Author: Tejicano

After about a week in Saint Petersburg we boarded our train for Moscow – Sonia seeing us off at the platform. She mentioned that she would contact friends of hers in Moscow who would help us there. When we arrived in the station in Moscow a few hours later Sonia’s friends were not only waiting at the station – they were waiting on the platform and got on the train to be sure they found us immediately. Zasha was there with her daughter, Galina, who spoke excellent English (but confessed that she was studying French, which she preferred). We asked them if they could help us find a hotel – and they immediately told us we were staying with them.

We had two days before our train to Beijing departed. During that time Galina graciously acted as our tour guide, showing us around her hometown and explaining much of ordinary life in Russia.

On the morning of our planned departure Zasha called the main train station to find out that our train would be delayed by 24 hours. We were told this was not uncommon in Russia. The following morning, after confirming that the train was scheduled to depart, we went to the government bread factory to complete our provisions for the trip. We bought three loaves of warm, freshly baked bread. This was obviously a fixture from the Soviet era – a large factory with a tiny shop in front. There was only one type of bread; round domes about the size of half of a soccer ball, brown and delicious. This was the only product the factory made. We paid the equivalent of 7 cents a loaf.

We got to the train station, found our train, and located our berth. We had two beds in a small berth which had four beds in it. When we got there our new room-mates – two Chinese men with a couple of their accomplices – had already started filling the room with bundles of their cargo. They closed and locked the door for about 20 minutes after which most of their bags and bundles were nowhere to be seen. They had obviously removed the panels of the walls then stashed everything in the wall spaces.

Late in the morning our train finally began our journey across the continent. The ride would last 6 days with only a couple short stops (about 20 minutes) every day. At every stop the Chinese, not just our room-mates but all other Chinese on the train (about a dozen of them), would hold various goods, mostly clothing, outside the windows where local people would come and bid for one thing or another. Old Babushkas buying baby clothes obviously either for grandchildren or for people they knew who might need such items. Younger women buying men’s socks for husbands or brothers. Scarves, underwear, sweaters… There was always a brisk business going on at the windows. It seemed pretty clear that the Russian economy was not providing enough clothing to the hinterlands.

When you are on a train ride for several days there is very little to do. You end up meeting every person on the train who you share a language with. The only exception was the Chinese who seemed to be purely focused on their track-side business and smuggling. I met two Japanese college students who had traveled west along the silk road and were now heading back east towards home. At one of the stops, on a lark, one of the Japanese sold a plain, grey t-shirt he had bought in Pakistan for 50 cents and tripled his money.

The English speaking group coalesced into nine people – a couple Aussies, three Kiwis, a Brit, a Hungarian who was studying in the UK, Frank and myself. We generally spent our evening talking, swapping food items for a little variety, and drinking the cheap vodka which was plentiful.

A couple people had a guidebook for the train line. Each stop was detailed but there was little to distinguish one from another except for the stop near Lake Baikal. Lake Baikal contains one fifth of the world’s fresh water. The book recounted a legend about this lake. According to the legend, if you put your hands in the lake you will live one more year longer. If you put your head in the lake you will live five years longer. If you put your entire body in to lake you will live twenty-five years longer.

So a group of us decided to form the Lake Baikal Swimming Club. The train was scheduled to stop for 20 minutes at a village on the lake. It was supposed to be a five minute walk from the station to the lake. So we figured that if we were prepared before the train stopped we would have time to run to the lake, jump in, and get back to the train on time. On the morning we were scheduled to stop near the lake we all got into swimming shorts, flip-flops or sandals, and waited for the train to stop. Once the train stopped we all ran off into the village towards the lake. People seeing us knew exactly what was going on and pointed the way through the village. We all jumped in – stopping only to drop a couple cameras on the shore – and got submerged. Triumphant, we got a couple pictures and then quickly ran back to the train.

