Slow train to Volgograd

So now you're starting to get the idea. Russian trains have two speeds: slow and stop. If the journey from Moscow to Samara was made pleasant and enjoyable by Tanya and her incessant chatter, the one from Samara to Volgograd was the complete opposite. There were already three people in the compartment when I got on the train, so I said hello and squeezed in. Russian trains have carriages with compartments of four bunks. Two on the bottom and, no surprises here, two at the top. Each comes with a thin bed roll that you use as a mattress and a pillow that can only be filled with coal, they really are that lumpy and hard. The provodnitsa - the woman who looks after the carriage - comes around with sheets and then you can make up your bed. In my compartment were two lads and a woman of about fifty. The lads said hi, the woman stared out the window as she continued to do for most of the next 20 hours.

As soon as the train starts out the station, there's the ritual changing of every day clothes into train clothes. The woman left while the two lads put on thier old t-shirts and trackies, and then we three left while she did the same. To while away the time, the lads did crossword puzzles they had bought at the station. I say they did them, what they actually did was frown, squint and then say the clue out loud. They did, give them their due, get one or two right, but if it hadn't been for the woman, they wouldn't have got much further. When they weren't doing the puzzles they were flicking through one of several well-thumbed Playboy magazines that they'd brought along with them, or were nibbling their way through about two pounds of sunflower seeds. I have never seen anyone eat so many in such a short time. When it came to making up the bunks, they both took so long to get it perfectly right, folding corners, tucking in, re-doing it to make it perfect, that the temptation to pull a corner out or move the pillow when they weren't in the compartment was very tempting.

In the morning everything was reversed. Again, turns were taken while people got dressed and the two lads transformed themselves from tracky-wearing slobs into dapper young men, complete with curly-toed shoes, designer sunglasses and more deodorant than is probably safe for your health. The woman turned herself from a narky old bag into a well dressed narky old bag and when we came into Volgograd station I was happy to see the back of them. The next train is not in second class, I couldn't get a ticket, so I have to travel third class. This could be fun, or it could be a nightmare, I guess I'll see, but the visa runs out on Sunday so I have to leave.

For the next few days I will be in Volgograd - or Stalingrad as it used to be known. My arrival coincided with torrential rain and a thunderstorm that knocked out all the tv channels - except, of course, for the crappiest Russian ones that show endless patriotic films about the war and about how good it was to leave in mortal terror under Joseph S. The good news is that rain stopped after bucketing down for 18 hours, the bad news is that the prom and any sign of a Volga beach is once again under three feet of water. Surely the Black Sea will have a beach I can laze about on?