Trans-Siberian Thoughts 4

One more sleep until Moscow. It sounds like I'm a kid counting down to Christmas, but that's the best means of keeping count I have. I set my computer (and so ipod also) to Moscow time (GMT+3) a few days ago, and have been trying to sync with that, but I woke up at about 5 this morning, so that's not working so well.

Numbers on the train are dwindling, and everyone is becoming more reclusive. There is hardly anyone in the corridor watching the landscape go by anymore, and the door to most berths are generally shut. This does make it easier to charge my various bits and pieces.

I too am paying less attention to the landscape, and there is a clear decline in the number of photos taken each day. After a while snow and trees and the occasional village gets a bit repetitive. We have started sighting the mile markers counting down the distance remaining to Moscow (2162 at time of writing, with 32 hours to go).

There's a bit of snow falling now and then today. This is the first time there's been falling snow on an ongoing basis. There was a bit at one of the stops on day two, but that was about it. The snow I've seen on the trip has been very fine and dry and does not make for good snowballs. I've tried once or twice and it's like throwing sand.

War and Peace is a bit more interesting now that I've gotten past the society intrigues of Part I and am now into the war against Napoleon. I can't say the Russians are doing well at this stage, but something tells me they win out in the end.

I have managed to work out the mystery of the bathroom tap, which has made me feel much better, although it looks as though the carriage has gone through its allotment of toilet paper for the trip. Given that I have a roll from Korea and that Russian toilet paper is the roughest I've ever come across, this development has not troubled me too much.

I've written a few different bits and pieces that aren't exactly a journal (well, are in no way a journal), more free writing, which I suppose I'll put up when I have access to the internet again. The book I'm writing in is lined for the first half and the second half is all blank pages, so I'm using the first half as a journal and the second half for everything else (drawings, maths, poetry, memes, etc). I do quite like the book and will have to post a picture of it. I had intended to use "The Deeply Unfortunate Doings of an Ill-Fated Life" for this purpose, but this book was a last minute splurge at Kyobo books when I should have been looking for a money belt and suits the purpose a lot better. I've still to find something worthy to put in the ill-fated life, but for now its got a few general bits of writing that have been produced for various reasons.

Anyway, that's getting a fair bit offtopic and the train has stopped for some reason, so I think I shall stop writing as well.