As the sun was about to set that afternoon, we approached the Mongolian border leaving Russia. Stopped at the border crossing, a couple Russian soldiers worked their way through the train, checking passports. As Frank and I had been scheduled to depart Moscow a day earlier our Russian transit visas had expired the previous day. The soldiers motioned for us to follow them.

Leaving our bags on the train we followed the soldiers off the train and towards a large, military compound as the sun was setting. Imagine the way a Soviet era Army fort on the Mongolian border would be depicted in a Spielberg movie and you probably have a good idea what we were walking into. Add to this the fact that trains only pass through that area a few times a week. I had wild images of being told, through a few curt words, that we were being detained while watching the train depart with our bags.

We were guided through a wide corridor in a concrete building to a large, wood desk where an officer was seated. We handed over our passports which he looked through for a minute or so, perfunctorily stamped our exit permits, and sent us back to the train.

So the train trudged on through Mongolia – which, much like something once read, did look very much like driving through New Mexico. I had always wanted to see Mongolia as it once ruled most of the known world. But our schedule would not allow us to leave the train for more than a few minutes at each infrequent stop.

Eventually we reached the border with China where the rail gauge changes. At this point they had to change out the “bogies” – the wheel/axel/suspension assemblies which each car rides on – because the rails in China are narrower than the rails in Mongolia and Russia the “bogies” have to be changed on every car. This process takes a few hours and as Murphy would have it my bowels chose that point in time to require evacuation.

I found it necessary to broach this subject with one of the train attendants since using the facilities on the train would have dumped my efforts right on the tracks below. After a quick discussion between the train attendant and one of the local crew they told me I could use the facilities in the Chinese government office.

I made my way down the indicated corridor in the dark (did I mention that by this time it was near midnight?) of a deserted building and I entered the door marked “male” in Chinese. The light switch on the wall did nothing so I fished a book of matches out of my bag. Fuck, only four matches left. When I struck the first match the scene I beheld was something Dante could not have described properly. On either side of the wide, elongated room in front of me was a row of bays, each one housing a squat toilet with overflow running in gutters from each bay to a central trough where it all supposedly would empty into an undersized central drain hole. Maybe the participants were supposed to have a bucket of water to effect this process but I saw no evidence that this idea had ever been considered by many. Second match – I looked into a few bays trying to find one which would leave less excrement on my shoes than I needed to disgorge myself. Third match – making a snap decision on the closest bay since there seemed to be no optimal choice and my bowels weren’t going to wait much longer. Last match – can I get my trousers off in here (without soiling them on my surroundings) and over my shoulder fast enough while perching my feet on top of my shoes? Darkness.

Mission accomplished, I made my way back to the train happy that I had brought a roll of toilet paper since that innovation did not seem to have yet made it to the residents of my current location – the local custom apparently being to use your finger and smear it on the wall. The term “third world shithole” took on a whole new and vivid meaning for me after that.

On the final leg over the following couple days we could see parts of the Great Wall in the distance, sometime only a few hundred yards away. We were all looking forward to showers and a warm meal for a change.

When we arrived in Beijing, the nine English speaking passengers had decided to find a hotel with a suite big enough for us all to share. At that time there were plenty of hotels catering to backpackers with cheap and simple accommodations. The room was large enough with enough furniture for everybody to have a space, some on beds, some on sofas or upholstered chairs. Split nine ways it only cost each of us about $1.75 per night.

I had studied Mandarin in undergrad and also had backpacked through China 5 years previously so it turned out I was the only one of our group who could communicate in Chinese. Every evening our group would go out for dinner together at any one of the many cheap restaurants – usually seating us at a table on the sidewalk in front. I would handle ordering the food and drinks which would cost between $1.20 and $1.80 per head – including a bottle or two of beer for each of us. One evening we splurged, arranging for our favorite restaurant to prepare Peking Duck (requiring an advance order), which cost a bit more than $2 each.

