42 drawings from a train to Siberia

The trip started from Stockholm and went to a low season biathlon complex in Siberia. Time melded during the trip, as did landscapes and countries, thus sequentiality seems moderately important. It roughly happened like this.

Oddly enough. The train ride starts with a boat.

You should always depart on a morning. Here I am, pacing all day worrying I've forgot something important. As soon as the boat pulls out I'm sure I'll feel fine. Then you have to make do with what you’ve got. You're just a person reacting to what you have at hand. Not the person who forgot to pack that essential thing.

Prepare, to react.

Ludmilla was crying as we left Moscow, her friend lingering in the coupe. She was just as sad when we left as she was overwhelmingly happy being met by her daughter and grand kids Ivan and Lisa in Tobolsk. She insisted I met them during the brief stop. The few things we had managed to mime and act out was that she had family there. Perhaps it was important to pay tribute to that one piece of information we had managed to transfer between us. After all, it took an entire day.

The days are vast. They start the same way and the sun sets in the same way. But it moves from start to finish so slowly it can’t be noticed. It just transforms, without visible change. Birch and pine remain everywhere. It's flat, hilly at most. Not warmer. Not wetter. Only the water changes. Islands in the Baltic Sea turn to scattered lakes and finally winding rivers. Another imperceivable transformation.

A loud Armenian who proudly refers to himself as both a urologist and dermatologist quickly offers everyone brandy and cranberry juice minutes after taking his seat.

I passed a thunderstorm on the first night on the train from Moscow. But time seemed to have frozen, the rain awaiting my arrival to relieve itself. We’re in a car towards Khanty Mansyisk, zig zagging between oil trucks and 18 wheelers that blanket the road in a fad brown gloom. The rain pummeling us as we’re traveling through marshlands on beaten up roads in a black Ford that smells like burnt ice-cream cones.

Rain was still pouring down as we entered the complex. The lobby was awkwardly dark, big round leather furniture, rounder then what would be functional or aesthetic. A wanna-be ski lodge but also somehow a swimming pool reception, with wall to wall carpeting. The surrounding 80s suburbia of an olympic village branched out in blocks well suited for desperate housewives. And again with a twang of "lodge" with exposed wooden beams that played no structural roll right next to mass produced double pane windows and brushed, painted facades.

At Hotel restaurant ‘Freestyle’ a 16 year old waiter eventually produces a meal. He asks for my Instagram because he wants to learn American ways and move there one day. I give up attempts to mime my Swedish nationality and hands him my handle, rich with a few dozen followers and fewer posts. A mountain of pickled mushrooms with sour cream. Russian Eurovision from a loud flat screen next to a bar bathing in blue LED-light.

The hotel room smells a bit like an old lady’s make up box.

An army of young girls with name tags appear out of nowhere and attach nervously to an adult. A decent coffee helps the surprising and unjustified hangover from yesterdays two beers. The omelette which more resembles a tray baked creme brulée, does not help.

I picture the dinners and parties from past skiing competitions that allegedly happen or happened here. It's hard. It resembles rather the dining area of the ferries crossing the baltic sea than a ski resort lounge. The indoor fountain though, somehow seems fitting.

Never ending expanse of fir trees surround the small hill outside, the dormant ski lift and the biathlon compound, surveyed by its giant LED-screen. Birds of prey circle overhead, mockingbirds rummage in the undergrowth next to the asphalt tracks that wind through the woods. Covered in snow they must look like white ribbons but now they’re used by young children in colourful clothing for doing laps. They later gather outside the sports school of Olympic Reserves.

All the janitors wear army camouflage for some reason. The blue and yellow see through plastic roof outside the restaurant bath the wooden beams and pine outdoor furniture to look like a surreal photo shoot for a highschool prom. It could use a smoke machine.

Two men purposefully down beers and vodka a few tables away as if they’re on a rigid schedule. Outside the window behind them finches are rummaging through potted plants littered with cigarette butts.

We shouldn't treat people hurting the environment with hostility. They are not enemies that do it wilfully. They are like alcoholics and need understanding. Someone to hold their hand and tell them how their behaviour is hurting you. Like a mother telling her son it hurts her when he neglects her. You don't create care through hostility.

The lady with the perched lips on the ride home between Perm and Moscow sat opposite from me. I assumed she was very religious. She had wrinkles around her mouth, the kind you get from smoking an entire life. I doubt however that this woman had ever touched a cigarette. This was just a wrinkled mouth that worried about the world. She read the newspaper fanatically back to back with frantic eyes and bulging temples. She left the hairs on her chin unplucked. When finishing her tea she put a hole through a napkin, threaded the spoon through and put it back in the cup to create a lid. She seemed adamant to stay clean, protecting her self with wrinkles and wit.

At great Georgian restaurant, eagerly ordering from the vast menu. Many plates, most of them superb. It’s then, for the first time during the trip, I miss not having a companion. There are times when eating alone is lovely but the grand, celebratory and festive dinners contain a throbbing wish for company. It almost feels like an instinct. The feeling also comes from a selfish mundane place. I wan’t to try all the dishes but not even five friends could’ve shared it all. Instead I stick to what is by now already excessive. I eat until I can’t anymore. Not only because it’s exquisite, it’s also my only company, dwindling by the bite.

I have previously thought of myself as someone who prefers to be alone. That's not true. It’s simply enjoyable. As are conversations with strangers, big dinners and intimate moments. Solitude doesn't undermine or replace a social existence. It's just another way to enjoy life.

Конец