Train Travel

And that was it, after three days, my time in Portugal was over. A short trip to the country, but I'll have to come back. I never got to try the salt cod or have a glass of Port, so there is more to do in Portugal before my time on this earth is up.

I heard a lot of people speaking Portuguese during my time in Portugal. This is to be expected, of course. I don't think I've ever really heard Portuguese before. More correctly, I have probably heard people speaking Portuguese before, but it has never really registered. I've done lay-overs in Sao Paulo, where no doubt I heard numerous announcements in Portuguese, and I have friends with Portuguese background, so I may have heard it spoken by their parents and such. However, I've never really listened to it before.

What amazed me is that Portuguese sounded NOTHING like what I would have expected. Having seen it written, I expected it to sound like Spanish. It doesn't. Portuguese sounded to me liked Dutch people speaking alternating words in Russian and Spanish. Lots of harsh Russian sounds said with the slurred "sch" sound that Dutch people use, along with flowery Spanish sounding words. Very strange.

My time ended with a last glance at the International Fair grounds where Lisbon held Expo 1998. All those flags lined up along the basin, alphabetically arranged by Country.

I was excited to get down to the Cs, where I looked up the tall flag pole dedicated to Canada.

No flag! The only country where there wasn't a flag! I was crushed. However, the wind was very strong, and most of the flags were in tatters. I assume it wasn't an intentional slight, but rather more likely that the wind took away the Maple Leaf over the sea.

A couple workers were slowly working their way down the flags, taking down the tattered and faded flags and replacing them with new versions, so no doubt Canada's flag is flying high again. I just wonder how often they have to replace those flags, they way they whipped on those high, windy flag poles.

I left Portugal on the train, from Gare do Oriente (the Station of the West, literally). Oriente is one of the main transport hubs in Lisbon. It was designed by Santiago Calatrava for Expo '98, and sits right beside the grounds of the former world Expo. It is a very modern station, with lots of light and glass and swoopy curves inside, and an impressive glass platform roof (the term train shed seems inadequate here) like a medieval cathedral made of light.

I had left my luggage in the lockers in the basement (floor -2 if you are looking for them) as I wondered around the grounds of the International Fair and went to see the Vasco Da Gama Tower (covered in a previous entry). Before claiming it, I popped into the toilets on the ground floor.

Now, Oriente is a very busy commuter station. It handles 75 million passengers a year, and I was there at four in the afternoon on a weekday. Not quite rush hour yet, but still pretty busy. Therefore, I was amazed at what happened next.

I was in the toilet, standing at a urinal and doing what men do at urinals - taking care of business and staring straight ahead at the patch of wall directly in front of me. Out of my peripheral vision, though, I noticed the guy a couple urinals to my right was looking over at me. I took a quick glance over at him, and saw that he was involved in ... ummm... pleasuring himself. Right there, in the middle of a busy toilet in a busy train station in broad daylight (well, we were two stories underground - but it was broad daylight up there).

Upon me looking at him, he caught my eye and looked at me in a way to suggest that while he was having a good time, he would not be against a duet. I blushed and went back to staring at the wall ahead of me, trying to will myself to finish my biological functions as quickly as possible.

On leaving, the man was still there, still at full attention. He had now turned his attention to a man a few urinals away on his right, who was also trying his best to ignore him. As I washed my hands, the man who had been engaged in self-satisfaction zipped up and walked out of the toilet, obviously unable to attract the attention he wanted.

I finished washing and drying my hands, and I walked out of the toilet to see the self-lover standing by the door. As I exited, a commuter in a suit walked in the toilet, obviously in a hurry to quickly take a pee before grabbing his train. The stroker waited until the commuter had entered the toilet, and then followed him in.

Bold. I guess when one is dogging in a commuter train station, you might as well be bold.

The train I jumped on was the long distance train to Hendaye, known as the Sud-Express. The Sud-Express used to be a two-night sleeper train between Paris and Lisbon, but with the creation of the high-speed LGV Atlantique line, the train no longer goes direct to Paris. Instead, you get high-speed TGV to Hendaye, and then a slower train between Hendaye and Lisbon.

