The Thermos of Doom> Travels

After our adventures on Olkhan, Kyra and I returned to Irkusk to catch the train to catch a 3 and a half day, 4 night, train to Moscow. We got on board the train at 1:30 AM and were a bit annoyed to find that the tickets I had been sold were in the lowest class, refugee class. In this class your train car is packed with beds with no closed rooms. You can hear the snoring of a man at the other end of the carriage and also smell his B.O. We tried to upgrade, but the train was full and none of the conductors could really speak enough English to understand our request. In the morning we awoke and decided we would just deal. We were both on top bunks, which limited our accesses to the table, making meals and cards a bit of a pain. The bottom bunks were held by an older woman named Tatania, who am I am pretty sure wet her bed and a guy named Sasha, who said he was a Urology student. He could have meant Uralogist, studying the Ural Mountains rather than penises, but he didn't speak enough English to clarify either way. It turned out Kyra and I were the only foreigners on the entire train other than a German acrobat.

In the end spending that much time on a train isn't too bad if you have good company and enough whisky. To liven things up, Kyra and I pretended that this stainless steel thermos that I had (Which looked like it would be great for storing plutonium), was carrying some dangerous material on the inside. I would always carry it with two hands and carefully set it down on the table. After putting it down I would wipe the fake sweat off my brow and breath a sigh of relief. Later, Kyra would mishandle the thermos and I would pretend to get very angry at her irresponsibility, repeatedly yelling, "You are putting the whole train at risk!" I think our fellow passengers were honestly scared of the mystery thermos until I opened it up and made some tea in it.