch.

‘The man’ huffed and puffed and sweated as he lugged case after unwieldy case onto the train.

I had sidled closer to the entrance with Mrs S and the three children. We had eight bags of our own between us and generally it takes a little time to settle the children in their seats – especially in this case as we were split between two carriages.

Taking his lead from the hen-pecked ‘Jaaaaaaaaahn’, ‘the man’ swiftly stepped to one side and blocked the children from getting on the train before his mistress, presumably in case a move of such audacity would displease the demanding matriarch.

The look of triumph on her face was something to behold as she stepped in front of the children onto No. 158 as though she were an empress boarding an imperial sea liner.

Her nose was firmly in the air as she took up position in seat 15. The dauphin was next to her in the aisle-seat 16, orange headphones clapped round his perky head, and ‘Jaaaaaaaaahn’ sat opposite, his nose in a guide book, but poised to leap to attention should the need arise.

I moved to the back of that carriage in a two-seat row, with Kitty choosing to sit with me.

The Peppa Pig theme tune started up as Kitty settled down and American-Psycho poked her nose above the headrests to survey the carriage, delighted at her place round a table while others squeezed into smaller spots.

I’ve never been especially convinced by the concept of karma, preferring to believe it is just a more exotic way of spelling coincidence, but what happened next had me revisiting this theme all the way to St Petersburg.

Just before the doors were due to close a large man loomed into sight by the entrance. Sweating profusely, he fumbled in his chest pocket for a slightly damp ticket and thrust it in the face of a female conductor.

She pointed in our direction and Igor-the-large began making his way down the alley.

 
Here comes the Big Man

The man was big, he was sweaty, he was squeezed into a Pringle tank-top which revealed large stained sweat patches on his shirt under his arms. His black denim trousers had a worn sheen about them that comes with too much wear and too little wash.

Certainly he was of striking appearance but that was not the most distinctive element of this character. The most noteworthy aspect of this man was the smell.     

It was strong a smell of unwashed bodies, seasoned with the fetid stench of unwashed clothes. It was sweet, worse than musty, and cloying. The sort of smell that you would want to be upwind of on any day, but certainly on a warm one.

When he paused and peered at seat 18 opposite orange-headphones boy and nose-in-the-air woman, I wanted to cheer.

He overshot his seat, hitched up his trousers, adjusted his tank-top and reversed into seat 18.

If American-Psycho’s nose had been pointed in the air before, it was now seeking the Mir Space Station. I walked Kitty up to Mrs S and the boys in Carriage One hoping to catch her eye, but she had twisted her body away from the man and was staring intently out the window.

‘Jaaaaaaaaahn’ seemed almost as amused as I was, relieved no doubt to be off duty for a spell while his wife was sulking and staring into the middle distance.

 
Good here, innit?

Twenty minutes into our journey I was still chuckling when Natasha sauntered down the aisle pushing a decommissioned airline trolley. This was a pleasant and unexpected surprise and made my plans to raid the buffet car redundant.

She doled out cheese, nuts, beef, chicken and mash and drinks which Ben and I shared, Kitty having pinched his place at the front of the train.

We rattled through countryside in comfort – at 250kmh – and I even managed a nap after lunch.

The story for Mrs S was a little different and she came heading down to the back of the train wild-eyed with about an hour to go. She was smelling slightly of wee thanks to a leaky Kitty nappy, and announced in no uncertain terms that she needed a break from her daughter and that I was to head up north and take over childcare duties with our youngest.

 
Love your work, Natasha

I manfully controlled the two-year-old for most of the remaining hour, only needed to walk her down to see her mummy a couple of times. No need for applause.

We pulled in to St Petersburg bang on time and our taxi driver met us on the platform. He spoke good English and, unlike his opposite number in Mesocw the day before, actually offered to help with a bag.

We then practically walked to the cabbie’s house to collect his car before splitting into two VW Jettas for a 5-minute drive.

He couldn’t really explain to me why we’d had to practically walk to the hotel only to get a taxi for the last hop, but his English was superb all the same and certainly good enough to exclaim: “You are very brave man, travelling with whole family.”

You don’t know the half of it, I thought…

In other news… Kitty resumed her fighting with Jasper after a brief period of distraction and I mediated, mostly by offerind electronic gadgest as a reward for calm behaviour. Meanwhile, in the other taxi Ben was pushing himself against the door away from his mother in a bid to avoid brushing against her and the wee smell…

After just a few minutes we pulled up to the Pushka Inn on the waterfront and checked in.

