Top 9 Posts: The Runner-Ups

I've written hundreds of posts during the five years Daily Suitcase has been in existence. But certain topics always seem to resonate with my dear readers. They include accounts of exotic excursions; my infatuation with Idaho;  my proclivity for punning; and rants against hackneyed travel writing. But by far the most popular post ever...and this is the naked truth...is the tale of going au naturel at a German spa.

But that's just a tease, because I am going to do my Top 9 countdown in reverse, in threesomes. Today, you get numbers seven, eight, and nine.

9. A Trans-Siberian Postscript: An account of  my adventures on the Russian rails.

Riding the Trans-Siberian Route
Along the Shores of Lake Baikal

Me in Front of the World's Largest
Lenin Head in Ulan Ude

St. Basil's Cathedral, Moscow

8. It's Just Another Manic Punday: Although I have recently started a #ManicPunday gabfest on Twitter (every other Monday from 12:30-1:00 PM EST....please join in), this success of this early quip of the same name astounds me. If you don't feel like clicking the link, below is the post in its entirety. 

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I have been staying at the Peabody Hotel in Orlando the past few days for a speaking gig at a travel industry conference. Inspired by the ducks that march through the lobby here on a daily basis, I present this week's Punday entry. Hope it quacks you up.

A duck walks into a bar.

He orders a Wild Turkey.

He asks the wader to put it on his bill.

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7. Go Directly to Jail:: I've been collecting international versions of Monopoly for 25 years. I have nearly 50 boards, but.those bought in Communist countries are my pride and joy. Yes, I have authentic 1980s versions of the game that celebrates capitalism at its most unscrupulous from Yugoslavia, Poland, and Romania. This post recounts tales of the chance discoveries.

One of Two Games Purchased
in Romania. Note the presidential
caricatures on the money.

In the next post, we shall move up the food chain. Expect stories from the Spud State 

and my beefs with bad travel writing.

To be continued ...

The Inside Track on Romance of the Rails

Here's an excerpt from my upcoming article for Emirates Open Skies Magazine.

There's something about long-distance train travel that conjures images of intrigue, mystery and romance. But why trains? Certainly, when you board a plane, you don't deign to imagine you will encounter a femme fatale or a mysterious masculine nomad in your row of seats. Certainly, when heading off on a 12-hour drive in a car, thoughts of rest-stop romances are the last thing on one's mind. But trains... Why is it almost a fait accompli that our minds expressly orient themselves to intrigue and enchantment upon embarking on an extended train trip?

Perhaps one can blame Dame Agatha Christie for this mysterious affair of perceived style. After all, she was among the first authors and auteurs of the 20th century to set a sweeping stumper on the rails. Murder on the Orient Express, published in 1934, is an enigmatic whodunit  (spoiler alert: the whole train dun it) starring Christie’s ace detective Hercule Poirot.  

Stepping on the bandwagon,  Ethel White followed  up with The Wheels Spin in 1936. The tale is more familiarly known as The Lady Vanishes, released by Alfred Hitchcock in film form in 1938. In the book, the heroine, suffering from heat exhaustion, discovers an elderly travel companion missing from the train. Adventure ensues. Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train (adapted from the Patricia Hightower book of the same name) has two passengers plotting criss-cross murders, whereby each is to knock off the other's bête noir. A more recent thriller-mystery set on a train is 2008's largely-overlooked Transsiberian. The film, starring Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer, adds modern-day gore to old-school mystery.

On the silver screen, though, romance on the rails often eclipses intrigue as a plot device. In many screenplays, young lovers meet on a train. There's 1995's Before Sunrise (the second sequel of which, Before Midnight, was released this summer). Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy hook up on a train, prefacing a 20-year odyssey of philosophizing and unapologetic profundity.  In Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959), Cary Grant's character encounters the mysterious Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint) on the 20th Century Limited from New York to Chicago. After adventures involving crop dusters, Tarascan statues, and Mount Rushmore, the two are seen together in an upper berth as their train zooms suggestively into a tunnel. THE END.

I often wonder how many of the creative types who have married romance and the rails have actually taken a lengthy train trip. Because if they did, perhaps some of the more fragile might end up like one Anna Karenina, who, at the end of her story, was literally wed to the tracks.   

As the aforementioned Transsiberian paints it,  the caravan plying the tracks between Beijing and Moscow is filled with babushkas and pensioners, assorted raggedy backpackers, dirty cops, and drug dealers.  On the Trans-Siberian (as I will stylistically refer to it) I traveled, I experienced nary a cop, dirty or otherwise, nor anyone trading in narcotics (not counting the train's doctor, that is). To clarify, though, rather than taking the "real" Trans-Siberian, the train on which one shares berths, baths, and board with Russian folk, I hopped one of the private excursion trains that has popped up post-Soviet Union.

Was there romance? Were there moments of transcendence?  Was there intrigue?  I won’t prematurely spill any beans, but I will say one lady (me) did temporarily vanish. Like the heroine of The Wheels Spin, I suffered from heat exhaustion prior to boarding the train. The malady struck in the Forbidden City. I headed to a Beijing hospital while the group headed to the train station.  I re-joined the group two days later in Mongolia, boarding the Trans-Siberian in Ulan Bator.

A Trans-Siberian Postscript

June 1
Washington, DC

Good Morning, Comrades. I am back in the US(S)A, after three weeks of adventure, absurdity, love, sickness, weight loss and innumerable travel tales.

