THERE’S a certain smug joy to looking at the perils of a rugged, lonely wild country from the comfort of a train; here we are, linked directly to Moscow on a double stream of metal, a windowpane away from the Heart of Darkness. Our days became a pleasant routine of wildness streaming by outside and an intimate, ever-shifting community of travelers in comfortable, tight, yet strollable conditions inside.

We rolled along, we chatted long into the night with fellow passengers, we watched the pale sun rise and fall through the trees and the distant mountains, we darted back and forth for boiling water to the omnipresent samovar installed at the end of the car, we toasted each other with endless cups of tea and hourly glasses of vodka (out here the stuff seemed to be drunk at a pace more medicinal than inebriating), and we dozed off, rocked gently to sleep.

The Other Siberian Railroad - NYTimes.com

Well, that sounds awful.

Source: The New York Times

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  1. jasonwdean posted this