I wasn't going as far as Hendaye, just as far as Salamanca in Spain. It was still a 6 hour journey, though. When I got on the train, I was impressed to see that the seats were those old-fashioned six-seater compartments with a door and curtains for the windows, like in movies staring Clark Gable.

I settled in with the iPod on shuffle and started to read a book that my flat-mate had given me for my birthday - Kate Atkinson's "When Will There Be Good News?" It is a very good read. My only complaint is that books that involve train crashes with massive loss of life on page 149 should come with a warning of such, in the event that you don't want to be reading about train crashes whilest rumbling across the dark Portuguese countryside in a rickety, old train.

The train arrived in Salamanca at 2 minutes past midnight. The train station looked quite nice, but was deserted at that hour and all the shops were closed.

From the train station, I had about a 15 minute walk to my hotel. I pulled out my printed Google map and headed along the route towards the centre of town.

One of the things I noticed when I was in Lisbon was that most of the windows have shutters on them, and this continued to be the fashion in Salamanca and later Madrid. Big, metal things that usually roll down on the outside of the window. They reminded me of the big, metal roll doors that shops often have on the front of them when they close up at night. I wasn't sure why they were there. If it was protection from burglars or rock-throwing kids, why did they even have them up on the top storeys of 15 storey apartment blocks?

In Lisbon it was just an idle curiosity. In Salamanca, walking along the deserted streets past midnight and seeing every window protected by a metal shutter and walls covered with graffiti, and you start to wonder if perhaps there is something you don't know about the neighbourhood you are walking through. Should I have body-armour or an armed escort for protection?

Of course, it turns out to be nothing so sinister. I asked a friend who lived in Madrid, who said it was to block the sun. Most folks don't have curtains, and instead have shutters. In the hot summer, they close up the house during the day to keep the sun out, then open the shutters and windows at night to let in the cool breezes. Because I was there during chilly November, people weren't throwing open the windows at night.

I walked along the same route a few different times while in Salamanca, and even the sinister graffiti from that first night was not what it seemed. Rather than gang-tags, it was a quite well done mural of Alice in Wonderland.

After a 15 minute walk, I arrived at my hotel, all body parts still intact. You know you are getting into late at your hotel when you walk into the lobby and they greet you by name, even though you’ve never been there before.

"Hello Mr. Wesson. Welcome to Salamanca."

The email usually arrives mid-week, bringing the bad news for the weekend. The weekly Transport for London tube closures for the upcoming weekend.

When last Wednesday's email arrived, I realized it looked like it was going to be a bad weekend for getting around on the Isle of Dogs. The Docklands Light Rail (DLR) was going to be shut down all weekend. The Jubilee line, the only London underground route serving the area wasn't running eastbound from North Greenwich towards Stratford.

Bad news a day later when the BBC reported that two of the unions who represent bus drivers in London were going to be striking from Friday night through to Sunday morning, affecting 3 of the 5 bus routes that run close to my house, impacting services even more.

"Gonna be damn hard to get around this weekend," I said to one of my flatmates, giving him a rundown on the weekend's closure.

"Ah, that's going to make it bloody difficult to get to my golf game on Sunday," he said, ending with what has become a bit of a mantra for anyone living here. "Goddamn TFL!"

TFL, short for Transport of London, is the city agency responsible for all the transportation in London. If you move anywhere in London, whether it be by bicycle lanes, roads or rails, and whether the vehicle carrying you is a car, bike, taxi, bus, tube or train, TFL most likely has a big hand in making your ride what it is. When you pay your congestion charge, tap your Oyster card when getting on the train or watch the taxi metre count up, it's the TFL that set your rates.

Because of this control, they make a pretty easy punching bag for anyone trying to get around in London.

To be sure, there is a lot to complain about.

Firstly, the tube trains are incredibly hot. I come from a city with air conditioned subways, and so arriving in London in the height of summer and riding in the hot trains in the stiflingly still air of the deep tunnels, drenched in sweat and crushed against your fellow travellers was a bit of a surprise to me, and I soon found myself wishing for a cool train and a seat.

