I'm a Backpacker, Get Me Out of Here!

[devi]

or, Fear and Loathing on the Trans-Mongolian Railway (September 18th)

I was going to friends-lock this one because it contains a pretty comprehensive character assassination. Then I decided I couldn't be arsed. But before I get to that, I need some input.

Everyone we meet on this trip, everyone, assumes Ivan is my boyfriend, not my brother. They think it's a bit weird to be travelling with a sibling. "Are you sweetie lovers?" we were asked by a little Chinese girl on the street. Ew! No! Stoppit! I'm starting to think I should have a T-shirt made saying "NO, HE'S MY BROTHER" in English, Chinese and Japanese, so as not to entirely scupper his chances of pulling.

They assume this, it seems, because we get on. Tamara and Natalie on the train trip you're about to read about said they thought we were a couple because brothers and sisters are supposed to fight and tease each other. Really? Okay, I used to inflict horrible violence on him when I was eight and he was four, but I'm nearly thirty, for christ's sake. So I was wondering:

[Poll #579791]

Anyway, back to the travel journal. It hasn't been such a good story so far because it hasn't had much conflict in it. By God is that about to change...

7am. Board train at Irkutsk. Been up since five, didn't get to sleep till two due to poker-playing hijinks. Dying to fall asleep in our cabin, except whoops, there are four of us (me and Ivan, another Tamara - this one is an epidemiologist from Ecuador - and Natalie, the Australian girl we met in the hotel in Moscow), and two Mongolian men are sleeping the sleep of the dead in our four-bed cabin. The air is fetid. I can smell their feet. We crowd into the bottom of the cabin, compare tickets, and try to wake them up so we can see what tickets they have. They snore away. We turn the lights on and poke them in the arms. They keep snoring, cartoonishly, the way you do when you're a kid and you're pretending to be asleep. I think with a sinking feeling that we've been double-booked and I'll have to spend tonight sitting up on half a bunk. Down the hall an English couple are pointing out that they paid for a whole cabin to themselves, so why is there a family and twenty boxes of stuff in it? Finally the provodnik comes along, and doesn't even need to look at our tickets. From her tiny body she unleashes a shockingly ear-splitting torrent of fury at the two men and in split-seconds they're down from the bunks like eels and running for it down the corridor. It looks like she's had trouble with them before. Stowaways?

We air the cabin out and settle down for a few more hours' sleep. The family in the next cabin are moving their stuff out bit by bit and stacking it up at the end of the carriage. I don't know how long it takes them altogether because shortly I'm sleeping like the dead myself.


4pm. We head for the restaurant car for a drink. Along the way there's an open door in the side of the train – only a waist-high iron grating between us and the rushing countryside. It's like being on a train in the Wild West. I stick my head out and get the wind in my hair, laughing with delight. Ivan makes a little video on his camera. Then a man in a grubby tracksuit bursts out of another little door and gives us yet another scolding, trying to shoo us back the way we came. We make eating and drinking gestures but he keeps shouting and shooing. Eventually he gives in. We go on into the restaurant car. It turns out he's the waiter. Weird way to do business.

Tamara and Natalie join us. We'll be at the border soon, so (trying to blow their roubles) everybody has caviar but me. I just drink beer. The tracksuited waiter glares down the carriage at us. In a bubble of train camaraderie, we talk about Life. Natalie talks about shit jobs she has known. Tamara says she's thinking of doing a postgrad course on the social history of South America. She talks passionately and fascinatingly about the Bloody Virgin Mary and Catholic guilt and the problems of discrimination between the different peoples. Natalie complains about Aborigines and all the advantages they have in the job market in Australia. Hmm. Then it's six o'clock and we're at the border, and we have to scurry out of the restaurant car before they disconnect it from the train.