I needed to change some traveler’s checks into Chinese cash so we went to a bank to arrange this service. This transaction was a convoluted process involving 5 different people at different desks around the bank office and took more than an hour to complete. At the bank I met another American who was there for the same service. During our conversation he related that he had been running a successful real estate business in Texas. One morning he was heading into the office and it hit him that he had no real reason to continue working his life away. He skipped the office, went to his lawyer’s office instead and started the process of selling his business and putting the proceeds – about $20 million – into a trust. That had been a few years before. He had been backpacking around Asia, living simple and cheap, paying everything with a credit card which the trust paid off every month. He said that when he and his Filipina traveling companion got tired of roughing it they would check in to a 5-star hotel for a week or two of comfortable living.

Frank and I had planned to take the train from Beijing to Hong Kong but when we went to buy tickets we found that there were none available for the next 3 days. So we got the tickets which were available and resigned ourselves to staying in Beijing for a few more days. We mentioned this to our group back at the hotel and one Aussie couple asked me to help them buy tickets on the same train to Hong Kong. Speaking Chinese was a requirement for buying a ticket – otherwise you had to go through a tour agency which would significantly add to the cost.

During the days our group broke up into smaller groups, each having different interests and sights to see. I skipped the major tourist attractions – the Great Wall and the Forbidden City – to rent a bicycle for the day for the equivalent of a dollar and just go where the crowds were and wander through the marketplaces. I had much more interest in just seeing how the average citizen, er, comrade lived. Cars were still an unusual luxury in Beijing and there were thousands of bicycles everywhere.

Chinese trains at the time had four seating classes; hard seats, soft seats, hard sleepers, and soft sleepers. We had opted for hard sleepers since the journey was only a couple days – too long to be sitting the whole way but not long enough to justify the cost for the soft sleepers.

On the morning of our train I flagged down a mini-van taxi in front of our hotel. The first order of business was to negotiate the service and the rate. Metered taxis did not yet exist – and if they did no driver would have one, preferring the chance to negotiate a better rate. I explained that we had a lot of luggage and had to go to the main train station and I said how much we would pay. We haggled a little on the price and came to an agreement.

The four of us piled in with all our luggage – barely leaving enough room to breathe – and rode to the station. Well, we had expected to get to the station but about 500 yards from the station the driver pulled over and told us we had arrived. He obviously wanted to drop us there now so he could get into the back of the long line of taxis slowly snaking up to the station. I told him we agreed to pay him to take us to the station, not for part of the way, and we wouldn’t pay him if he didn’t fulfill his end of the deal. He refused to drive any further so I warned him that we wouldn’t pay if we had to walk the rest of the way. He dug in his heels so I explained to my friends what was going on and told them to get out and go in different directions to the station – which we did. The driver was pissed but couldn’t figure which of us he should chase and we all got away clean.

We met up at the main entrance and then found our way to the train platform. We boarded the train and found our assigned bunks. The bunks were very basic with only enough room to lie down – sitting up was not an option. There was a curtain you could pull across the open space to afford a little privacy for changing clothes.

Our Australian friends had found a small, porcelain water fixture in the car and filled their canteens and drank from it. While the water may have been potable, the next morning they saw an aged Chinese man standing at the water fixture, using a dirty rag to wipe off his crotch and rinsing it in the small basin. They ended up discarding their canteens and buying bottled water at one of the stops.

We arrived in Shenzen and transferred to another train to take us to Hong Kong. Hong Kong was still a British colony but there were many more mainlanders there compared to my experience five years previous.

Most people who had any means had already left or had set up residences and passports elsewhere but would come back to run their businesses in Hong Kong. We met a few Hongkong Chinese who didn’t have enough of a fortune to get out but were well-to-do enough to be worried about how they could hold on to their living standard after the handover.

Hong Kong was still a first world city with goods and venues in all price ranges. Luckily for us there were accommodations available in our price range so we didn’t have to blow too much of our remaining cash there.

In 1949 Mao had purposely spared Hong Kong not just because he didn’t want to create friction with the UK – expecting he would get it in the long run anyway – but mostly because he wanted an international port he could use to smuggle hard currency, gold, and high value goods through when necessary.