If that doesn't get your blood boiling, then no doubt the constant shut downs and delays will probably get you. Every weekend since I have arrived a number of lines, especially the Victoria, Jubilee and DLR have been partially or fully shut down. Beyond that, every day seems to find at least one line suffering "severe delays" due to signalling problems, which is especially distressing during rush hour, when hundreds of thousands of people are trying to get around using the underground, overground and national rail running through the city.

National Rail, which is in fact a collection of a number of companies running franchises serving the suburban commuter and intercity trains, has it's own problems, from stations needing to be completely rebuilt to track works shutting down lines to some destinations completely at times.

Having only been here a short time though, and coming from Toronto, I have a different perspective than the long time Londoners. Sure, you'll find me cursing TFL from time to time, like on Saturday when I had to backtrack 20 minutes upon learning that a bridge crossing the Millwall Dock was closed for construction on a DLR station, or this morning when I sat for 10 minutes outside of Bank station waiting for the DLR train to pull in, backed up due to the omnipresent "signalling problems."

Despite my curses these past few days, I come from a city with four subway lines covering 68 kilometres of track. London, by contrast, has 400 kilometres of track.

Toronto's subways and buses are run by the TTC. Commuter rail in Toronto is run by GO Transit, and intercity trains by Via Rail. There is no integration between these three services, in either fares or scheduling, nor is there any integration between Toronto's transit and it's neighbouring cities.

London, on the other hand, is well integrated. Sure, it's expensive and you often have to pay additional charges when transferring between modes of transit (i.e. bus -> tube, tube -> DLR, tube -> train), but you can all do it with one card - the Oyster card, and the schedules seem to match up pretty well.

The biggest difference between Toronto and London though, has to do with what was closing those lines all weekend in London. Construction.

The last subway to be opened in 2002, a 5.5 kilometre stub running along the north of the city. Toronto has plans to build more subways and light rail projects, but right now they are just lines on a map, and Toronto's history has seen lots of lines on a map.

London, on the other hand, is growing. While there haven't been any tube extensions since 1999, the DLR expanded most recently in 2005, and an extension is currently under construction, and the London Overground, a commuter rail service run by TFL is expanding rapidly to expand from 4 to 5 rail lines.

Other rail services are getting upgrades as well. Thameslink, the north-south train line through the centre of London, is getting an upgrade to allow longer trains.

The most ambitious scheme, though, is Crossrail. Crossrail is a £16 billion dollar plan to electrify the east-west railway from Maidenhead in the west to Shenfield in the east, and create a tunnel through the centre of London connecting Paddington station in the west end of London to the east-end of London, with one line heading north of the river to Stratford and on to the coast, and another line heading south of the rive to Abbey Wood.

The plan calls for a tunnel running under the centre of London with stations at Paddington, Bond Street, Tottenham Court Road, Farringdon, Liverpool Street, Whitechapel and my current home on the Isle of Dogs.

I checked out the Crossrail information session today at Liverpool street station and picked up some literature on the project.

The Isle of Dogs station is set to be built underwater in the West India Dock, right in the middle of the water in the picture below.

The tunnelled section will be about 22 kilometres long, and will have to be tunnelled through the existing spider web of existing tunnels for trains, tube and cars already under the city.

When complete (projected for 2017), the line will provide up to 24 trains per hour through the centre of the city, and with a link down to Heathrow, provide much better transit to London's main airport from the east-end.

If things go according to plan, in less than 10 years London will have a completely new, high frequency service through the centre of town.

Toronto, via it's MoveOntario 2020 plan, is hoping to add similar cross-town services to Toronto by 2020, though with funding disagreements between the city, provincial and federal governments, who knows what will happen.

So to my London friends, don't complain too much. London really does have an excellent public transit system, and with constant upgrades and extensions going on, it is only getting better. When things get bad, try and grin and bear it. It could be a lot worse.

...now if they can just figure out how to put air conditioning on the tube lines.