The Pushka palace… 

Galina, the duty manageress, spoke perfect English and made the process totally painless.

Handing us the keys to 306 and 308, she smiled: “Please enjoy your stay with us… and you will find in your rooms complimentary water because of course you should not drink the water in the taps.”

Raising my eyebrows, I nodded.

“Like Moscow.”

My eyebrows dropped, and I froze.

That cleared up one thing that had been bothering me, at least.

It turns out the St Petersburg water has Giardia lamblia a parasite which causes stomach cramps and diarrhoea…

The Pushka Inn was a delight – a tiny hotel carved out of an old waterfront family mansion, with a tiny two-man lift the alternative to stones steps leading to the upstairs rooms.

Going up? – room for small one…

There were more smiles in the first five minutes than in two days in Moscow,  and it was soon evident how more western this city is compared to the capital.

It was shortly before 7pm once we’d got changed, jumped on all the beds etc and we headed out to see some of the city before supper.

We had been recommended a boat tour of the city as an excellent way to see a lot of St Petersburg in a short period, but when we arrived at the waterfront we could not get on the English-language boat because it was already full. Of Italian tourists of all people. Which frankly seemed a bit rum as it wouldn’t matter what language it was in for them if not Italian.

Anyway, this meant we ended up the sole English speakers on a Russian boat. We were still able to appreciate the beauty of the city; and frankly there didn’t appear to be many laughs involved in any case so I don’t think we missed much .

It is all Greek to me

We were surprised what a nesh bunch the Russians were, though, all huddled under blankets as we sat up top in shirt sleeves.

Having yanked Jasper by the shoulder out of the road to save him from being run over (“I saw you step out and thought you were crossing, daddy”) we then slid into the adjoining Café Pushka for a bite to eat before bed.

A cacophonous family with eight children immediately cast the Shine children in a most positive light and we waited for our food playing a land-based variation of Battleships the restaurant provided on their paper placemats. Everyone, children and adults were playing and the dining room sounded like Bletchley Park with all the A3, F4, G6-ing going on.

Someone put these children to bed! 

When the food finally arrived Kitty swiped Ben’s Chicken Kiev off his plate by the bone Bam-Bam style before I could rescue it from her fist and avert a crisis. These children needed to be in bed. As if to underline the point, Ben, pulled the quote of the day out of nowhere as we waited for the bill.

“”Who knows where we are going tomorrow?” Mrs S asked.

Ben: “I do, I do, I do, I do. No I don’t…”

Well, the rest of us are braced for another international train – this time to Finland and Helsinki.

 

Day 22 – Moscow, and life on the outside…

WE’VE ALL READ that prisoners can find it very, very hard to adapt to life on the outside, right?.

They lose a sense of the wider world. Become institutionalised, increasingly inward looking. They rely on their captors for everything, and live a life where even taking a shower is a noteworthy occasion.

Well guess what, folks?

Baaaaaaaasiiiiiiil… as Sybil Fawlty would say… 

Today was the day we stepped off the mighty K3 after riding the iron workhorse all the way from Beijing to Moscow, and we were feeling shaky.

This chunk of green Chinese iron had been our transport, our accommodation, our restaurant and our restroom for six nights and five days.

Before we’d even reached Moscow Mrs S was already suffering a major case of Stockholm Syndrome. A bigger Sinophile you’ll never meet, and she has loved being in our little Chinese bubble since getting on board at Beijing Railway Station and retracing the route she first travelled in 1989.

The landscape has changed from Chinese to Mongolian to Russian, but the sounds and smells have remained constant and comforting.

The five of us enjoyed a final round of ham and eggs at old redcoat’s Soviet café dining carriage where we finally solved the sourdough vs stale bread mystery by discovering a furry patch of green penicillin on the loaf he dropped on our table.

Our straight-faced “frenemy” warms up… 

We said our goodbyes to the Chinese conductors who had become friends over the course of the week, and left the remainder of our Chinese money with them. From cursing us on day one when we owned up to not having a Mongolian visa (and an invalid Russian one), even the most straight-faced of the lot came to say goodbye to us, bringing the children trinkets his wife had made in Beijing for him to sell in Moscow as souvenirs.

Feeling good about life after witnessing this show of generosity I chided Ben for not waving back at a Russian child who had waved from a small suburban station platform we had rolled past.

“Ben, if someone waves at you, why not wave back?” I asked.

“It’s embarrassing,” he said, looking at me as though I had asked him to drop his pants and sing God Save the Queen in Red Square.

