Part 4: Calm, Cool, and...Calamity?

September 1990, Trans-Siberian Raiway: With a pack on my back, I climbed aboard the Soviet train in Beijing. For some unknown reason, I was bumped up from one sleeping car to another one immediately in front of it. I shared a sleeper with a twentyish-looking couple from Germany who had been teaching German language in China. I vaulted myself to the bunk on top.

After a ritualistic exchange of teaching experiences, I found my way to the dining car. The repetoir was incomparable to the four years of rice and stir-fries to which my system had grown accustomed. Oy! The menu on the choo-choo offered cabbage soup and pumpernickel bread. The price was palatable—a few pennies in all for an entire meal!

That following afternoon, we stopped at the station in the northern Chinese city of Harbin. As the train clanked out of station, the train began jolting abruptly. I reacted by stepping out into the corridor and clasping the handrail tightly.

Unable to see outside, I could only hear the ripping and tearing of metal, followed by a series of crashing sounds. Bang! The train crashed to a halt. Baggage and personal belongings were sent airborne. Hot water boilers toppled over. Passengers were slammed to the floor. Then—an unnerving quiet. We could finally breathe; the worst was over. I gazed around.

What had happened? We raced out of the train car to take a look. It was precisely 3:00 p.m. At a fork in the tracks, a Chinese freight train pulling into the station collided with the train car that I was riding, smashing into the side of our sleeper where I had been sitting!

The side of our car was ripped to pieces; the back end, torn to shreds. The car to our rear, the one to which I had originally been assigned, was knocked over forty-five degrees. The wagon looked as though it was about to topple at any minute, and the passengers were still inside!

Knowledgeable of my ability to converse in English, Chinese, and Russian, the Soviet conductor of our wagon grabbed me by the lapel and, together, we mobilized the terrified onlookers.

Ramming railroad ties firmly against the top rim of the leaning car, we supported it long enough for the trapped passengers to scurry out. Everyone safely exited unscathed. Only one passenger suffered a gash at the thigh.

Our clothes were grease-stained, but the attempt met with success. We wiped the smudges of tar from our hands and faces and climbed back onboard the demolished train car to gather our scattered belongings. Then, we waited by the train tracks for hours. The two mangled cars could not be replaced. Even worse, the couplings between almost all the other cars had snapped, displacing dozens of passengers.

With that, the conductors drove us back into the half-dozen sleepers that were still intact. Herded in like steers, the flustered journeyers moaned with complaints as the caravan of “cattle cars” clacked out of the terminal. A bit shaken up, I was thankful….

Hours after crossing the China-Soviet border, new cars were latched onto our train. For some puzzling reason, though, bunks were not assigned to anyone. Sleeper after sleeper lay vacant into the night, while passengers ridiculously sat doubled- and tripled-up. Way past bedtime, I pleaded mercy from the new conductors, who ignored me as if I did not exist.

Stumbling on a roomette that was not locked, I accommod-ated myself to a bed. Other heavy-eyed wayfarers followed suit. At that moment, no one could figure out why the conductors reacted like tackling ruby players. Later, someone threw out a hint: “dyenghee, dyenghee, dyenghee.” The new buzzword under perestroika was ‘money’.

Akin to practices in China and Vietnam, U.S. dollars in the Soviet Union opened doors, the size of the door being determined by the wad of cash. The Chinese offered cigarettes in order to be allotted a reserved seat on a bus, brand name liquors for a soft bunk on a train. With the USSR’s new era of glasnost, it was hard currency.

The ride for the remainder of the week was matchless. The scenes from the window were breathtaking. Each morning, the warm days and cold nights brushed in a new tinge of autumn hues on the leaves of the leaning white birches that carpeted the rolling hills of Siberia.

Between sights, I brushed up on my Russian by speaking to others and flipping through a pocket dictionary. From time to time, I even pulled out the Bulgarian newspaper that I had picked up at the Bulgarian Embassy in Beijing. In spot reading, I tried guessing my way through the grammar and vocab which are closely related to Russian. I could only figure out about fifty percent, and that from context.

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Photo Berlin Wall by Noir GNU Free Documentation License at Wikipedia.
Photo top right by PetarM Trans-Siberian railway at Nazivaevskaya (near Omsk, Siberia, Russia, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license at Wikipedia.
Photo bottom left Siberia by Christophe Meneboeuf, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. at Wikipedia.
Photo middle right Perestroika Stamp by Andrei Sdobnikov, not an object of copyright according to Part IV of Civil Code No. 230-FZ of the Russian Federation of December 18, 2006 at Wikipedia.
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