Originally Posted by Nagasaki Joe

My most enjoyable train ride was the Trans-Siberian Express trip from Nakhodka to Moscow (via overnight stops in Khabarovsk, Irkutsk, and Moscow, and then on to Vienna) back in October of 1976. IIRC, the entire trip took about 13 days.

The train from Nakhodka to Khabarovsk had a gorgeous interior, I thought I had boarded the Orient-Express and could not believe I would travel across the Soviet Union is such luxury. The luxury experience was short-lived as we changed trains in Khabarovsk and boarded the large, heavy green Siberian-Express train that was the same design as the train of today. Foreign passengers were initially segregated to cabins (4 to a cabin) away from Soviet citizens who shared cabins together in a separate carriage. I shared a sleeper cabin with two other young passengers from England and France.

In the dining car, Soviet citizens could not sit at the same table with foreigners, and if they did, the waitresses would shoo them away. However, Red Army soldiers could sit with foreigners. My two cabinmates and I had lunch in the dining car one day and two Red Army soldiers sad down at our table to talk with us. They noticed that my French cabinmate had a cheap $0.10-cent Bic disposable cigarette lighter, which they asked to see. They were captivated by it and offered to trade one of the two bottles of Bulgarian champagne they possessed. The Frenchman said no, he demanded both bottles. The Red Army solidier thought deeply for a moment, and finally, in an act of great sacrifice, handed over the second bottle. He happily accepted the lighter in return and began playing with his new toy.

Later in the journey, as more people got off the train, Soviet citizens and foreigners were allowed to share the same cabin, which was odd, given that we could not share the same table in the dining car. In this mixed cabin, we enjoyed sharing vodka with a very friendly Russian who wanted to know about our lives and where we were from. At each short train stop, Russians would get off with pillow cases in hand, and bring them back to the train full of bottles of beer.

I had a one-night layover in the Siberian town of Irkutsk. On the first day, I walked around and visited various shops and enountered a shopkeeper who was terrified at having to deal with a foreigner. She became angry and forcefully hurled a heavy plastic case at the wall, and shouted, demanding that I leave. On the second day, I was taken to a church to see Russians at worship, which felt like a propoganda tour meant to show that the Soviet Union permitted freedom of religion. The worshipers all came across as paid actors intent on making an impression upon us. A guide was supposed to meet me at the station in Moscow but failed to show. Fortunately, I knew the name of the hotel I was staying in and was able to summon a taxi to take me there. My time in Moscow included a guided city tour in English, which I barely remember. The next day, I boarded the train to Vienna via Poland and Czechoslovakia.

Although an exciting and eventful ride, my problems began on arrival in Vienna when I exchanged the Russian Roubles I had bought at the beginning of the trip into the local currency. To my horror, I now only had enough to catch a train to the outskirts of town from where I would have to hitchhike to Marseille, France (from where I was to sail on a tall ship to New York City) amid the snow and cold weather and had run out of funds and had no credit card. I even had to fast for five days and sleep at night behind bushes and under overturned row boats in the Old Port of Marseille (only 1 years after the filming of French Connection II on location there, an unsavory place at night, just like the movie) until I was finally wired emergency funds from home. But that’s a subject for a different thread.