The Russian border guards come round and take our passports. We sit in the cabin and talk about faith. Tamara says she almost became a nun, but lost her faith at 25, in medical school. "Those children in the burns unit," she says. "It made no sense that God would will that to happen." "Have you read Conversations with God?" Natalie asks. "No," Tamara says. "It'll really change the way you look at life," chirps Natalie. "It made me realise that the Universe will give you anything you want if you just ask it. I see the Universe as a supportive mother, and God as, er... as a supportive father." She blithers on in similar vein until Tamara gets a bit flustered, jumps up and invites me to come for a smoke. In the smoking area she has a rant at me. She's 38 and has thought long and hard about this subject and has no patience with woolly-headed Course in Miracles drones like Natalie trying to convert her. We puff away and she rants on and I rant a bit too. She's a magnificent ranter. I like her.

But when we come back to the cabin after the clash of ideas we realise we're all united by a common problem. The toilets are locked when the train's in a station. The train is going to be in the station for (the guidebook says) three more hours. They have taken our passports, so we can't get off the train. I would risk it but the train is rolling back and forth as they rearrange the wagons and put on a different restaurant car. We've all been drinking beer and everyone in the carriage desperately needs to pee.

We waddle about, clutching ourselves. I plead with the provodnik. She goes "Shoo! Shoo!" I start to ponder the gap between carriages. I examine a plastic bag from the Irkutsk supermarket, but there's a hole in it. Agonising minutes crawl by. The train rolls back and forth. Someone is going to rupture internally before the evening is out.

Then I hear a psst from the next carriage. Colin, half of the English couple next door, has found a toilet that's unlocked! We scurry in one by one like guilty schoolchildren. I have rarely been so relieved in my life. Tamara is in there when the provodnik catches on. She comes and bangs on the door, telling her to get out. "I didn't unlock it! Customer unlocked it!" she cries, outraged. For a moment we are all of one mind, exchanging relieved smiles.

We sit in the cabin as customs officers demand the money declaration forms we had to bully the guy at the airport to give us when we arrived in Russia, and Mongolian customs arrive and give us a form to fill in. "Please mark the items of the following symptoms, if you have any: Dry cough. Muscle pain. Diarrhoea. Vomiting." I wonder how many people on this train right now are lying about the diarrhoea part. Natalie tells Ivan he should take musical tips from the Corrs. Then she gets on to her favourite subject: complaining about men. They're all emotional cripples, she says. She doesn't seem to care that there's a man in the room. She exhorts us all to read "Why Men Don't Listen And Women Can't Read Maps". It'll change our lives, she says. Ivan points out that he can listen to people. I say I can read maps perfectly well. "Well, how can you have an argument if you can't generalise?" she says. "Anyway, it's okay to make generalisations if you just say 'in general' first."

Tamara is clearly getting more and more pissed off and concentrates hard on her book. I want the conversation to end, please. I don't want to have the Cultural Relativism 101 conversation ('but if a culture murders babies is that still all right?'). I don't want to have the Men and Women Are Different conversation. Natalie talks like one of those email forwards ('women have an enlarged shopping gland'). I beg the all-providing Universe to make it stop but as usual It ignores me. I keep trying to change to topics that don't make me want to scream, but Natalie has opinions and she's in the mood to express them, and she's supremely confident in her own rightness. I tell her she's being unfair. "I just call it like I see it," she says. "Women are simpler than men," she goes on. "We feel an emotion, we express it." "If that were true, I would have punched you hours ago," I tell her. In my mind.

It's nine o'clock. We roll onward a tiny bit, across the border, and Mongolian customs start searching the train. Ivan makes an admiring comment about a pretty customs officer who goes by.
"Oh. Are you one of those men who fancies Asian women?"
"Yes, they're cute. Why?"
(Shakes head darkly) "I wonder, that's all. I wonder."
Shortly afterwards, she asks him, "What's your T-shirt about?"
Ivan: "It's Nintendo."
"I don't know about that. It's a male thing."
Ivan: "I know lots of girls who are better at videogames than me."
Natalie (smirking as if she's scored a major point): "Are they Asian?"

Ivan starts whistling a tune from the Kill Bill soundtrack. Natalie complains, "Oh, stop, that'll be stuck in my head now." He keeps on whistling it, then stops long enough for her to look relieved, then starts whistling again. Tamara shoots him a grin.