From Hong Kong my friend Frank took a boat to Taiwan while I caught a flight for Bangkok. But that’s another story.

With our trail to Beijing established, we enjoyed a couple weeks in Prague while Sonia was getting paperwork for her van prepared and we visited the embassies of the countries which required visas for us to transit or visit. Sonia had to go with us to the Russian embassy as she was our sponsor. Whenever we visited the Russian embassy Sonia would wear a long wig – something I never fully understood. I believe her short hairstyle was probably unusual to most Russians and in dealing with officials being unusual was something that could impede normal consideration of your request.

In part of this process she was dealing with one guy at the embassy to whom we paid a “transaction fee” – Sonia claimed that he was one of a number of former KGB agents who had secured positions at every embassy in a network which operated within but separate from the official Russian government.

After we had decided our course – driving up through Poland into Russia – whenever we were out meeting people and talking about our plans the first thing half of them asked us was “Do you have a gun?” Answering in the negative, a few times we were asked “Do you want to buy one?” I did follow up with one of these offers just to find out what options I might have. When the deal turned out to be an Uzi for US$1,500 (never having seen the equipment) I declined – mostly because I couldn’t afford that much for a gun I expected to be tossing in a dumpster or a river before leaving Russia.

While we were in Prague, Frank and I would sometimes take care of Vadim while we were touring the city. Since neither Frank nor I had any ability in Czech, Vadim would translate for us – Japanese being our common language. Of course every time we did this the person Vadim was talking with would ask what language he was speaking with me. Half the time when he told them they would laugh incredulously. The other half would sternly tell him to stop lying and give a straight answer. Vadim, like most children his age, was a language sponge and after about ten days hanging out around us had collected a small vocabulary of English words and was starting to put together basic sentences.

One afternoon we were hanging out with some friends of Sonia’s at their apartment and it was decided that we should have some refreshments. We all kicked in some cash and gave that and a bucket to Vadim who went to the bar next door and came back with a bucket of excellent Czech beer.

One evening out in Prague with Frank and Jack I was the designated driver. Heading back to Jack’s apartment well after midnight, I was stopped at a traffic light behind two other cars waiting to make a right turn. After the two cars turned I waited for a break in oncoming traffic and turned. A police car turned on its lights and pulled me over. The cop came up to my window and in broken English told me I had made an illegal turn. He asked me how much I had been drinking – to which I replied “nothing.” He told me the fine was US$50 which I could pay now. I told him I didn’t have any money on me. He told me to go to a hotel just down the street and use my credit card. I said I had tried that earlier and they wouldn’t do it for me.

I had no reason to believe that the Czech authorities would be rough or overly zealous in attempting to squeeze a bribe out of a backpacker who had not really broken any laws. And I didn’t have a schedule to adhere to, didn’t have to be on a plane in a week, or a job waiting for me to get back to. $50 was more money than I could afford to just hand over – even if I did have it on me – so I figured I would wait and see where being patient got me. The cop was standing there, watching other cars go by which he could be pulling over and hitting up while traffic would soon be dwindling down due to the late hour. He looked down at me and said “You go” then turned away and got in his car.

After two thoroughly enjoyable weeks in Prague it was time to get on the road and start our drive. We took an early morning train to Bratislava where Sonia’s van had been getting some body work done – the first evidence that she wasn’t kidding about not being a good driver. We arrived just after dawn and a couple of Sonia’s friends drove her van to the station to meet us. We piled our bags and Sonia’s luggage into the van and I got behind the wheel.

Sonia’s van – an older model Toyota Lite Ace – still had the Japanese plates on it. And being a Japanese car the steering wheel was on the right-hand side – but streets in the European mainland are driven on the right-hand side so driving it took a little getting used to. The paperwork had been certified in Slovakia by a clerk who I would bet my right testicle had no idea what was on the original Japanese registration other than the letters and numbers. Sonia had sourced two military style steel gasoline cans – very similar to the 5 gallon variety used by US troops. We would need these because it was harvest season which meant that gasoline would be a rare commodity once we got to Russia. Some aspects of the Soviet economy were still in effect which meant that certain resources were reserved for industries which would not function without them.

