Leaving Wallbrook

Leaving Wallbrook

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TChAEXxri1s

My first trip to Asia took place in March 1986. The previous year I had finished about 20 years in different institutions: primary school, secondary school, college, university. In between the college and university two years as substitute teacher in all levels of the Finnish educational system and then the army. It was time to see a bit of the wide world. In spring -85 I happened to see an article about trans-Siberian train and knew where I’d go.

At first a friend from the university was supposed to go with me but he cancelled his trip in order to stay in the institution and started to teach. I didn’t want to do that, yet, so I decided to go on my own. Now, that was the first time I’d be travelling totally on my own and various people enquired my sanity, perhaps rightly. Anyway, I dived into self study of Chinese language while I finished my education and worked as security guard to earn money for the trip. It wasn’t easy to find study material for Chinese in those days but I managed to get one book which had been printed during the Cultural Revolution. From there I learnt useful phrases such as “Chairman Mao visited the commune and this greatly encourage the workers.” Phrases like this would come handy during my trip.

In those days you had to send a  letter to China International Travel Service (CITS) and they would send you an invitation, if they thought, you’d be worthy to visit their country. Only after that you could go and apply for the Chinese visa. I also needed a Russian (Soviet Union) visa and a Mongolian for my return trip. It was quite enjoyable to go to the railway station of Helsinki and order: “A return ticket to Beijing, please.”

The train tickets didn’t cost much and China wasn’t an expensive country to travel with a backpack. Local restaurants and dormitories where all I required in those days. I started the trip on a wintry March evening from Helsinki and took an overnight train to Moscow. I had a day to spend in Moscow but as the weather there wasn’t any better than in Helsinki, I searched for a hard currency bar where I spent the day chatting with Finns who worked in Moscow. This later proved to be a wise decision as stupid as it may sound. I also visited the Intourist (Soviet equivalent to CITS) office in order to confirm my return ticket. They told me I should do it in Beijing

The train for Beijing left Moscow on Friday night (just about midnight) for a short sprint to Beijing where it would arrive the following Friday morning, local time. It was the era of Gorbatchov so the restaurant car didn’t serve any alcohol, luckily I was well prepared for this after visiting a hard currency shop (Berioska) in Moscow prior hopping on the train. 

The article had recommended to have a sleeper cabin with only two bunks even though it was a bit costlier. I was rather lucky as nobody shared the cabin with me and I had the luxury of having the whole cabin to myself. Now, it may sound rather boring to have to spend six days on a train but there was not a dull moment. The car was full of similar travelers, young and old, and we chatted and partied the trip away. I also celebrated my 26^th birthday somewhere in Siberia. About every three hours the train stopped at stations and we could go out for 10-20 minutes, not that there was anything to see. Some people had told be that they would put shutters to the windows while passing the various cities and towns in SU but this was just either a memory from the days gone or an urban legend. We were able to enjoy the scenery of low hills and birch trees followed by some more low hills and birch trees for the first three days. 

The scenery changed after we reached Irkutsk and Baikal and soon after that we entered the Mongolian Steppes. On the evening of the fifth day we reached the small town of Zabaikalsk which was on the border of SU and the land of the dragon. As the rail track width is different in Russia and China it took six hours to change the bogeys and this wait was the most boring point of the trip.

Finally the train moved across the border and both customs visited us on the train. As was common in those days, you had to declare your hard currencies when you entered Soviet U and also when you exited it. The Russian customs officer wanted me to show that I had my 5 Finn Mark note with me as I had declared, it must have been worth about $1 and that was all he wanted to see. It took me about 10 minutes to find it somewhere at the bottom of my backpack.

Then finally I was in the ancient land of mystery and we all went to the local shop to buy Chinese goods and booze. I stopped outside the building for a while, everything was new and strange: sights, voices, language, smells. It was quite late when the train finally started moving again but there was enough time to go to the Chinese restaurant car and have a wonderful meal. Not that the borsch soup a Russian porridge hadn’t been delicious but those were basically the only things you could find from the menu. There had been something that wasn’t on the Russian menu, though. Something called “Njet”, which you would get when you pointed at anything else. We enjoyed the meal and then went to bed, anxious for the next day, our first in China, albeit still on the train.

The last day on the train we watched the scenery: Manchurian plains as far as the eye could see. The most curious sight was a man showing the flag for the train’s driver that no traffic was coming. There was only his little hut there and a small road but you could see no vehicles for the 10 km or so you could see around. At least it was good to know our safety was in good hands.

So once we got tired of the wonderful scenery, we started to get familiar with the Chinese gift to the drinking masses of the world, “Maotai.”  It didn’t feel like a gift the next morning when we were woken up at 5 a.m., about an hour before arriving at Beijing.