Down the corridor, a German woman is saying, "We can't eat, we can't go to the toilet, we can't go out..." They've even turned off the hot water boiler, so no coffee or hot chocolate or cup-a-soup for us either. Natalie is desperate for a drink. "Tamara, have you any vodka?"
"I have this bottle I bought for my friends back in Ecuador."
"Please can I have it? Please? Pleeeeease?" Luckily, Pablo passes by at this point. "Pablo, have you any vodka? Please, please? It's the only way I'll be able to get through this."
Later, in Pablo and Andrew's cabin with a mug of vodka in hand, she declares, "Anyone who takes drugs is just sad. They can't handle life without a crutch."
A, a fellow-traveller: "I tried cocaine once."
Natalie: "Ah, so that's why you have the sniffles! You're a druggie!"
The conversation turns to literature. She picks up Andrew's book and wrinkles her nose. "The History of Modern Russia. God, that looks so boring. Have you read any Danielle Steel?" She pronounces that War and Peace "isn't a man's book" because there's social interaction in it.

The customs officers come up our carriage and have us stand in the corridor while they're searching the cabins. The pretty one comes to ours. Still in the great cause of needling Natalie, Ivan says "I wouldn't mind being strip-searched by her." Natalie shouts "Drugs!"

I look at her in horror.

"Drugs!" she shouts again, pointing at him. "He's got drugs!"

Thanks and praise be to the lovely fluffy pink cuddly Universe, the customs officers ignore her. "My God," I snap, "you really do have issues, don't you?"

(Can you imagine that, being accused of smuggling drugs at a desolate border post where you don't speak either language and where everyone has to fill in ten forms in triplicate to do anything whatsoever? I've read stories of travel guide writers getting stuck in a holding cell for a day because they got off the train without their passport. By the time they'd established that he didn't have anything illegal on him the train would have been long gone. Hell of a sense of humour you've got there, Natalie.)

I can't look her in the eye after that. I'm too furious. Everyone goes back to Pablo and Andrew's cabin to drink vodka but I'm really not in the mood. I feel like I'm on Big Brother. "11pm. Deirdre decides not to join the other housemates and is reading by herself." Tamara is asleep on the bunk below me. Now Colin and Liz in the next cabin are debating whether women can read maps over their game of Scrabble. God, it's like a virus.

And at last, at last, at half past midnight with everyone once again struggling not to think of their bladders, the train starts moving to a general round of applause. Thank God for that.

Comments

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

I was very worried on my trip to France that I would be mistaken for cybersofa's wife. I started a lot of conversations "Mon père et moi..."

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm doing that too. "Our parents said..." and "In the little town where we went to school..." But then again that last one isn't great because we could be childhood sweethearts. Ew.

When my mum and I went to Egypt, though, we found it was convenient to both pretend to be the wives of another guy in our tour group!

[dr-f-dellamorte.livejournal.com]

You're a better person than me. I probably would have slapped her already, then thrown her off the train.

Han might have some issues with her statements that computer games are a boy thing.

[offensive-mango.livejournal.com]

Tell her that since she's a woman she should shut up and make you dinner.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Hah! Well, I did scarf quite a lot of the nice blue cheese she brought.

[feath.livejournal.com]

Natalie? Kill her. Throw her out of the little door just before the dining car. You'll never be convicted. Hell, no one would report you.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

I thought about it. If the train had been moving faster, maybe...

[cardinalsin.livejournal.com]

"If that were true, I would have punched you hours ago," I tell her.

I wish you had, that would've been great.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

I wish I had too, now.

Do you mind me asking, what's the rivalry about? Rivalry to impress parents? Job rivalry? Achievements rivalry? Ivan and I used to have a terrible grudge-match about who was better at violin - or rather, he was effortlessly better and I sulked :)

[j4.livejournal.com]

"I just call it like I see it," she says. "Women are simpler than men," she goes on. "We feel an emotion, we express it." "If that were true, I would have punched you hours ago," I tell her. In my mind.

I wish I could believe that you'd just made this Natalie woman up for the sake of some great writing. Still, at least if you get stranded in the middle of nowhere in a group of people that includes her, then there shouldn't be too much argument about who gets eaten first... ;)

I know I haven't said much in response to any of these posts but I'm loving reading about your experiences -- I hope you can write all this up into a book when you get back, I'd definitely buy it!