It’s the start of the New Year, and of course that implies that we have just ended the previous year. As with many out there, I have taken this time as an opportunity to reflect on 2007. Along with the usual fretting over the fact that another year has passed without getting engaged to Jessica Alba, Jessica Simpson or Jessica Biel (or, really, any Jessica), I take this time as the year ends to see how I fared with travel this year. A lot of this is driven by the fact that many of the reward programs I take part in, like Marriott Rewards, Continental OnePass and Air Canada Aeroplan have qualification periods that run in parallel to the actual year. Luckily for me, I have qualified for elite status in all three of those programs this year, which means 2008 will hopefully mean more comfortable airline seats and bigger hotel rooms.

I have also, for the third year, calculated how much I flew and how much carbon I threw up into the atmosphere. This year I flew an exceptionally large amount, even for me, with 81 flights totaling up to 80,785 actual miles flown. This is the most I have flown any year, fuelled mostly by the cross-country trips from Toronto to Seattle early in the year, and my recent weeks flying north-south between Toronto and Houston. According to the carbon calculator I used, all that travel added up to somewhere around 27 tonnes of carbon put into the atmosphere. Yikes! And so I was off to purchase a number of carbon offsets to assuage my guilt about so recklessly destroying the planet.

Good news for the planet, though, is that I didn’t actual fly anywhere for a Christmas vacation this year as I have the past few year, instead electing to stick to the ground and take the train up to Quebec City. While it’s diesel engines do spew carbon into the atmosphere, the amount is less than flying, and the carbon isn’t flung into the high atmosphere, instead it’s spewed out at ground level to choke the local fauna as the train cuts through the Quebec forests.

My train, operated by Via Rail Canada, left downtown Toronto’s Union Station at 11:30 AM on December the 30th, travelling pokily along and making a number of stops as it headed east and north towards Montreal, arriving at 5:02 PM. After a 50 minute stop-over (enough time to grab a burger from McDonald’s, another few tonnes of carbon thrown into the atmosphere), I was back on the train heading towards Quebec City, arriving at the impressive and imposing Gare du Palais in Quebec City at 8:56 pm.

The total trip took 8:33 minutes to cover the approximately 800 kilometers between Toronto and Quebec City, averaging 100 kilometers per hour. That’s not very fast, providing a similar speed to driving and certainly much slower than flying, which takes 1 hour and 25 minutes.

I choose the train, though, instead of driving or flying though, because I was on vacation and in no real hurry to get anywhere. Instead, I wanted a nice relaxing trip, allowing me to look at the scenery, read a book (it was a Michael Crichton thing about talking monkeys) and relax.

That might soon change. Yesterday in Ottawa, the premiers of the provinces of Ontario and Quebec, Dalton McGuinty and Jean Charest, announced a plan to do a feasibility study of putting a high-speed train between Quebec City and Windsor, Ontario, which we would find “whizzing along the tracks at upwards of 300 km/h – double the speed of VIA Rail's current trains – [taking] two hours and 18 minutes to travel between Montreal and Toronto, down from four hours.”

While this is an idea that has been tossed around a number of time over the past 20 years, the two Premiers (the leaders of the provincial governments, for those not familiar with the Canadian political structure) have a number of reasons to study the idea now. In addition to the desire of voters to see Canada meet carbon reduction targets, Quebec and Ontario are both large manufacturing economies. The price of oil has been skyrocketing, causing the cost of manufacturing to rise, while the Canadian dollar strengthening against the US dollar and the softness in the US economy meaning that our exports to USA are becoming more expensive just as Americans are tightening their spending. A $20 billion dollar project to build high speed rail would mean jobs, especially for a company like Bombardier, maker of high speed train engines and cars.

I’ve in the past covered how cool it would be to have a high-speed train in the high population Ontario-Quebec corridor that runs from Windsor, Ontario (just across the river from Detroit) to Quebec City and includes major population centers like Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa.

Nothing more clearly brought this to my attention than two different trips I made this summer.

The first, taken 5 times between May and July, was between Toronto and Detroit. The distance between these two cities is a straight 370 kilometers along. Via Rail runs trains down to Windsor, Ontario, but the trip takes almost 4 hours and the departures are too late in the morning to get me to Detroit on Monday mornings in time for work. Instead, I ended up flying Air Canada into Windsor, and taking a combination of taxis and buses between the Windsor airport and my workplace in downtown Detroit.