The trip, driving up from Slovakia through the Czech Republic and Poland, was uneventful. Getting stopped by police five or six times during the one day we drove through Poland became routine. One time, after the cop had handed back our passports and vehicle registration Sonia translated his incredulous exclamation – “Russian mother, Czech boy, American drivers, Japanese plates – this is so strange it has to be legit!”

The Russian border at Brest was a different story. We got there just as the sun was setting and stopped behind a sedan with Polish plates. The line of cars and trucks stretched back at least a mile and a half from the checkpoint and was moving at a pace so slow we would sit for about 20 minutes before starting the engine and moving 20 or 30 feet before stopping again. That stop-and-go pace never changed through the entire night.

All night small groups of people would come up and knock on a window, offering a better spot in line ahead for eighty or ninety Deutsche marks. It was an eerie, surreal setting. Everybody seemed to be on edge, unsure what to expect but knowing that no surprises here would be good ones. Both Sonia and Frank, who had chided me for carrying pepper spray and two large combat knives in my backpack, each asked if I would lend them a weapon until we got through the border.

Frank and I had manned the driver’s seat all night from the point when we lined up to cross the border and both of us had been up keeping an eye out for the roving groups passing by in the dark. We finally got through the checkpoint just after dawn and drove on into a bright day in wide, open fields on a straight, well paved highway. Neither of us had slept much at all so we asked Sonia if she could drive for about an hour so we could get some rest. Understanding our condition but not wanting to stop where we were right then, she reluctantly agreed to drive.

I promptly fell asleep in the front passenger seat while Sonia drove. She was doing 120 KPH (about 75 MPH) as we had discussed earlier – partly to make good time to our destination and partly to avoid bandits. About 20 minutes later I was rudely awakened by a loud thumping. Startled awake I found myself where I would otherwise have expected to be driving the car I was in – left-hand front seat on the right side of the road – as we were sailing through a small, scattered flock of sheep at 75 MPH with the ones in our path being ejected off the road and splattering on the pavement. Instinctively I jammed my foot where the brake pedal should have been as I flailed wildly for the steering wheel which wasn’t there.

“I didn’t know what to do!” exclaimed Sonia. “Looks like the sheep didn’t know what to do either,” I replied. We pulled over and checked out the situation. There were 7 dead and dying sheep along the road and a minor dent just below the van’s bumper along with a few smears of blood and sheep shit. Luckily there was no damage to anything functional on the vehicle.

Sonia counselled – “If we wait here the shepherds will expect us to pay them a lot of money because you are foreigners. The police will also need bribes to keep from charging us with traffic violations. We’d better keep moving.” There were no people or even buildings in sight so there was little reason to think that anybody but us were yet aware of what had happened so I started the engine and got back on the road.

We only slowed down every hour or two when the road took us through a village. Passing through the villages we would pull over so Sonia could ask people if they knew where we could buy gasoline. We had one can left with less than half a tank in the van so we weren’t desperate yet but knew that we were better off filling up if we could find a chance.

Passing through a town a bit after noon we found somebody who knew where we could get some gas. Sonia got the directions to a garage which we located outside the town so we stopped while she spoke with the people there. Sonia came back to the van, “They don’t have any gas here right now but they will bring us some.” We talked briefly and understood that this was our best offer so we were resigned to wait. We ate a lunch from some provisions we had brought and waited. It was close to three hours before we heard the truck rumble up outside and we were able to top off the tank and fill the empty jerry can.