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

She systematically alienated everyone, that was the fun thing. At the ger camp the next day there was an undignified scrum of about five people besides us all trying not to get assigned to a ger with her!

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

And thank you for your compliments. It means a lot coming from you, considering you write brilliantly yourself.

But though I'd love to do something with all this verbiage, I get the impression you don't get anywhere with travel books unless you have a gimmick (like I said to dakeyras the other day, Across Siberia with a Fridge) or are the first to do something, or similar...

[millionreasons.livejournal.com]

"in general" Australian backpackers are a pain in the arse.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

I also hate to generalise based on two whole people, but it's funny how both the Aussies we talked to really didn't like Aborigines at all.

[natural20.livejournal.com]

I'm amazed you didn't push her off the train in some isolated part of Mongolia (or is that tautology?). That or tear her a new asshole, especially after the "Drugs!" bit.

People can be such amazing assclowns.

[mzdt.livejournal.com]

I suspect Natalie isn't travelling to learn about the world, she's tarvelling so that the world can learn about her. ;-)

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Yup. I was stunned that a long-distance traveller like her could be so incurious. She was amazed to read in the guidebook that Russia and America had once been connected by a land bridge in the Ice Age. "Was that Gondwanaland?" she mused.

[uon.livejournal.com]

Hello. Please, please do not stop writing!
That is all.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

I'll try not to! Thanks.

[robot-mel.livejournal.com]

Don't know if you'll be able to see it but;

不，他我弟弟（if he's younger)
不，他我哥哥(if he's older)

(sorry to hear about the nightmarish woman!)

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Cheers!

Chinese is going into my head much more slowly than any other language I've met on this trip. I feel a bit guilty that I get to be here and you're not. I was ridiculously pleased today when I brought a dress back to a shop and managed to ask (from the Lonely Planet phrasebook) 'can I return this? It doesn't fit'...

[otterylexa.livejournal.com]

My brother and I do a sort of affectionate sarcasm. We get on pretty well, to the extent that we've been sharing a house for a year now, and we're staying here at least another year. He stopped trying to beat me up when we went to different schools (he was about 11); he always lost anyway. I do find myself mentioning that he's my brother quite a lot, particularly as we look rather disimillar (he got the recessive red hair/pale skin genes).

My sister is ten years younger than me, so there was no rivalry there. We get on really well now; I'm looking forward to being able to see more of her, now that she's left school and has a boyfriend in Oxford too.

Nathalie sounds like a complete moron. I guess you've been lucky to only encounter too unlikeable people in your journey.

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

I want you also to wear these T-shirts when you're back in London and in my company, just to freak people out!

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

'He's my brother, and I'm the shallow end of the gene pool'

[prayinmantis.livejournal.com]

wow, and i thought our time at the u.s./mexico border was bad.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

I know. On the train I thought back to that queue we were in with nostalgia and affection...

[lilitufire.livejournal.com]

Gosh, that drugs gag was about as clever as claiming there's a bomb in one's luggage at the airport. Moron.

I'm going to be interested to read your impressions of Japan :) Where are you planning to visit?

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

We're arriving in Osaka (if all goes well) on the 6th October, and we'll be travelling around Japan till the 25th.

[gothwalk.livejournal.com]

You're far too mild to these people. I think I'd likely have gone Oirish in that circumstance ("Jesus Fucking Christ, woman, are you actually tryin' to get us all arrested?", as my middle brother once said to a teacher...)

inannajones and I used, occasionally, to be mistaken for brother and sister, which always mystified us. We don't look alike (thankfully for her), we don't have similar accents, and at the time, we didn't even have a surname in common. It hasn't happened for some time.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

I think I was so stunned that she'd actually done that, at the time, that I didn't realise what the appropriate response would be. Esprit d'escalier and all that.

[queenortart.livejournal.com]

There are some extremely rude things I'd like to say about her. I will restrain myself to say stupid bint.

I'm really enjoying reading this, I'm going to point a couple of people towards it who did the train trip in April dreamchilde and artemis_fowl if you see them show up in comments