In August, I headed over to Europe. Obviously I had to fly across the Atlantic (no trains to take there), but once I landed in Europe, I spent two weeks travelling almost exclusively by high speed rail, travelling between London, Brussels, Cologne, Amsterdam and Frankfurt on the fast and comfortable high speed Euro-trains. On the trip between Cologne and Amsterdam, I was even lucky enough to sit in the front cabin, where I could easily see out the front window and watch as we sped between Germany and the Netherlands.

Now, the interesting thing is that if you do the math, the train isn’t really that much faster Europe. From London to Frankfurt is a total of around 800 kilometers, which the trains cover in 6 hours and 32 minutes, or around 130 kilometers an hour. Despite having ICE trains that can travel up to 300 km/h, for the most part the trains can’t travel that fast for much of the length of the trip. Things are getting faster though. The Cologne to Frankfurt part is all high speed track, and the train is often travelling in excess of 250 km/h, and the UK is building their infrastructure to get the Eurostar moving faster.

What is very impressive about the Europe trains, though, is the fact that they run so frequently. Looking at taking a train from Toronto to Windsor, the earliest I could get out was 7:50, arriving in Windsor at 11:30. The first flight out of Toronto airport leaves 7:15 and arrives at 8:22, meaning I have to leave my house around 5:30 to get to the airport and clear security. Leaving my house at 5:30 am to catch a 6:00 AM train would be possible. A 6:00 AM train would arrive in Windsor at 9:45 AM, and I could be across the river quickly and at the office by 10:30. That would be a completely doable proposition.

While the trains in Europe may not be as quick as they possibly could, they run often and they are comfortable, and that’s something that Canada needs to do in the Windsor-Quebec corridor to make train travel something that’s more than just a mode of travel for tourists who want scenery and relaxation.

I just completed a two week trip from Paris, France to Hong Kong via rail, most of the way covered on the trans-Siberian and trans-Mongolian railways. I completed the journey in 16 days, stopping in Brussels (1 day, 1 night), Moscow (2 days, 1 night), Irkutsk (1 day), Ulaan Baatar (1 day), Beijing (3 days, 2 nights) and Hong Kong (1 day, 1 night).

The Train Ride

In general, the train was a slow way to travel. I thought that it would be a decent way to see the country side, but I ended up feeling very disconnected from the scenery passing me by. Because of the timing of my tickets, we ended up passing a number of things that I wanted to see in the middle of the night (Volga river, Lake Baikal, Euro-Asia border, much of the Gobi desert). Even during the day, things pass by so quickly that you often only get a glimpse of them.

I would much prefer (in the future) to drive if I am going to do a large overland trip. In that way, you can stop and examine things and have the iternary in your control, rather than under the control of the train schedule. I would take trains, but probably just overnight (8 - 10 hours), and not count on them providing a great way to see things.

The trains were comfortable enough. It is a little weird sleeping in a cabin with three people you don't know, and the constant noise and motion could be a sleep issue to some people.

Having a food car on the trains were in no means guaranteed. Even then, the food was on the expensive side. At all stops in Russia there were people selling food on the platforms, which was good and inexpensive. Most of it was meat in pastry or dried fish, so vegetarians may have some issues. At other stations, there was usually a shop or restaurant in the station. Hot water is always available, so self-catering is a good idea. Lots of people eating lots of "just add water" noodles.

I ran into few English speakers on the trains, really only on the trip from Irkutsk to Ulaan Baatar and from Beijing to Hong Kong. Otherwise it was all locals. People are very friendly, though, and share their food (which is nice if all you have is noodles). Conversation was limited, but hand signals, mime and drawing pictures provide a minimal ability to communicate.

The Scenery

The train ride from Moscow into the Urals is alright if you like Pine and Birch forests intrupted by industrial wastelands. As you climb into the Urals (very low lying at the point the train goes through), we started to get snow and more forests and less industry. We did cross the Volga river, which was neat to see.

After leaving the Urals, you enter Siberian plains. It's a lot of forests, open grass plains and boggy, swampy areas. I didn't see much in the way of wild-life, as I imagine they are in the forests and keeping a low profile. Approaching Irkutsk the land starts to get hillier heading up towards Lake Baikal. Baikal is a long, thin but very deep lake, holding one-fifth of the world's fresh water.

