David Rogers loves traveling, and loves writing about it. He’s been blogging for quite some time now, on his “Last train to Lhasa“, a travel blog where he talks about his trips to Scandinavia, Russia and Asia. Here’s the first of two parts of his chronicles of the Trans-Siberian trip he took in 2007.

December 21st, 2007 – I arrived at the Moscow train station at about 8.30pm to meet my two Aussie friends, the ones I met in Tallinn. After an endless queue to get my train tickets (I booked over the internet) we went to the platform and watched our train being shunted in backwards.

We soon made ourselves comfortable and as the train moved off, we cracked open the Vodka in our compartment. I was at the Russian end of the train and Nick and Chez were in the Chinese end, sharing their compartment with Kiwi Henny and Polish Mihail who I had met in the wonderful Hostel Comrade.

I was sharing my compartment with three Russians who got off the next morning. It was not long before a rough looking Russian called Alan from the next compartment made himself known to us. Alan had just finished a fourteen year prison sentence for knifing someone to death and was returning to his home town, Magadan in Eastern Russia.

Myself and Nick got dragged into his compartment for some more Vodka and to share his food which consisted of some bread, some cheese and some sort of feathered beast’s leg which had no doubt been dispatched to the great hen house in the sky by his own fair hands.

It wasn’t long before Alan was Vodka’d up and started to get pretty scary. Whilst ( was passing through the bar car, he demanded I drink Vodka with him. He had grabbed my coat in a vice like grip and would not let go for love nor money.

The scary and starey eyed bar man had no interest in helping me out and found the scenario to his great amusement.

Not wanting to offend the crazy bastard due to safety concerns, I ended up having three shots with him before managing to escape to the safety of my friend’s compartment.

Alan was persistent though. No matter how many ways we tried to lock the door, he managed to get in. He made several attempt to kiss my neck which is Russian tradition after Vodka apparently. He gave up in the end and went on the rampage elsewhere. Crazy Alan was not fucking about, he went on a forty eight hour Vodka binge and finally crashed out for twenty four hours and looked rather sheepish for the remainder of the journey.

We spent the first night in the bar with some more Westerners – six Swedes, an Englishman with a very posh upper class accent, an Irish guy called John and a Russian who claimed to have murdered two Chechnans – he was not very fond of Chechnans apparently. He was another that I though best not to offend in anyway, despite my lack of Chechnan characteristics.

The night was finished off with a snowball fight at a station we stopped at and then to Linnea, the Swedish girl’s first class cabin for a lot of drunken nonsense ranting.

There was snow lying deep in the countryside after leaving Moscow and for the rest of the journey. The days were spent looking out of the window at the frozen rivers and the snow covered pine trees. Transversing several time zones over land leaves you somewhat dazed and confused.

The whole journey is scheduled on Moscow time so you never really have any idea what time it is locally, how much daylight is left or what time you have got up or gone to bed or woken up. The days seem to meld together and stops are welcome so we could buy beer and food from the platform traders and get our feet on some solid ground. By day three we were starting to go pretty crazy.

The last full day I was on a bit of a downer because I had realised I would arrive in Irkutsk at 4am and had nowhere booked to stay which did not sound good to me. The main reason I was a going to Irkutsk was to obtain a Mongolian visa. I was as nervous as a whore in a church, to put it mildly.

A friendly Belarusian guy called Serge had a chat with the starey eyed bar man and it turned out I could stay on the train until Ulan Ube and get off the train at 1pm the next day (local time). The only problem with this was my ticket was only to Irkutsk so it would mean moving out of my cabin, saying farewell to the Russian carriage attendant and moving into a spare bed in the Chinese end of the train with Irish John and Sergio, which was not problem for them.

I had spent three days in the Chinese section of the train with my friends so I assumed the Chinese guys thought I was on that carriage anyway. They were pretty chilled out and probably didn’t care much that I was jumping the train ticketless.

This afternoon the train pulled into Ulan Ube and I said a sad farewell to my new friends and hailed a beat up old Lada to take me to the hotel. The taxi driver was another crazy guy who was not going to let the snow and the ice on the road put him off flooring the accelerator. I made the ten minute drive in one piece and he gave me his number in case I wanted to hire him again. I think I will probably not.

I am in a rather nice hotel which is not cheap so I may move to a flea pit tomorrow but having a decent shower after four days of train skankiness is worth it.

This afternoon I hung out in the town square practicing my Russian by chatting to the locals. I think I am the only foreigner in this small chilled town and all think I am crazy for coming to Siberia at this time of the year.

The square has a vast, sinister bust of Lenin’s head made of black granite (biggest in the world I believe) with icicles hanging from his nose and all around people are making huge ice sculptures of bridges and palaces, presumably for Christmas. It is -20c outside so any trips out have to be kept fairly short and to the point in order to avoid hyperthermia.

