Day 12 - Tuesday, Sept 24 - Leaving Irkutsk

We were up bright and early for breakfast in the hotel at 6am as the bus was leaving at 7:15 for the train departure at 8:15. Another beautiful morning.

One thing that was amazing in Irkutsk was the observance of the pedestrian crosswalks. As soon as someone stepped off the curb onto the white lines, traffic would immediately stop. Much more consistent than in Woodstock or China.

We are on the train all day today as we are going through relatively unpopulated areas of Siberia. We are going through the “taiga”, very dense forest, mostly silver birch, red pine and some larch/tamarack. In some places the silver birch looked like skeletons, with smaller branches broken off as the trees were dead from fire – we could see the trunks were black. In other places, the trees still appeared to be alive but the bark was burned as well – it isn’t clear whether they will survive. It looks like some of the fires are from low brush and grass that burned, so only the lower trunks were damaged. I suspect the major fires that were in the news were entire trees.

Silver Birch trees in typical Taiga view

Before we left in the morning, I was speaking with one of the desk clerks who said that some of the fires were set intentionally. After the fire was extinguished, companies could harvest what was left of the trees as lower quality lumber.

We have been passing huge sawmills with massive piles of logs and also open train cars stacked with freshly cut lumber.

In the morning, Tamara gave a history of Russia in the 1900s from the overthrow of the Tsar to the formation of the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin, to the collapse of the Soviet Union under Boris Yeltsin and then the election of Putin. It was quite interesting although difficult to follow, understanding all the different factions.

My mother has a cold and in the morning, Dr. Voskolovich came down to check her out and gave her some medication although it doesn’t seem to be helping a lot. It was funny when at the beginning of the trip, the important people on the train were being introduced, the train manager, the chef and the doctor. The first two were introduced as handsome young men (actually, graying men in their 50s or so) when everyone politely collapsed. Then the Dr was similarly introduced but he was tall, dark and probably in his 20s. The women expressed much greater appreciation!

In the afternoon we had a lesson of tasting Vodka. Drinking vodka should be done as a social event with toasts for round of drinks. We were told that one should never sip vodka as it burns the lips and the alcohol is absorbed too quickly. Also, one should never mix vodka with a carbonated beverage or be followed by a carbonated beverage as that quickly puts also alcohol into the system quickly. (So much for the tonic that we bought to go with the vodka in our compartment). The way to drink vodka is to:

1. Exhale over your shoulder

2. Toss the shot of vodka quickly into your mouth and swallow

3. Quickly eat some pickled snack

4. Repeat as needed

I can’t quite see the purpose of drinking shots this way as I couldn’t really tell what I was drinking. However, it wasn’t as painful as sipping the vodka we had for lunch in Mongolia.

Today as we travel west, we lose an hour so it is not as convenient to compute the time in NY.

A strange thing happened with my Fitbit. Although we have been on the train all day, my Fitbit registered 34 flights of stairs from walking back and forth from our compartment to the dining car.