Heading down through Mongolia you get more grass plains. Wild horses can be seen, as well as herds of cows and sheeps. The occasional ger is sited.

After Ulaan Baatar, you start to enter the Gobi desert. It's a rocky, sandy desert with tufts of dry grass. Horses, cows and sheep are still scene, but the occasional camel is added into the mix. The desert continues into China.

After Jining, the desert ends and you get into Chinese agriculture and mountains. Getting towards Beijing, lots of good views of the Great Wall can be found in between long, dark stretchs through tunnels.

After Beijing and towards Hong Kong, lots of agriculture is seen. Hong Kong is very mountainous, and so you get more tunnels and mountain views.

Cities

I didn't get to see much of the cities, but here are my quick impressions.

Brussels, Belgium - nice city, and interesting mix of old buildings and new office towers, but it fits together nicely. Beer is really cheap as compared to Paris, and so much good beer is made in Belgium, which is a plus.

I stayed that the Hotel Sabina, which was nicely located, but the rooms were drab, small and prision like. I paid $US 56 for the night.

Moscow, Russia - very interesting city. Red Square is very cool. I couldn't figure out how to get into the Kremlin, there was a line but it never moved. I was amazed at how many high-end shops there were in Moscow - they seem to have taken to the shopping aspects of captialism very well.

I stayed at the Tourist Hotel near the botanical gardens metro stop. Around $US 70 a night. It was a nice enough hotel, but far from the city centre. There were a large number of buildings on the property and I couldn't figure out what they were all for. There was a store where I stocked up on supplies before getting on the train.

Irkutsk, Russia - like a wild west frontier town. The weather was beautiful - sunny and around 10 degrees. Very un-Siberian I thought, for late October. Irkutsk is a good base for lots of activities around Lake Baikal (rafting, boating, fishing). Food is inexpensive. There is somewhat of an irony in walking down Marx street and seeing all the high end clothing stores.

Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia - a very interesting mix of gers, wood shacks and drab soviet style buildings. Nice main square, and the large Gandantegchinlen Khid monastery and the winter palace of the Mongol Khans are worth a look, though not the fee to take pictures. Lots of mutton available to eat. Many people use Ulaan Baatar as a setting off place for trips into the Gobi desert.

Whatever you do, don't give your passport to the police. It's a shake down, which I unfortunately feel victim too. Three police officers accused me of being drunk (which I was, but I don't think that's a crime) and started harrassing me. They searched me and took everything off me. I had been warned that the police do this, and it's really an extortion attempt. I was pretty sure I was going to have to pay to get out of it.

But then one of the dudes dropped my camera and it popped apart into 3 pieces. That seemed to destroy all their resolve, and they ended up giving me back everything without getting a cent out of me. I think they were worried that I might want to go to the station and report my camera being broken.

Either way, the good news is that my camera just popped out a couple different modular parts, and that I was able to snap it back together and it still works fine.

Beijing, China - Tons of construction cranes dot the skyline of Beijing as they prepare for the 2008 Olympics. The hutong (all the little alleys that hold the small houses) is quickly disappearing as Beijing builds high rise apartments and office buildings and street wide enough for cars.

I stayed at the Bamboo Garden Hotel near the Golou metro stop. Amazing place! It was around $US 70 a night. It's a first rate establishment, built around a courtyard that once housed the Empress' eunuchs. There are quiet pools to sit by for reflection, a restaurant, tea room and bar, and (most importantly) hot water in the showers! The room is fantastic, including free HBO and a James Bond-like control panel to control and lights that folds up into the night stand to disguise itself as a drawer when not being used.

Ordering in restaurants can be a bit of pain, so if you speak no Chinese, look for places with pictures on the menus, or eat from stalls where you can see the food. I had no problems eating from the stalls, and it was very inexpensive.

Also, be wary of students practicing English with you. I meet a couple of students who wanted to practice English with me. They showed me around for a couple of hours, and then we went to see a tea ceremony. The bill came and it was for $330, which the students didn't have. I paid, and then we went out to dinner. I didn't even realize it was a scam until I read about it a few days later. They worked 5 hours for the money! Also, I was approached twice by English speakers who were "art students" and wanted to show me their work.

