We arrived at the train station pretty excited and waited for our train to arrive. Once it rolled in we got to our cabin, settled in and the hoped that it would just be Rikki, Gina and myself. Brett & Mish had a full second class cabin to their own. Things were looking good with a few minutes to go until we saw a guy with a backpack sprinting down the platform. It turned out we were getting a room mate. He was a cool Argentinian guy called Gaby, who was also headed to the World Cup so that was fine.
He said he met some other Uruguayans who were also travelling to the World Cup and an Aussie, they we were all in another room. Soon one of the Uruguayans turned up at our door pretty tipsy. He said the stewardess in his carriage, Marina had told them to get rid of their vodka. They had sculled half and put the rest in juice bottles. Before long everyone had come down to our room and we were drinking and carrying on. Our stewardess, Svetlana was try to get us to be quiet but she didn't have too much luck. The South American boys were terrorising the stewardesses a little but you could tell they enjoyed the attention. We switched between rooms, drank and chatted most of the night, we probably polished off about a bottle of vodka each.
Not long after going to bed I woke up to chaos all around me, immigration had boarded the train and were checking everyone's credentials. They made me get down from my top bunk, half asleep and half drunk. There were 2 men and a woman who all seemed to be from different agencies. All three were asking me to do different things at the same time oblivious to the fact that I can only complete one task at a time even when I'm alert and sober. I found my passport, immigration card and visa which I handed to the the woman who was shouting "look at me, look at me" even though I thought I was. There was a tall skinny guy in a stereotypical Russian dark green military uniform who seemed the most reasonable out of all. He wanted me to right down my occupation plus the names, D.O.B's and occupations of my parents. I almost told him I was unemployed without thinking until Rikki quickly "reminded" me that I still had a job. She had told them my occupation whilst they were trying to wake me. The other guy who was wearing a camouflage army uniform wanted me to get my back pack down so he could look inside. To say I was confused as fuck would have been an understatement. Eventually I was able to make all three happy and they moved on to the next carriage. Welcome to Mother Russia.
The great thing, and sometimes not so great thing about the vodka here is that it doesn't leave you feeling too dusty. I woke up with a slight headache but I think that was mainly due to the sangria I drank with the South American boys. A couple of Panadol and few more hours sleep and it was if I had never drank a drop.
Most of us got off that day at Irkutsk, a university town which is the unofficial capital of Siberia. We meet out guide Zenia and headed out to our next stop Listvyanka on the shores of Lake Bikail.
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