There's Never A Dull Moment On This Trans-Siberian Adventure

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Let's scope out what's really happening in the country that invented the Potemkin Village - that's a false front - and Russia, where the term originated, can be as hard as any country for outsiders to grasp. Two years ago, our colleague David Greene got a look behind the curtain by traveling across the country thousands of miles on the Trans-Siberian Railway. His journey for MORNING EDITION took him to remote spots, like the shores of Lake Baikal.

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DAVID GREENE, BYLINE: This has been an important landmark throughout Siberia's whole history. Some people on their way to exile would have to stop here along the shore and wait for the dead of winter, for the water to freeze, so they could cross the lake on horseback. It's this beautiful, but also really unforgiving landscape.

INSKEEP: That was David in 2012. At a moment when Russia is all over the news, David has now taken that journey again. He did it while writing a book called "Midnight In Siberia." With a colleague, he traveled in second and third class cars across a landscape in winter.

GREENE: Siberia is bug-invested. It can be very hot in the summer. It's not like going in the summertime would be like, you know, beach vacation. But I wanted to see it when it's cold, when it's largely dark, and it just felt appropriate.

INSKEEP: What were the conditions like on the train?

GREENE: It depended. We went a lot in third class because I really - I really just wanted to sort of feel what it was like to ride the rails. And a lot of Russians who are going to see family or traveling from one place to another - they go in third class. And I would describe it sort of as a college dormitory. Actually, I think back - even more primitive than my college dormitory was. You know, each little area of an open train car would have six bunks. So you'd be kind of right up against the window, and there were four bunks - two and two - and then the bunks were on top of each other. Then there was this aisle where people would constantly walk back and forth and not care if they ran into your bed or anything.

INSKEEP: Right through the middle of your room, basically.

GREENE: Right through the middle of your room, essentially, and navigating these bunks was horrifying. I mean, you had to really be a gymnast, which I am not, to kind of climb up and get up onto the bunk. And it's really humiliating because everyone's watching, and it's just - it's embarrassing.

INSKEEP: And that's the contrast because you have this vast, vast countryside that's not very populated outside the window, but you describe a train where people are just on top of each other and entirely accustomed to being on top of each other.

GREENE: Totally intimate, and it's an intimacy that - I felt like I never want to suggest that I was truly getting a sense for how people live. But, you know, you go back to Soviet times, and in communal apartments, people in Russia - they learn to live on top of each other. It was both great because families got to know each other, and it was awful because there were times when families would basically spy on each other for the government. So it was both extremes. But they learned to be on top of each other, to share space. And you would sort of have to - as outsider, have to get used to that. I mean, there were these customs. You know, if you had a lower bunk bed, if someone wanted to come in and get up to his or her upper bunk, you know, the assumption was you shouldn't care if I need to basically step on your face, you know, while you're sleeping to get up to...

INSKEEP: (Laughter).

GREENE: That's the way this is. I mean, we're sharing this space. And so you have to get used to that rhythm of life.

INSKEEP: So there's spectacular landscape of absolute nothingness outside the window.

GREENE: Right.

INSKEEP: There's incredibly crowded conditions in the sleeping cars. What's the food like on this fabulous journey?

GREENE: There's a dining car, which makes you think that that could have some good food options. Then you go there, and you can sit there. And basically, vodka is the best thing to do in the dining car because that you know they will always have.

INSKEEP: OK.

GREENE: They have this giant menu with all these delicious choices, and usually none of them are actually available. So you sit there asking, you know, oh, can I have the chicken julienne or the mushroom julienne? Nyet, nyet, nyet, nyet. So what do you have? Borscht. OK, let me have some borscht.

INSKEEP: (Laughter).

GREENE: Which was fine, but people would bring their own food on the train and share it. I mean, the first time I was on the Trans-Siberian, I was humiliated because I didn't realize that was such an important tradition. And I walked into a neighbor's train car, and she waved me in and had a piece of Belarusian sausage from her family and this delicious horseradish concoction. She's offering all of this to me, and all I had was a Luna bar that I had brought from home.

INSKEEP: Did you offer the Luna bar?

GREENE: I did offer it to her, and she politely declined, which doesn't surprise me at all. But food sharing and conversation - it's really a big part of the rails.

INSKEEP: And yet, if I'm not mistaken, in and among these tales of what travel is like, you described it as more enjoyable than Amtrak.

GREENE: Oh, yeah.

INSKEEP: What did you mean by that?

GREENE: Oh, it's - Amtrak is boring now. There's never really a dull moment. There might be a Russian guy who has gotten way too hot in his compartment and has come out, you know, into the aisle. And he's in, you know, (laughter) essentially his underwear - you know, like boxer shorts and a tank top - and hiding a cigarette that he's sort of taking puffs of when no one's looking because you're not supposed to smoke on the train and gazing out into this empty landscape. But I don't get that on Amtrak. I mean, it's just these moments and the food sharing and the conversation, and there's just so much life.

INSKEEP: And you have all these little details that point toward what kind of society it is, how it's organized, what is considered important. You describe a metal detector at one of the train stations. I think Yaroslavl is the city. What was that like?

GREENE: It was strange because I was going back to the train station. Serge and I had taken a break or something. We were going...

INSKEEP: Serge, your interpreter?

GREENE: Serge, yeah, the NPR producer in Moscow and a wonderful colleague who took this trip with me, which was great. And there was this huge line, and we were sort of, you know, just waiting and waiting and waiting. And it turned out that the line was because there was a metal detector at the entrance to the train station. But it stunned me because we got up there, and there was no one actually manning this thing, but people were going through and lining up and putting their suitcases on it and putting it through. And the incredible thing was everyone just did it, which struck me as a really Russian thing. There's an acceptance. This is the way life is and needs to be. And I think that's a part of life that Russians, in growing numbers, are beginning to resist.

INSKEEP: You actually have one character after another who not only accepts the difficulties of life and the added inconveniences of life and the absurdities of life in Russia - not only accept these things, but insists that they're good - wouldn't even want to improve life because hardship makes you stronger.

GREENE: Isn't that incredible? And it's sad, in a way. I mean, there was this young man. He had lost both his parents. He was orphaned. He lived in this tiny village outside Chelyabinsk, was drafted into the Russian military - there's a year of mandatory military service - and begged to get out of that because his parents had died. And the Russian government still made him go. The training was so intense, and he said, it made him Russian. And it was almost as if because he went through all of this awful stuff, he was made to be Russian.

INSKEEP: I happen to have read about Russian military training. It's unbelievably brutal. They're incredibly abusive to people in horrifying ways. The officers basically steal from the soldiers. But this guy's saying, this was a good experience.

GREENE: It made me stronger. And he, you know - he cried at one point, sitting in this cafe, and I couldn't understand the complexity of his emotion because he loved his country so much. He was frustrated because he dreams of owning his own business and maybe traveling someday, but doesn't think there's any possibility that'll happen. He's nostalgic for earlier times. You know, he feels like Russia has become a place where there's sort of less love of community, less brotherhood and sisterhood. It's a place where people are sort living lives that are more isolated and more difficult. But yet, he says, he loves what his country represents and loves the place. And that, I think, is something that is hard, as an outsider, to really appreciate.

INSKEEP: Our colleague David Greene. His reporting is now in a book called "Midnight In Siberia." Thanks very much.

GREENE: Thanks, Steve.

INSKEEP: And David reports next week on Crimea on NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.