A couple hours after gassing up we were passing through open fields punctuated by broken clusters of trees. The road rose and fell slightly with the terrain. I was driving as we came into another open space – about 200 yards across. About halfway across I zipped past three sedans off on the other side of the road parked and facing the direction we came from. There were six or seven armed guys – one of them nonchalantly holding up an AKSU-74 (short-barreled Kalashnikov) as casual as if it was an umbrella. Glancing in the rear-view mirror after I passed them I saw them burst into an excited exchange, some of them obviously wanting to pursue us but the others seeming accept that they couldn’t get turned around and up to speed in time to have a chance of catching us. They couldn’t afford to waste gasoline for an unknown bounty. Saved by pure luck.

At early twilight we reached Pskov. We paused as Sonia asked an older gentleman for directions to the police station. As he raised his arm to point the way his jacket lifted, exposing a Tokarev T-33 (semi-auto handgun) tucked into his belt. It seemed perfectly normal and I doubt he cared whether we saw it or not.

By the time we got to the police station it was dark. We had been driving hard all day after a bizarre, restless night before that so we all needed sleep. But there was no safe place to leave the van unattended so we parked it in front of the police station under a street light and slept in our seats. I was so tired I slept soundly until sunrise.

At sunrise we woke up, started the engine, and got back on the road. We pulled into Saint Petersburg well before noon and Sonia directed us to her mother’s place – an apartment in a brick, Soviet era building just outside the center of town. We unloaded the van and carried everything up to the apartment – with friends of Sonia’s waiting and watching the van. After that we drove directly to a secure storage area. Imagine an area of about three acres surrounded by a wall of angle iron and sheet metal 12 feet high – topped with double concertina wire. The wall was obviously not just to keep others from getting into the area but also to keep them from even seeing what was in there so they couldn’t know if it was worth breaching the wall to get in.

Back from the perimeter inside the lot were posts with enough light fixtures to make the interior bright as day after sundown. The guards were well armed and the night patrol dogs were kept in a caged off area during the daytime. Sonia had to pay to store her vehicle there but that was the only option if she wanted to keep it long enough to sell and get her money out of it.

That evening, in a conversation with Sonia’s mother (with Sonia translating for us) her mother related that Russians believed that freedom meant freedom to commit crime and everybody was out to get money or any goods they could, however they could.

Frank had always made a dinner every time we were given a place to stay and this time was no exception. The problem was finding ingredients. The old Soviet distribution system was unevenly sputtering along with major gaps in availability of just about everything. Whenever something did show up the news was spread by word of mouth and people would mob the central store.

In the week or so we spent in Saint Petersburg there was no news of new produce or goods arriving. We went there to see what was available. Walking into the central store your senses were assaulted with the stench of rotting vegetation like being hit in the face with a 2X4. You had to fight from gagging as you walked between the empty shelves. The place was as big as an American small town grocery store. There were a few piles of nasty looking potatoes and some unidentifiable goods in cans and jars. That was all.

The next day we went to a specialty store which was where expats went for their needs. This was a small but well-stocked shop filled with imported goods. The prices were beyond anything most Russians could even dream about. We got most of what we needed but paid about double the price we would have were this back in the US.

In my travels around the world I find food stores to be an indicator of the level and health of the local economy. Less developed countries have less to offer – mostly local produce or meat, a small number of packaged/processed products, and few imported items. Poorly functioning economies often lack numerous basics. In the larger cities there are often imported goods shops catering to foreigners – at exorbitant prices. We bought some spices and vegetables which we took back to make dinner.

Walking back to Sonia’s home from the subway station we saw a truck parked on the side of the road and a guy was selling beer from the back. The bottles were bundled 8 in a small cardboard crate, some with labels half-applied and some without. I bought a crate which we put in the fridge for dinner. Later, when we sampled this brew we found it unpalatable with a heavy chemical aftertaste and poured it down the drain for Sonia’s mother to use the bottles later.

We spent our days seeing the sights of the city – a highlight being the Hermitage. This museum holds many famous works of art – quite a few which I expect anybody would recognize immediately.