 “It’s not embarrassing, it is nice,” I insisted. “And the world would be a much nicer place if everybody waved at each other instead of feeling awkward or embarrassed or just ignoring each other.”

Of course Mrs S loved this line of chat, and for the next hour or so insisted on waving at me whenever possible, recruiting the children to join in too, until I was forced to admit that waving to people – whether you know them or not – is pretty lame.

Give a little wave… isn’t that niiiiiiiiiiice?

You really do have to be careful what you say in my family…

As we got nearer to Moscow, all waving had stopped and the beautiful countryside of the Ural foothills was replaced by urban sprawl and graffiti.

Our Chinese friends were busier than they’d been all trip. They were boxing up food and trinkets, wrapping boxes in tape, lugging sacks from one end of the train to the other and working in perfect harmony as a team – each carriage liaising with another.

We pulled into the platform bang on time and had no time to say another Zàijiàn to our Chinese chums before we were saying Zdravstvuj to Russia.

Our driver was waiting on the platform as the train came to a halt. Spade-faced and broad-shouldered, he greeted us with a half-hearted wave of a laminated Hotel Mercure sheet of paper before striding ahead of Mrs S who struggled along behind with three bags and Kitty in her arms. The boys staggered under the weight of their rucksacks and I brought up the rear, lurching along with four bags of my own.

Moscow mules

We walked past lots of heavy smokers in tracksuits as we tried to keep up with Robo-Kremlin’s steady pace, and eventually reached his black Mercedes in a pot-holed car-park where we loaded our bags into his car and set off through the wide open streets of the Arbat district.

Five hot showers removed almost all the grime of the six-day train trip and we were ready to hit the town. With little time in Moscow there was no time to spare and we bowled outside with a map in hand.

We couldn’t really figure out if we were in a good neighbourhood or not, although the prices indicate we are. We encountered  a lot of people who wouldn’t look out of place on a Far-Right rally, but perhaps that is just the fashion in this part of Europe now.

We found the Metro stop near our hotel – and an ATM inside. Things were looking up. I delegated Mrs S to be the speak-to-strangers-person (as she is so good at waving) and pushed her to the front of the queue to speak to the sturdy baboushka behind the ticket counter.

“WE. WANT. TO. GO. TO. RED. SQUARE,” Mrs S said…

“Now look here, we want some of your ticket things to travel to RED SQUARE, yes?” 

Against all odds, baboushka’s stern features disappear when confronted with Mrs S and Kitty, and she explains in her best English how many tickets we need, which line to catch and where to get off.

I am still staggered by this when, moments later between platforms, a tall chap with an equine nose wearing a white polo-neck jumper leans in to her and helps her select the right platform.

By the time we are on the train and a tourism student engages her and gives her tips for Red Square I am looking for hidden cameras. This isn’t the harsh, unfriendly city I had been warned about. We are having to plead with people not to get up and give us their seats on the underground, and fortunately we only need to travel two stops before we are there.

Mrs S has spotted a number of shady people “checking out tourists” and “casing out bags” so I am reluctantly persuaded to wear our rucksack dork-style, ie back to front. At this stage I easily look like the biggest prat in Red Square (and that includes a couple of guys wearing bright pink fur hats) but I am not going to let it ruin my afternoon and, when I set eyes on St Basil’s cathedral, I am genuinely awe-struck.

I looked way more embarrassing than this

Nothing can prepare you for seeing this wonderful building with your own eyes. A perfect form in perfect scale, I couldn’t take my eyes off this beautiful cathedral which dominates one end of Red Square and, frankly, makes every other building pale in comparison.

Lenin’s mausoleum was not open to the public so we could not visit, breaking our tradition of seeing “dead dudes” according to Ben, following our visit to see Ho Chi Minh’s body in Hanoi a week ago.

Everybody is tired and hungry and there is a fair bit of bickering going on between everyone, led in the main by Kitty, but I am running her very close for second place by this stage.

We’d planned to eat at Café Pushkin as a reward for enduring food rationing on the train (caused by me forking out the bulk of our food money on visas and bribes in Mongolia) and that meant another foray onto the Metro, this time in rush-hour.

I think we are all buying into Jasper’s notion of the “Invincible Shines” now after all we’ve been through so far, and we head fearlessly underground once more, unable to read the Cyrillic station signs but otherwise well-equiped with our line-drawn tourist map.

Pushkin our luck with this one?

