Dec. 19, 2009 8:20 am
We’re on the 4:20 train, pulling out of the station in Karsnoyarsk, headed for Irkutsk. Yes, you read it right; it’s 8:20 am in Krasnoyarsk, but we entered a new time zone when we stepped on the train. All along the Trans Siberian, to avoid the confusion of seven different zones, the clocks are coordinated with the time in Moscow. This morning is the mildest day since I arrived, with a light snow, no real bite to the air. We’re hoping that this weather follows us east. We’re in second class, where the beds are configured like the train in Some Like it Hot: rows of bunks in two levels. A short, uniformed woman with Asian features checked our tickets and gestured for us to enter, welcoming us tersely with the number of our seats: “Twenty five.” “Twenty seven.” We whispered as we moved our things about, settling into our bunks in the dark cabin, amid occasional snores, other whispered conversations, muffled announcements over the PA in the station. As the train gains speed, the light grows, and the outskirts of Krasnoyarsk are dimly visible; gusts of snow smear the passing shapes of factories, power lines, telephone poles. For the first couple of hours, we see improbably large, strangely configured pieces of heavy machinery along the road, and an almost continuous thread of buildings. By noon we are in more open country, with great crowds of birch trees pressing in against the tracks. Further in the distance, their delicate upper branches are washed out to gray by the dusting of snow – faint brushstrokes semi-transparent against the pure white of the hillside.
