There Are Nine of Them

I’ve been looking at the Trans Siberian rail road.  Toying with the idea of riding it with the family next summer. I thought it would be slick to look up the names of the major stops along the way and see what they looked like in Google Images.  With some exceptions, the cities of Siberia would appear to have many, many similar features:  The church, the square, the dreary apartment blocks.  In my mind’s eye, Vladivostock is extremely far north, but it forms a finger downward towards North Korea and Japan, wrapping around the bulge of HeilongJiang.   It is the home of the Russian Pacific Fleet, an open water port. 

Originally I had thought we’d board the train in Beijing and travel north towards Mongolia.  But the terminus of the Trans-Siberian is certainly not Beijing.  It is Vladivostok.  We’ll fly there and have a look around the port in the summer.   Heading up north along the outer perimeter of Heilongjiang, we’d pass the JAO:  Jewish Autonomous Oblast.  I feel an almost pilgrim’s-like need to stop and see ironic corner of Siberia.  However it would appear that there are only about 2% of the population that are presently Jewish.  Still . . . street signs in Yiddish?  I think I need a photo of that and the giant minora fountain in the town square. 

It’s unclear if you can get off and on these trains easily enough or if you’re stuck buying a new ticket each time you hop off to see a city.  We’ll need some time to see Lake Baikal and unlike some of these Stalin-depots, Irkutsk actually looks like it has some old extant architecture to take in.  I toggle back to the map of the whole train line, cut into different time zones.  There are nine of them.  This is basically unfathomable.  Flying over so many time zones is like going to sleep at night and having something impossible happen in your dream.  But crossing more than two times the distance of New York to San Francisco on land.  How do you process that?  I’m developing an affinity for this map. 

When you get to Moscow, you need to get started seeing things properly.  Can I entice my mom to meet us in St. Petersburg?  We’ll have to see Yasna Poliana. Should we concentrate on all that is core Russia or sample bits of the former empire and head for Kiev and Tibilsi, or Baku?  Water attracts and both the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea would almost certainly need to be seen.  All seems clear to visit Armenia and Azerbaijan.  I’ll do a Caucuses double-check.   By now we’re talking about a post-rail run of an area larger than Western Europe.  Edits.  Certainly. I’ve only flown on a Turpolov once in my life, during a visit to Vietnam, in 1994.  We’ll have no choice but to get over any aversion to those aircraft. 

Thursday, 8/03/17