Incredibly we (Mrs S) nail it first time and after a little wiggle on the walk we arrive at the café, which is actually as five-star restaurant, and our children are the only ones in the entire building.

We needed have worried, the boys behaved impeccably and Kitty transformed herself  from a cranky little witch into a sparkling Tsarina.

A friendly, elderly German couple in the window seat near our table were goggle-eyed at the Invincible Shines appetite for exotic food as Ben ate quails eggs and noodle soup, Jasper went for the Borscht – with roast goose – and Kitty slurped down salmon caviar with sour cream on blinis.

Jasper ranked Russian food right up there in his top three behind Thai food and Vietnamese food, while Ben also put it at number three behind sushi in top spot and Hana’s lemon-glazed shortbread. “That was sweet, baby” apparently.

Mrs S had a pork brisket dish and I plumped for stroganoff. Russia isn’t cheap these days and this was eye-wateringly expensive but offset against a week of boiled noodles on the train, it was well worth the cost.

As we left the restaurant we got a better idea of the status of the Pushkin Café by the number of chauffeur-driven cars waiting outside. We found a taxi to take us back the long way and, after a few trips down unnecessary streets, our moustachioed friend felt he had driven sufficient metres to warrant a blistering fare. With Kitty already asleep in the back, him driving like a maniac, no seatbelts fitted in his vehicle and everyone desperate for sleep, I paid up – it was his lucky day.

We all collapsed into our first real bed in six nights and already the trans-Siberian train seems a long time ago.

Mrs S and Freddie Mercury’s big brother

The Pushkin palace…

 
Quailsh eggsh Mr Bond?

Apple Pie smile

 

 

The intrepid Shines ride the trans-Siberian

Kitty takes the long walk back from old redcoat’s Soviet café up front to civilisation in Carriage 10…

Day 19 – Into Russia: Boobs, buttocks and the tomato diarrhoea

“CELEBRATION! We made it!” Jasper beamed in the morning. “How much did you have to pay?”

What role models we are turning out to be…

We talked through the events of last night and of how nobody had to be paid because the world is becoming a less corrupt place, but that we had been fined 2,000 roubles each, which we will pay when we get back to the UK.

We then practised palming a folded dollar bill to each other in the guise of a handshake – all the essential life skills are being learnt on this Long Trip Home.

It really is a long, long way…

We had woken up ridiculously early having wound the clock back four hours in the space of 100 metres from the Mongolian border town of Suhe-Bator to Naushki in Russia,  because the train operates on the same time as Moscow, some 5,894 kilometres to the west.

Ben woke up at 3am Moscow time and was bouncing off the carriage with excitement. Kitty followed soon after with Jasper around an hour behind.

Ben and Kitty feasted on dried Frosties we’d bought in Hong Kong, cheese-straws and some cashew nuts – the breakfast of champions – before we all showered at 0530 NT (New Time).

Power shower this ain’t, though I am in no way complaining – those in the second class four-berthers have only wet-wipes to keep themselves the right side of repulsive.

Did I say All Mod Cons? I meant NO Mod Cons…

 Our adjoining two-berth cabins have a wash basin in a shared cabinet, accessed from both cabins and with a showerhead on an extendable hose and a plug hole in the vinyl floor.

The red side of the single tap is a cruel joke; for this showerhead only spits out icy Siberian water. Actually, more of a dribble than a spit.

We set up a production line. The stripping off was done in mine and Ben’s cabin. From there the victim would enter the torture chamber (where Mrs S was stripped to her pants, showerhead in one hand, shampoo in the other) and pass through to the other cabin where I was waiting with a sarong to dry and an iPad as a reward.

The howls from the closet resonated around the entire carriage as Ben entered the “wet-room”… but he emerged clean and shiny and new, smelling sweet and eager to get stuck into some ‘pad action’.

 

Who owns these clean groomed children?

 

Jasper’s initial roars soon died down and he enjoyed his shower, spilling out my side with a big smile on his face.

The loudest squeals of course were reserved for Kitty who wailed and screamed and shouted and squirmed and fought. And Kitty had been spared the cold shower – Mrs S had collected water from the coal-fired boiler at the end of our cabin and was ladling it over the loud one.

By 7:30 we were at breakfast in the Russian dining carriage. Straight from the school of Soviet design, this thing was smelly and scruffy with yellowing paint and paintings which swung from the walls.

It was staffed by a sour-faced woman in her fifties, whose dark roots showed through severely bleached hair. Her counterpart was a man barely able to stay within his very large red waistcoat, thick set with closely cropped grey hair. His complexion suggested he had smoked many, many, many cheap cigarettes.