In brief, here are a few highlights, in chronological order:

Part I (best forgotten)

A Great Wall
A Summer Palace
Heat exhaustion in the Forbidden City
An overnight at a Chinese hospital
The Chinngis Khaan Airpor/Ulan Bator at midnight
The Mongolian steppe
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Part II

My first step in Russia

A giant Lenin head in Ulan Ude

One of two odd encounters with bears

Wading in 30 degree Lake Baikal

Studying the Siberian countryside for hours a day
Studying Cyrillic one hour a day
More Lenin statues (full-size, but not life-size--dude was a midget)
Several babushkas
Countless Russian Orthodox churches
1 mosque
2 Kremlins
10 pounds lost weight
1 case of the flu
1 Red Square
0 Monopoly games

TaTa Siberia, Hello, Tatarstan

Friday, Kilometre 780
Kazan, Tatarstan

After passing the divide between Asia and Europe in the midst of nightfall, we arrive in the capital of the Tatar capital of Kazan one and a half hours late. However, as we have a full day's program here, the relatively short delay causes no distress.

Despite this being our first official stop in the European part of Russia, it feels like we are still in Asia....or perhaps the Middle East. Muslims, who first came to this city in 925 AD, live peacefully side by side with their Russian Orthodox neighbors, as their houses of worship, located in the city's massive Kremlin, compete for attention.

A couple of notable occurrences here in Kazan--I had my first complete conversation in Russian. It went like this:
Me: Kak Delat? (How are you?)
Androgynous Andrei the Local Tour Guide: XopaIIIo (Harasho--Good). Kak delat?
Me: XopaIIIo.

That's it.

We were also regaled with music. At the retro Karavalle restaurant, we were treated to videos of Tom Jones from the 1970s and Madonna circa 1983. Afterwards, a visit to a music school provided the backdrop for a delightful series of impressive performances from young virtuosos. The 10-year-old violinist stole the show, but the other strings, the pianists, and the reeds were equally refined. It was lovely to sit back and listen to the classical music, without worrying about taking pictures or running the video camera. That said, I did capture a few snippets.

Finally, we saw the ubiquitous Lenin statue. In the Lenin slept here category, Kazan's claim to fame is a classic case of foreshadowing. The great revolutionary was expelled from Kazan University for his rebellious ways.

And now, ta ta Tatarstan. On to Moscow.

Tsarry, Tsarry Nights

Thursday Night, 9 PM (again)
Ekaterinburg, 1814 Kilometres

After more delays, totaling five hours, we reach Ekaterinburg or Yekatinburg at 9 in the evening. This time, though, we can actually see it. It doesn't get dark here until 11:30 PM.

Although still on the Asian side of the Urals, this is a very European city. People are fashionably-dressed, in terms of what passes as fashionable here (shorts worn with hose; many women sport stilettos, but unlike the Italians, they haven't quite mastered the art of walking without wobbling). 20-somethings are skateboarding, and at sunset, young lovers stroll the romantic walkway lining the city pond. It seems a very modern city, despite that fact that during the Cold War, the presence of the military and weapons manufacturing made this a closed city over which Boris Yeltsin presided in the late 1970s and early 1980s. At the time, it was called Sverdlovsk, named after one of Lenin's right-hand men.

The country's fourth largest city is best known for its pivotal role in 20th century Russian history. Nicholas II, the last tsar of Russia, was exiled here with his family after being deposed. The Bolsheviks then knocked off the last of the Romanovs here in 1918.

In the ultimate display of Catholic guilt, Nicholas was canonized after the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. The impressive Church upon the Blood was built in 2003 as a form of repentance, confession, and remembrance.

The pcitures above: That resembling the Washington Monument is an unfinished television tower. Its claim to fame is that it is the world's tallest unfinished TV tower. The green building serves at Vladimir Putin's home away from home when he visits Ekaterinburg, which happens about every other year.

Are We There Yet?

The next two posts are marked with the days they were written. However, no Internet connection has been available for nearly three days, so I am uploading them on Friday in Kazan. We are less than 900 kilometres from Moscow.

Wednesday, 5185 Kilometres: Today is the first long slog of this Trans-Siberian adventure and it's getting sloggier by the minute. Actually, the slog started yesterday at noon, when we boarded the train after an overnight at the Courtyard by Marriott (really) in Irkutsk. In the afternoon, there was an entertaining and educational vodka tasting, followed by rest and dinner.

Because we set clocks back two hours before bedtime, we had extra time to sleep in...to the point where when the figurative breakfast bell rang at 7:30, we were all ready to eat. We were then informed that, in addition to the two new hours gained in this time zone, we had fallen behind three hours overnight due to something or other on a bridge. I didn't really get it. But the bottom line is that our next excursion off the train... a visit to the drab Siberian capital of Novosibirsk...would be delayed from 4:00 to 7:00PM. It didn't seem like a big deal at the time, but as the day wore on, we got further and further behind schedule. Getting to this industrial center seemed to be becoming a pipe dream.

At 7 PM, our original departure time FROM Novosibirsk, we were informed that construction...or a derailment...or something...had caused a traffic jam on the tracks. But we would arrive in Novosibirsk..'round about 9 PM. We should be there any minute....or not.

That said, spending today, of all days, train-bound wasn't such a bad thing. For one, it's been raining all day. For two, the germs festered by Typhoid Marty, who had been hacking into the communal food since Day 1, had now reared its head in many of our throats. Third, my period came....of course. So, all in all, if 35 hours straight had to be spent on the train, this was one of the better times to do so.

After our stop tonight, our next stretch is scheduled for 21 hours. I shall write more during that time....about Novosibirsk, the Siberian Tea Party (not affiliated with the American political wingnuts), and about good housekeeping.