Erik is a terribly nice man and wise to do so. It shows him on the way already. He recalled Dr. Bunsen Honeydew from Sesame Street: slightly thinning blond hair in a slightly oversized head, a large area surrounded by a horn-rimmed glasses. When we first met, Erik studied at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and that medical technology. We lived together in a shack.
some point, one, two years later, called on Erik from Sweden. He had just finished his studies, all his belongings and left New Haven and sold, and now planned as the grand final training period, an extraordinary journey, along with a few friends. One was sick, unfortunately. Since I had occurred to him spontaneously and always ready for anything. Whether I did not want to jump in?
"Where the heck going?"
"From Moscow to Beijing and then back to Hawaii, California, East Coast, Europe, the standard way up."
"Sounds interesting. But why should I put myself 473 days long on the plane? So many legs I'm not for all the thrombosis. "
" We fly so not all the way. "
" Oh no? What then? Let's go 10,000 of the 40,000 kilometers on the bike? "
" No, by train. "
This should probably sound reassuring, but the effect failed completely.
"With the railway? From Hawaii to San Francisco? "
" Rubbish! From Moscow to Beijing. "
You will not understand the same, but somehow reassured me this information. For one, I knew that Erik during his military service at a listening station in the far North had worked, and several American dialects fluently spoke, and secondly, I have a certain idea of complete cases with which the Russian and Chinese airlines domestic flights. With any double decker Air Szechwan over the Gobi desert - not me! Anyway, after a quarter of an hour had Erik soft knock me and was glad that someone took over the pro rata cost of the trip.
A few weeks later, we were so five of us at the station in Moscow, waiting for the exit of turn 2, Rossiya, Vladivostok. That is, after nearly 9300 km away and the railway needs for just over six days (ie about the same long as the German Federal Railways from Essen to Cologne).
Erik had booked us for a four and a one compartment. Sufficiently so, and we had six seats in a freely accessible local for a guest. The first was a nervous mind of the type constant entrepreneurs, ever in search of business ideas that could fail it then. Just now he had placed an Internet panties laundry in the sand. Logo, business cards, website, online shop - all wonderful, but the pick-up and delivery costs, the company had ambitious target driven into irretrievable. Victor served his depressed soul with Russian vodka, a glass of water after the next, and also served he us. After 3,000 kilometers, or about half way between Omsk and Novosibirsk, I had more time, and quite involuntarily numerous pre-digested in vodka marinated portions of Communist fish eggs, blinis dumped beside the railway line - from the train window and production aesthetically dubious Würgegeräusche.
Shortly after Pyotr Blagojarsk trudged through the car. Pyotr was with all hands go to his in-laws near Yekaterinburg, ie with a wife, two children, a goat and two wire cages with chickens. At stop in Blagojarsk he had visited the station toilet, a good plan, because the toilets on the train were in a pitiful state. I Although no Russian, but on one of the signs in the toilets was quite sure: "Please be sure to urinate next to the bowl" Unfortunately, Pyotr nodded off briefly on the Bahnhofsklo, presumably caused by the mental peace because of the sudden cleanliness. When he awoke, his train had left, but happened to turn the stand on the platform and looked exactly like his. Until he noticed that his family no longer existed, were already nearly 100 miles between the separated. And that a train reverses the trans-Siberian railway, to search for a lost passenger, is one of the events in the Universe, whose probability tends towards zero.
For us it was only in Irkutsk, after almost 5200 miles, engaging. We climbed into another train, which branches off at km 5655 and the road is heading south: the Trans-Mongolian Railway. The train has now been pulled by two double locomotives of type 2M62, which are known to everybody that they have heard, either "Taiga drum" or "Stalin's last revenge." Fortunately, our department were pretty far back.
In Ulaanbaatar, the capital, we got a new guest, a small blond boy, the Oxford English language and worked as a deputy sheriff in the British Embassy. When asked where in his opinion the most boring place world was, he pointed silently behind him. "A hundred thousand inhabitants, a cinema." It sounded really depressing, but faded against the fact that since the border is not a dining car on the train hung over. Maybe there was not enough for this purpose dogs or ground squirrels in Mongolia.
If you drive somewhere breaks forth, there's really nothing worse than when the fuel runs out. In a railroad, I consider it the worst possible incident, if not go on the rails. Why do I get it? Well, in the middle of the night, we approached the Chinese border. Despite the noise of the Taigatrommel we were already a few miles earlier, the sounds Chinese revolutionary songs to hear blasting out of the powerful amplifiers over the country to the travelers musical tune. At the border station was brighter than at noon in St. Tropez; giant spotlight shone the demarcation line of meticulously. And behold: The track was over!
So far we were namely the Russian broad-gauge road, 1524 mm wide. In China, the rails are apart but only 1435 millimeters, so the Russians and their military transporters can not travel to Beijing by mistake. Since then the Chinese are consistently: The cars were converted to smaller chassis. The whole thing lasted over an hour, but had a very pleasant consequence: There was again a dining car, also with a wonderful Chinese cuisine. Unfortunately, after about ten minutes all the passengers gathered there, fifty miles later, all was empty and there was again eaten ratzekahl Mongolian relations.
Eventually we reached Beijing. At last, a hotel, a bit of Forbidden City, a little sightseeing, and then off to Hawaii. I had imagined, but oh, how I was wrong! Erik was undermined namely the horrible mistake of applying to from Sweden for a three-day tour by Chinese officials. Unfortunately, he had some new ideas. And complicating factor was that the Chinese side of Erik's words "medical technicians" had concluded that he was a surgeon. Therefore they had meticulously organized for us a tour of Beijing's hospitals all possible to give us the latest surgical techniques with the help of acupuncture, yin and yang, Ayurveda, and who knows what to show the whole story. As a guest, you say yes and no so unwillingly. And if you go on the operating table is and the interpreter says, "Professor Cheng will open now, as you see, without anesthesia the chest of Mr Li and removes demonstration for the honorable gentlemen doctors from Sweden, the heart," then ventured, too no one reply: "Sorry, but there must be some mistake."
Incidentally, I flew back from Beijing just after Frankfurt. Somehow I had concerns that Erik could have announced a volcanologist at Hawaii.
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© cologne-Prussian editing Institute