Both were watching a loud Russian soap opera when we entered. The woman turned to us briefly before resuming her viewing while the man left aside his mug – a pottery concoction featuring two large breasts at the front and juicy buttocks – and brought us a dog-eared menu.

 

All class, is old red-coat…

 

“Vodka? Beer?” He ventured (at 0730 with three children under 8, remember). “Orange juice,” he  added, almost as an afterthought.

We looked down the menu and settled on eggs and ham, coffee and tea. The breakfast vodka would have to wait for another day.

It is fair to say our expectations had been managed by this stage, and so nothing could prepare us for the feast our fat friend served up.

Served up in thick metal tins – like frying pans without handles – two perfectly fried eggs shone up at each of us, complemented by chunks of delicious thick bacon. With a flourish he set down a platter of bread which was either sourdough or stale, but either way it was perfect to mop up the breakfast.

 

Heavenly breakfast

 The bill for breakfast was almost the same as our fine on the border for breaching entry rules, which might explain the paucity of trade in there. That and the eccentric décor and curious service.

All the time we skirted along the vast Baikal, the world’s largest freshwater lake. Its clear water and mossy rocks seem to act as a magnet to Russian holidaymakers who were out in force, their bellies bulging over their shorts, camping, sitting on stony beaches.

Like the English, the Russian holidaymakers cannot seem to resist the first sight sun and vast acres of white and bright red flesh was on display. Perhaps this is not so surprising given at times of the year Baikal freezes over – this warm weather must be a marvellous respite from the Siberian winter.

 

 

Lake Baikal

 

The flat plains had grown into tall mountains and silver birch trees lined our route. Crossing from Mongolia to Russia we had switched from a diesel engine to an electric train and the tracks seemed to sing at times.

We cut through Alpine landscapes with wooden houses boasting brightly coloured shutters, women in turbans tending vegetable plots, cows grazing on grassland, piles of wood, rolls of hay and forested hills used for skiing in the winter.

Mrs S is very sad at leaving China, a country which enthrals and appals her in almost equal measure. Her sadness is set off by the kindness of our friendly and ever-patient Chinese conductors and translators.

Three days ago we didn’t know each other and yet know we feel close, given that  we have caused them such monumental headaches with border officials in three countries. I suspect they thought they would be getting rid of us at any stage, but now they are stuck with us to Moscow.

Easy, Tiger…

 

They have become friendlier each day which is just as well for now it is only us and the conductors on Carriage 10 – our neighbours departing first at Ulaan Baator and then at Irkutsk. We have the run of the place to ourselves.

As we trundled back to our carriage, a wonderful smell wafted from the conductors’ cabins.

Mrs S investigated and found that at the coal fired water boilers in each carriage, the conductors had fashioned wood and coal fires and were making their own delicious meals each day.

Visibly more relaxed now they were out of China, the conductors turned their cabins into mini kitchens, chopping and slicing and dicing. Laid across one of the bench seats in one cabin were almost 100 perfectly formed wontons waiting to be cooked, the tiny parcels filled with delicious concoctions.

 

The wonton makers…

 

In another 60 or 70 were resting on a rattan mat, ready for cooking later.

Mrs S has told them how wonderful they look  and smell, but I am not sure whether or not the hint was sufficient for them to share.

Vying with the smell of Chinese cooking is the distinctive smell of pine which pours into the corridors. Our route is increasingly lined with pine trees interspersed with birch.

While Mrs S’s love affair with China is rekindled, my own fascination with Russia grows.

I have a respect for these hardy people and their lives. And a grim fascination for the run-down Soviet housing blocks and the harshness of their existence. The contrast between the old Russians in sober if threadbare suits and hats and the young Russians in Juicy Couture jogging pants and designer sunglasses is striking.

No caption necessary

 

I cannot wait to jump off the train at Irkutsk where we power down for 25 minutes. I venture out of the station where seedy taxi drivers, all bull necks and tight leather jackets, motion to me turning an imaginary ignition key.

In this town dubbed the Paris of Serbia by Chekhov everybody seems to carry their possessions around in tatty carrier bags. No ATM machines are immediately visible so I return to Carriage 10, but not before a guard scolds me for taking photographs on the platform.

As we wait to pull away, young policemen mess about, their green peaked hats set at a jaunty angle on the back of their heads as they flick each others ears and share jokes, before one flicks a wink to Mrs S through the train window.

Next stop lunch. (I know this day IS taking a long time. Believe me, I am living it).