Hong Kong, China - well, at least kind of China. Mountains and ocean, with gleaming high rise towers in between. I loved this city. I hiked up to Victoria Peak and watched the sun go down and the sky-scrapper lights start to come on. Really cool.

I stayed at the Marriott Rennaisance Harbour View Hotel using my Marriott Rewards points. It's very nice, but hardly budget.

It's right by the Wan Chai metro stop, which also has a lot of bars, restaurants and "strip clubs." I didn't go in, but apparently the strip clubs are very shady, and I have heard of people being drugged in them. The bars seemed fine.

Border Crossings

I had no issues with border crossings. Half the borders I crossed had no border control (France-Belgium, Belgium-Germany, Belarus-Russia). The rest were pretty painless in that you just waited on the train for someone to come around.

For any forms required to be filled out, most forms either have English on them, or you can get an English form, so if they hand you a form without English, ask for the English form.

The crossing from Russia to Mongolia is very long, though, taking upwards of 8 or 9 hours, so don't plan much for that day.

Language

In Russia, learn the sounds that the letters of the Cyrillic alphabet make. Metro stops, train stations and street names are not printed using the English alphabet, but maps tend to put things in English letters, so to translate between the two you need to know that tuhhelb is prounounced tunnel, and stuff like that. Plus, a lot of the words that travellers would need to know are pronounced the same or very similar. Tourist, restaurant, bar, cafe, toilet, and bank are just some of the words that are very similar, so if you can read a little Cyrillic, you can figure out that Pectopah = Restoran.

Mongolian uses the Cyrillic alphabet too, but the words are somewhat different. Many things in Mongolia are also printed in English. Few people speak it, but pointing and smiling can get you pretty far.

China was very hard to communicate outside of Beijing. In Beijing, there was a lot of English around, or at least words in English.

Ticket Costs (as printed on tickets)

For Paris - Brussels, you can buy the tickets on the Thalys TGV site. Standard prices is 71 Euros, but discounts can be found if travel is flexible, or departure point. I saw one deal that was 15 Euros from Charles De Gaulle airport to Brussels.

I bought the Brussels - Moscow tickets on line from Die Bahn for 229.5 Euros.

For the Moscow - Hong Kong portion, I purchased on line with a company called Sokol Tours. I found them to be the cheapest after spending 6 hours or so looking. They charged me about $US 1000 for the tickets. However, the ticket prices were printed on the tickets, and thus if you wanted to try and buy the tickets yourself you might get a much better deal. However, trying to deal with ticket agents without language skills could be a problem. Some people who purchased tickets were charged extra fees in addition to the ones listed on the tickets.

Paris - Brussels = 71 Euros or $US 83.54 for seat.
Brussels - Moscow = 229.5 Euros or $US 270.05 for shared cabin sleeper with 3 people
Moscow - Irkutsk = 3780.1 Rubles or $US 131.00 for shared cabin sleeper with 4 people
Irkutsk - U.B. = 1617.8 Rubles or $US 56.07 for shared cabin sleeper with 4 people
U.B. - Jining = 40580 Mongolian or $US 34.22 for shared cabin sleeper with 4 people
Jining - Beijing = 83 RMB or $US 10.26 for open dorm style sleeper (lower bunk)
Beijing - Hong Kong = 646 RMB or $US 79.87 for open dorm style sleeper (middle bunk)

From Ulaan Baator, my train journey took me to Jining, China, where I transfer to a train to Beijing, China.

The train ride from Ulaan Baator was okay. After calming myself after the event with the police in Ulaan Baator, I meet my new cabin mates. There is an elderly couple and their adult daughter. The daughter speaks French and Italian, so we can communicate to each other in French.

I learn that they are travelling to Hohhot in China to go to a hospital. I looked at her elderly parents, and decided not to enquire any more. Frankly, the train journeys were starting to wear on my emotional state, and I didn't think I could confront the concept of sick parents and mortality without breaking down.