It is Saturday today (I think) and I am stuck here until Monday when the Mongolian consulate opens but there are worst places to be stuck. Hopefully this visa process will be smooth but if anything goes wrong I will get the Beijing train that does not go through Mongolia as my Russian visa expires soon and I don’t fancy much spending Christmas in a gulag. As it stands it looks like I will be spending Mongolia in Christmas which could be good!

Hearing an alert siren threw me to a sort of unreal dimension. Of course it was expected, but it sounded like a starter signal: the game begins, go hide! I freezed there, standing in front of a house that was hit a few days before. I watched Alon and Keren – it was the first time for them as well, but for sure they were better prepared than me. Keren pulled my arm and we took cover behind the garden wall. I didn’t look up for the rocket, I kept watching the ground and waited for the siren to stop. What I didn’t expect was to hear the boom. A dull sound, meaning it was real, it was not a game.

The Grad missile hit a house near a religious school. When we got there, the area was stuffed by police and firemen, and I noticed the scared eyes of a young boy overlooking from the building facing the damaged house, hid behind his window.

Nevertheless, life flew ordinarily in Ashqelon. People gave us directions while waiting for their buses, gave us way at the roundabout, they checked our bags at the mall, welcomed us warmly at the hospital. Keren met a cousin she had not seen for years and he showed us the video of some other rocket, on his phone. People smiled at me, and as Alon explained in Hebrew where I came from, they offered me to drink, they blessed me, and they took me to meet a wounded soldier in room 14.

Keren stepped back to let me get first into the room. The big guy was shaving behind the door and smiled, his parents drew back to make room for us and we could talk to him for a while, thank to Alon’s interpreting. After a few minutes, the soldier’s father stood up from his chair and solemnly said to his son, in French, to tell me that they were grateful for my visit, that it was very important for them. Alon asked me if i knew French and I began to speak French.

At the mall, two Italian soldiers (Carabinieri for E.U.) were waiting for their lunch and we talked about Italy and Milano and how homesick they were. I suggested to take a picture, together with the group of cute boys and girls from the Israeli Air Force brigade who were having lunch next to us. But the idea did not work, Italians could not compromise themselves with one side of the conflict. Lucky me, I could, and I cheered and took pictures with both groups.

Driving along the Gaza Strip in a sunny day of war was quite weird. It rather looked like a big, busy, much awaited day. On our way to Beer Sheva, we met huge trucks, carrying even huger tanks, we met fast military jeeps waving white and blue flags, old Fiat Unos carrying (at least) 5 big soldiers and convoys of trucks with humanitarian aids coming out of Karni.

Alon got a phone call from Gilad, a friend of him and journalist for Channel2, who invited us for a tour. “It’s your lucky day, GioRgio”. Gilad picked us up at Keren’s apartment in Beer Sheva and took us to meet an Army spokeman. I could hear Alon telling him about me in Hebrew and I picked the word “Italki” only (“Italian”). I guess it was enough.

The sun was going down quickly, so Gilad drove us fast to a hill on the border, where a number of journalists were gathered to look upon Gaza. There we climbed the stairs and got an astonishing view on the overcrowded area of Bayt Hanun and Gaza City. The Strip appeared as an unnatural, endless bunch of dark buildings, completely different from what we had behind our shoulders – green, hilly, rural landscapes with wide roads, villages and small cities. The orange sky was quite clear, except for a quiet Apache waiting above us and two observation balloon from which they said they can read any Palestinian’s shoe size. Gilad set up his equipment and called me for some short interviews, which I answered with a trembling voice, both due to the sight and to the chilly wind. “Poor little Italian”, Alon teased me, while the wind brought the sound of three explosions.

With my Canon suffering some inferiority complex comparing herself to camera lenses of Japanese and British journalists, we left the Hill for Sderot, just a few hundred meters far. Gilad parked the SUV in the main square and I jumped off with my explorer-like backpack full of chocolates, flags and (poor) lenses. Even Sderot – I could not believe it – was lively and crowded. People walking around, open restaurants, and of course Fire, Police and Defense Departments on alert. 8.000 rockets landed here in the last few years. I wondered what would happen in Italy if thousands of rockets fell from Istria into Trieste – Trieste would probably be deserted.

We entered the military compound going round big cement blocks, we smiled and spreaded “shalom” to the young guys and girls standing there with cigarettes and M16s. Inside, the barracks were crowded of soldiers dutifully going back and forth and 5 of those came to sit on a bench next to us. Gilad suggested me to make a speech but I declined. Then the commander – a cute 20 year old girl – took me privately and checked what I was going to ask, speaking and listening in a very close face-to-face. After my statement, she nodded and smiled: it meant I passed. Gilad and other officers asked for silence by beating on the desk and everybody turned their eyes on me. Uh-uh.

“Oh, ehm. Hi, I’m Giorgio, I came here from Italy to bring and mmh show you the support of many people from my country. I’m sure that, just as we always see the bad side of the war here, you too see the bad part of Europe, you see protests, burnt flags. Well, I’m here to tell you that most of us support you. And we love and admire you, because you are strong and brave, because you put yourself at stake to defend your brothers and sisters. We don’t know what it’s like to be here, because we are not here, but be sure, we admire you and understand you. We share your values, and we are with you.”