Back we troop to red-coat. He nods as we enter – hardly the welcome for long lost friends I had hoped for given I’d tipped him at breakfast, but it would have to do.

And here he is….

 

We order omelettes for the boys, a pork escallop for Mrs S and I plump for the borscht on red-coat’s recommendation.

Now this is a man who knows his borscht. It was sensational. Full of chicken and vegetables, not too thin, not too vinegary, with a big lump of cream floating in the centre. He smiled knowingly as we tucked in.

Mrs S’s escallop was the last to arrive – while we were waiting red-coat favoured us with a second helping of his sourdough/stale bread, beautifully presented in his big fist and dumped on the centre of the table.

He brought her dish out before disappearing for a minute and returning with a large red plastic bottle. With a conspiratorial smile, he leant over our table, across Ben, and fired a squirt of tomato diarrhoea over Mrs S’s plate, seemingly the ultimate accolade, before triumphantly returning to the kitchen.

Look at that ketchup lunge… the man’s an athlete

 

We seem to have quickly become something of a hit with old red-coat, perhaps because we are the only people to eat in his diner. He teaches the children how to say goodbye da–svi–da–nya and sort of smiles, possibly for the first time in 25 years, when Kitty repeats a passable version.

We strolled back to our carriage – since entering Russia we are now near the empty front of the train, while the rear carriages are packed – so the walk is through seven or eight carriages, past snoozers and cooks.

Jasper read to Ben on the top bunk cabin while Kitty was cajoled to sleep. The boys were quiet for an hour or so after the promise of an afternoon movie; and we then watched The Man with the Golden Gun, a request after our time in Thailand.

Mrs S and I watched the landscape go by, the occasional farm breaking up the woodland, and then turn our sights to supper.

Our bottomless supplies bag yields noodles, cashew nuts, apples, cheese straws and salt & vinegar crisps. The children slurp water we’ve cooled from the coal-fired boiler at the end of the carriage and Mrs S makes up some vodka-tonic – this is Russia, after all…

The vodka may be Swedish, but this is a Russian tradition. Like eating gerkhins. Or lard.

The time ticks by as do the pine trees and slowly the sun begins to set. Ben is persuaded to share with Kitty for the first time – affording Mrs S a bed of her own for the first time this trip – and after a few minutes the sound of protests is replaced by the sound of snoring. Jasper reads.

My watch reads only 9pm, but in reality it is 1am and I am rocked into a deep sleep as we cut through thick forest.

 

Day 18 – Mongolia and the Russian border incident…

“Here is your name; and here is our law you have broken”

“YESSSSSS. We did it!” – Jasper punched the air and jumped down from his bunk, his big sleepy yellow hair standing on end and an enormous smile on his face.

“Tell me what happened, mummy.”

Our joy was irrepressible as we talked him through the events of the night before at the Mongolian border and he smiled and high-fived us at every twist.

July 18 started well. It started as a day of endless skies, grassy plains, yurts, cowboys and the freshest air imaginable pouring into our window, as we traversed the Gobi and the Mongolian Steppe.

We celebrated solving our Mongolian visa crisis with a hearty breakfast of eggs in the ornately carved Mongolian dining carriage. Eggs, tea, toast as we rocked through the Steppe.

 

 
Mongolian joy!

We sucked in the fresh air, and Jasper and I both mused how we could live in a place like this. Mrs S was less convinced a diet of “yak fat and dried horse meat” was her thing. But all in we were euphoric.

Prematurely so, it soon transpired.

I had been flicking through our passports with a smile on my face to admire the shiny new Mongolian visas, and I glanced at the adjacent Russian one in Kitty’s passport.

I quickly rifled through the others to ensure they said the same thing.

“What time do we get to the border?” I asked Mrs S.

“We get to Naushki at around 11pm,” she said. “But we lose four hours so it is only about seven.”

“Right,” I replied. “But it is still the 18^th? Or at best on Mongolian time, the 19^th. It’s not the 20^th is it?” 

And with those few words, that familiar feeling settled in my gut as it dawned on us that just 24 hours after arriving on the Mongolian border with no visa at all, we would shortly be landing at the Russian border with a visa which was not yet valid.

Hurtling towards another border challenge

Of course I know we should have double-checked all these things ourselves, but we had made the mistake of thinking that by outsourcing the visa issues to a professional travel visa company, we would be able to focus on other more pressing tasks.