The ride is nice enough. The Mongolians have brought a movable feast with them of bread, mutton, dumplings and berry preserve, which they share with me. It saves me from having to eat another bowl of reconstituted noodles.

We pass through the Gobi desert mostly. The desert is more rocky than sandy, I see a lot of gravel covered dirt with small tufts of dry looking grass. More wild horses are seen, as well as lots of cows and sheep. There are even a few camels. But it all passes by so quickly, and there is no chance to really examine the landscape.

We arrive in Jining, where I leave the train. Instead of the agent waiting for me with my ticket as I step off the train (as has usually happened), I have to wander the station to try and find the "Inter Tours" operator. I have a card with the name of the tour company written in Chinese, but no one seems to be able to assist me. Finally, a Chinese man approaches me (the only white face in the station) and hands me my ticket. Instead of the 8pm train I was expecting to receive, the ticket is for a 1:30 am train. I try and explain that I wanted the 8pm train, but the Inter Tours agent speaks no English, and I can't communicate my desires to him with mime.

Instead, I try and change the ticket at the various ticket offices around the station. I am told repeatedly I can't change the ticket, though why I am not sure. One lady seemed to indicate that I would have to buy a whole new ticket, another said it was because it was for a different day (the 8pm train was Nov 1, 1:30 in the morning would be Nov 2). Another lady said it was because I had a sleeper car, and the 8pm train didn't have sleeping cars. At least, that was my understanding of the sign language they indicated to me. No one spoke English.

I sat down in the station on the hard plastic orange chair, and got out my itinerary. At that moment, I noticed that my hotel in Beijing was booked for the 1st of November. But I wouldn't be arriving until the 2nd. I found a phone, and called the hotel. Luckily they spoke English, but said that there was nothing they could do. If I wanted to cancel a day on the reservation, I should have called 48 hours in advance. So I would have to pay for 3 days of hotel, even though I was only staying for 2 days. "Fantastic," I said to myself, sarcastically, and wandered out of the train station and onto the square in Jining.

I examined the scene in front of me. Lots of Chinese people hurried back and forth from building to building. A million watts of neon signs glowed in front of me, none of them with an English letter on them. I had 6 hours in Jining, but no Chinese money, no map and I couldn't find a left luggage office or lockers for my bags. The thought of trying to find a money exchange or ATM in Jinjing and not getting lost while dragging around my bag didn't feel that appealing, so I wandered back into the station and sat back down on the hard plastic chairs.

Everyone stared at me. I was the only white person in the station, and the Chinese didn't hide their fascination. I could feel all the eyes on me, and I hadn't showered or shaved in 8 days. I was alone in a strange place with no money. I tried to shrink in my chair, to hide from my situation. But there was no hiding from it.

A woman sat down across from me, eyes glassy from drugs or drink. She started to sing a mournful song. Soon the station attendants were surrounding her, telling her to keep quiet. Their voices echoed around the big, empty hall, harsh and unfriendly. Everyone stared at the confrontation. The woman continued her sad song, and started to cry. On the other side of the hall, a couple started arguing. The station floor was sticky and dirty. I wanted to be out of there. I wanted to be home.

• * *

If 8 days of train travel without showers had left any impression on me that there was any romance in train travel, the train from Jining to Beijing drained it from me.

Instead of the sleeper compartments I had on the rest of the journey, I was in an open dorm sleeper car, sharing space with 66 other people, stacked in beds three high. I was near the end of the car and the bathroom. All night people wander past me on their way to the squat toilet. The car started to smell like burning coal from the water heater, and the air became thick. The train creaked and shuttered all night, the door to the bathroom squeaked loudly. People shuffled and tossed in their beds. I hardly slept at all.

The train moved very slowly, covering a distance of 498 km in 9 hours. A plane would knock that out in an hour, a car in 5 or 6 hours. For a train with such utilitarian sleeping conditions, it didn't offer much in the way of utility as a method of travel.

The sun rose, and I stared out the window. Some amazing scenery was passing me by as we went in and out of long tunnels and mountain passes. I watched the great wall and temples flow by, but I couldn't care less. I just wanted to get to Beijing and be done with the train. This was no longer any fun, it was an incredible hassle, and I just wanted it to be over.