After what had to be a sort of Braveheart speech, we talked for a while – still under Gilad’s camera eye and officers’ prompting signs behind my shoulder. We missed the chance to take a photo together but I could give some Italian chocolates to the group.

Later, someone wrote in a comment “let’s hope the chocolates were not poisoned.” And I actually noticed that, once gained the trust of a number of people and having asserted my supportive intention, the gates of Israeli hearts had opened wide to welcome me warmly. Chocolates could really have been poisoned, I could have a gun with me, my bag could be filled with explosives. No one checked me when we entered the town-council bunker to meet the Mayor of Sderot. He pinned a small Sderot shield to my jacket and we shook hands friendly. We had humus and shawarma with agreeable ladies who told us about their kids and their lives in Sderot, and I felt part of the family. In just three days, I changed from being persuaded myself of being a very dangerous terrorist, to be eventually acknowledged as a true friend or even as an icon of national unity and foreign support.

My support for Israel is both rational and emotional. The reactions I got from those people were amazing, it was to me like a very warm embrace and definitely a sign of love and reciprocal trust. At our closing-tea moment, back at Keren’s place in Beer Sheva, I felt at home and I felt Israel was the place I belong to. I kept listening to the three of them talking Hebrew and I felt like it was my language. We shared an intense day and we discovered our likeness. I was so surprised when I realized I couldn’t actually understand a word.

Being under heavy interview for hours, at Malpensa Airport, was no big deal after all. I like to talk about myself, and the El-Al security guy was very interested in my stories. I explained scores of times the purpose of my trip, the names of my friends, and what they do, where they live, and what did I do in Syria, and Lebanon and Qatar, etc. etc. and again and again. It was cool and I was used to it, it was my 4th time in Israel, but the guy became more and more distrustful. “Il tuo viaggio ha qualcosa di sospetto”, he said in Italian. Your trip is somehow suspicious. And in with the same questions again.

I decided to go back to Israel just a few days ago. Al Jazeera was getting real nasty, BBC and CNN unbearable, I couldn’t even get ordinary facts about the war. Just civilian death tolls, death tolls, minute by minute. I wanted to go see, feel it, share some bad emotions and maybe understand something more. Mum sent me a ticket on wedsnday and on friday I was there, cleared to board, escorted to the gate by security girls, sitting in the second-last row, isolated but with a careful guard sleeping in the row behind mine.

Tel Aviv at sunset was awesome, as usual. And as I drove along Highway 1 into the city, skyscrapers appeared in their white light, and a lot of memories came to my mind. She does not disappoint me, ever.

Elias was at the reception to welcome me, in a blue t-shirt and a rough beard. “Hey man”, he says, friendly, but I don’t have much time to spend at the hotel. Emily has invited me to a homey, wonderful yemen-flavoured dinner. In her room, she shows me her Navy uniform and nostalgically points herself on some old pictures, as she and her sister set up to take me out to the Port.

Tel Aviv seems to be in a bubble. You can notice shades of sadness in people’s eyes, some hidden fear, but their lives go on as usual. Their war is at least 60 years old, in fact. A sort of habit, some may say.

Saturday

The morning flows smooth as Maya canceled our lunch meeting, so I start walking around to feel the pulse of Tel Aviv promenade in war days. Crossing crowded Tayelet Herbert Samuel I suddenly realize how weird I am, dressed in shirt, sweater and jacket, among beach boys and families of dozens multicolored kids.

The McDonald’s is stuffed with people and I can notice some warily eyes on me, due to my awkward look, or maybe just to the big camera i’m carrying around. But nothing worries Israelis more than usual. On the contrary, the West Bank Fence built in 2006 appears to have lifted from the security guys most of the concerns about suicide bombers. As I eat the non-kosher BigMac, I gaze Israelis, amazed to see how they walk forward, build, go out, live their lives with no compromise, in any condition, before any fear. You can’t say they are not scared, but for sure they know how to face dangers. And here lays the definition of courage.

Meanwhile, my efforts to arrange a trip southward continue. From the GilGal Hall I’m browsing my address books, messengers and Facebook friendlist, writing to those available for help – my Facebook profile fills up with incredulous and supportive comments. I’m looking for someone who would come with me and help me getting into the Soroka Hospital, to visit some wounded soldiers. “I’m too shy to go alone”, I tell everyone. Many friend-of-friend paths have started but most friends are forbidden by parents to go south (hey they are brave but they care of their kids). I can’t get to any conclusion until Alon and Keren (friends from Couchsurfing) answer: yes.

After a dinner in Rehovot and some fun at Rishon LeZion beach, I head to Alon and Keren’s place in Tel Aviv and we talk, mostly of my previous trips – I keep enjoying telling about myself. We also plan our drive to Beer Sheva and Keren suggests we could even go to Ashqelon and Sderot. I had those places in mind but I didn’t dare to suggest friends to come under rocket fire. They did! And they even offered me a tea in a huge mug.