We had been rather taken up with the mammoth task of organising our withdrawal from Singapore and the simultaneous renovation of our new house in England to pay as much attention as we clearly should have done.

And so now we were facing a re-run of the Mongolian border incident, this time on Russian soil. 

I tried to nap but couldn’t, tried to eat but could only pick at food, and I thought once again of being stranded at a desolate border town.

Outside, meanwhile, unfurled a tapestry of galloping horses, cows, camels and yurts. 

As we approached small villages, we passed permanent houses with brightly coloured roofs and yurts in the gardens. It looked as though the circus had come to town. Locals with wide, sunburnt faces watched the train go past and waved from their homes.

 There were windmills on the plains, their enormous arms turning gently in the breeze and from time to time a small cluster of industry would appear like a tumour of funnels on the landscape.  Old Soviet trucks rumbled along deserted roads.

Cowboys herded cattle – some on horseback and others riding scrambling motorcycles up the bumpy terrain.

The landscape took on an alpine feel as we headed west, with flowers and trees and rabbits inhabiting the railway sidings.

As we neared Ulaan Baator the clusters of brightly coloured houses thickened, and we passed homes made out of converted buses, railway carriages and metal containers. A fun-fair had been set up near the central station along with modern-looking hypermarkets and an office block.

 

 

More petrol stations spring up, in patches of two and three as we near the Russian border, and locals at the railway stations seem more affluent, and carry smart phones. The guard at Darhan wore leggings, high boots a puffer jacket and heavy make-up. She held an iPhone in one hand and her flag in the other.

We reached the Mongolian border at Suhe-Bator as the shadows were cast long, and soon after having our papers collected a large immigration officer in a bright white suite came to tell us we would likely face problems at the Russian border.

“They might say go back,” he smiled. “Your visa is not good yet. You would stay the night in Naushki. Then get the train back to Mongolia.

“Your Mongolian visa is good,” he grinned. “No problem, you would be welcome.

“Then perhaps you go to Russia the next day when your visa is good.

“I work tomorrow – maybe see you,” he added cheerily.

Of course this would throw out all our plans and would mean a total reworking of our route plus a flight on a Topolov or something equally scary to get to Moscow in time to pick up our train to St Petersburg.

We would have to risk the wrath of border patrol once again.

As we crawled out of Mongolia, a policeman, a female soldier and three passport officials stopped their joking around to stand to attention and salute the train pulling off, breaking off from their solemn task to give Mrs S a quick wave.

We rolled past barbed wire fences and heavily foliaged no-mans-land, and it dawned on me that the Russian border guards might be a very different proposition to the Mongolians.

This was confirmed within seconds of the spiky-haired dyed-blonde officer climbing aboard. “Look at me, look my eyes,” she barked as I slowly got to my feet. She compared my weary face with the more youthful one peering out of my passport.

I handed her Ben’s passport as he was sleeping above.

“Look at me. He look at me,” she insisted, so I lifted his head up and pointed him towards her as his eyes swam in his head.

She then moved next door, softening only when she saw Kitty and when she questioned Jasper’s woolly-haired appearance compared to the neat haircut in his passport pic.

 She began to march off, and I stopped her. “We have a problem,” I began.

She turned on her heels and looked at me sharply. “A problem?”

“Yes,” I explained, and went through the whole story about how the visas did not match our travel itinerary.

She instantly raised this with a young blond superior wearing a broad green Russian peaked hat.

He rolled his eyes, clearly relishing this pantomime as much as we were.

“Your visa, your woman visa – no good,” the man said to me.

I told him that all five were the same.

A dark-haired woman was giving the Chinese man in the cabin next to us a hard time. “How long have you lived in Germany,” she was saying – almost shouting. “Twenty-two years? Show me Germany stamp in your passport. No, that is China – show me Germany.”

The young blond man called out to her, and she left our poor neighbour to turn her attention on me.

“Why did you come to Russia early?” she asked, fixing me with her blue eyes.

I told her how our train ticket – how our entire itinerary – did not match up with the visas a company had obtained for us, and that we were all very, very sorry and needed her help to resolve this.

I explained how we would never have got on the train had we realised, not with three small children, but that with so much traveling we were only looking a day ahead or so and that by the time we realised our error we were well and truly on our way.

I explained how we were booked into a Moscow hotel on the 21^st (and we would be required to register there on that date as part of our visa requirements) and how we were booked onto a Moscow-St Petersburg train in 22^nd.  All the while I held our travel itinerary open and pointed out the relevant sections while she looked down at it and listened.

Each explanation she duly recounted to her colleague – her boss, it turned out – in Russian, clarifying at one point that the visa error had not been ours, but a combination of the Russian Embassy in Singapore and the visa company we had used.

I could feel momentum shifting. I was winning her over.

Meanwhile customs officers rummaged through the carriage. A tall skin-headed man in a military boiler-suit flashed a torch into every crevice of my cabin.

We went next door and as I motioned to lift Kitty out of her bed so he could search under it as he had done mine, he stopped me, and held up his finger and thumb signalling just a little bit.

His friendly face smiled – he didn’t want me to wake her. I lifted the bed a chink and he flashed his torch briefly into the tiny gap. The war with customs had clearly been won.

The immigration officials left our carriage and we waited. It was silent apart from the occasional uniformed official marching purposefully past our door.

Eventually the dark-haired woman who spoke good English returned. “You and your wife must come with me. You must sign some protocol because you have broken the law,” she told me.

“The children can stay here, but you two come.”

Mrs S said: “My daughter is unwell, she keeps waking and will be upset if she wakes and I am not here.”

“She is unwell?” the woman said, and at that moment Kitty played her role to perfection, delivering a juicy cough and a small complaint.

“Okay. First you, and then you,” she said, pointing first at me and then Mrs S.

I followed her off the train into the border offices, a cold building with the Russian Federation flag flying outside. “First you wait, sit there,” she said with a smile, motioning to a bench occupied by five soldiers in black uniforms.

 

One with an Asian face – the only non-Caucasian of the five – shifted across to let me sit down.

 

After a minute or two, our woman emerged from a wooden door and beckoned me over.

 

I followed her into a long thin room. Just inside the doorway was a large scanner connected to a computer and camera, and at the far end was a PC and printer.

 

She motioned for me to sit with her at the far end. She called up a template on the computer and we went through a series of questions. Most of the information she had already inputted, gleaned from my passport, but the rest she asked. Where did I live, what was my job, and so on.

 

I told her I was a sports writer, avoiding the journalism word which tends to put government officials on edge, and said that I would be visiting Russia regularly for the next few years for the Winter Olympics and the World Cup. This seemed to amuse her and she shared it with her male colleague in the room.

 

He called me over and stood me in front of the scanner where he took prints of both my hands – my palms, thumbs and all my fingers. He also took photographs of my face from three angles. He had started to warm up too, and we joked a little as we did the scans.

 

Then I returned to the woman. She had printed out some papers and was holding a pen.

 

“This is your name. This is name of woman who check your passport. This is name of man who check your cabin,” she explained, translating the Cyrillic text.

“This is the law you have broken. This is where you say it is fault of Russian Embassy in Singapore. And this is your fine of 2,000 roubles. You sign here please.”

 

I felt a little uneasy signing these papers I could not read, but did so at her urging.

 

The blond boss called over to me. “Your woman, where she, she, where she born?” he asked. “London” I told him, and he tapped into a keyboard.

 

“OK, you go. Go to train,” he told me. “Your wife come.”

 

I left the building and strode back to the train (I was becoming fairly adroit at midnight train manoeuvres) and sent Zoe to the HQ. “It is our UK address, remember?” I called after her.

 

<Russian border pix>

 

She went through the same procedure and returned. A short while later the blond officer returned with our passports.

 

Spasiba I told him, and he muttered that it had been nothing under his breath, almost managing a smile.

 

We flicked through the passports to find them all correctly stamped and were soon on our way.

 

Siberia lay ahead.

 

 

 

 

 

Trains, planes and automobiles. And ferries.

After eight happy years living in Asia, we had to make our departure something special, and this is it: a 13,000 kilometre overland odyssey by rail from our Singaporean home back to the UK, and a new adventure.

Jasper, Ben, Kitty and the two of us old enough to know better set off from Woodlands railway station in Singapore on July 1st bound for London’s Waterloo.

We’ll be catching sleeper trains, bullet trains, sleek trains and rickety trains; and will travel some of the world’s most storied routes including Vietnam’s Reunification Express and the awe-inspiring Trans-Siberian Railway.

It promises to be an eye-opening affair, criss-crossing a dozen countries and, so long as we don’t miss too many trains, one which will span 32 days.

Brave or foolhardy? Probably both… we‘ll find out on the Long Trip Home.

By the time we pull into Britain’s busiest railway station my guess is none of us will be left in any doubt we’ve been halfway round the world… watch this space — and wish us luck…

Zoe, Oss, Jasper, Ben and Kitty Shine x