As we were walking near the main port one day I saw a Ford Model T parked in a small space outside a tiny, old warehouse – the blue-and-silver “Ford” insignia on the radiator having been replaced with a hammer and sickle.

One day we went to an open air car market. This was nothing more than a strip along a major road with enough of open land on either side where people could park their vehicles with hand-lettered “For Sale” signs stating prices. There were all varieties of car and truck from all over the globe. I noted a late-’70s Trans Am still bearing Wisconsin plates. From what we saw, Sonia figured she could triple what she had invested so far. I very briefly considered the idea of repeating what she had done – buy vehicles in Japan and sell them in Russia – but the uncertainty and risk of getting them there with both the vehicles and our anatomies intact didn’t seem to be a viable proposition.

Sonia’s mother worked in an office affiliated with the government transportation bureau and was able to secure tickets at Russian prices – about US$180 each – for a bunk on the Trans-Siberian Railway from Moscow to Beijing. We knew this was a good deal but had no idea how good until we met our fellow passengers after departing from Moscow. Most tourists purchasing these same tickets through tour agents in the various first world countries paid well over $800 for a bunk from Moscow to Beijing.

Soon we would be leaving St. Petersburg, boarding the first of a series of trains which would eventually get us to our final destination on the continent.

Editor’s Note: This morning’s post is from Tejicano, who really needs this time spot to be able to participate. The Old Guy is sleeping it off in!

It was 1993 and I had just finished grad school and was leaving the US for life overseas for an undetermined period of time. Japan was to be the end point of my travels but I was up for anyplace interesting where I could find work. Expecting that when I reached my end destination I would probably be returning to the life of a corporate working dog I knew that if I was ever going to see the world this would be my best chance.

The Soviet empire had just recently collapsed – this great, wide expanse of land on the map which for all of my life to that point had been beyond reach was now available to explore. Countries and cities which had only been referred to in spy movies were now becoming tourist destinations for those adventurous enough to find a way there. To me it was like the world was beckoning and I was itching to answer the call. I had travelled to China five years before and that gave me a taste for backpacking – traveling with only an outline of an itinerary and finding the way en route.

This was back in the dark ages before e-mail and the internet. Credit cards were not useful anywhere outside of the most developed countries and ATM’s were not yet connected across international borders. You carried traveler’s cheques and exchanged them for local currency when required.

Information about travel was gleaned from word-of-mouth, articles and advertisements in travel magazines, or tips from publications like Lonely Planet which was the gold standard for backpackers. International phone calls were expensive and unreliable – quite often you would end up listening to a recording in the local language which wasn’t very useful if you didn’t have some level of fluency in that language.

A friend of mine had very similar wayfaring aspirations so we determined a reasonable plan to make our way from western Europe across the Eurasian continent to the islands of north Asia. Frank would be leaving a couple months ahead of me and visiting friends he knew around the Iberian peninsula before heading to the recently reunited Germany where we would rendezvous. First, I would be driving my pick-up truck from Arizona going east across the US with stops in South Dakota and Kentucky, and then selling it when I reached the east coast.

My vehicle was a 1971 Ford F-150 which I had upgraded with a 351 Windsor V-8, headers and dual, 2” exhausts. It had an oversized radiator and three gas tanks – the main behind the seat and one on either side below the bed ahead of the rear tires. With a four-speed transmission and a stick shift it was a delight cruising the highways in it.

For this kind of solo road trip across the US I felt armament would be mandatory – so in preparation I visited a gun show where, for $150, I procured a Mossberg 12 gauge pump with an 18” barrel and a pistol grip. That would ride in a soft case behind the seat – or under the seat when I had any reason to think it might be useful during that day’s or evening’s agenda.

Figuring that I would not be back in any part of the US for a number of years I paid no attention to speed limits. I figured I would collect as many speeding tickets as possible and put them in my scrapbook for the trip. As I expected not to return before the statute of limitations on the tickets expired I saw it as a “license to speed”. As these things usually go, I wasn’t pulled over once.

I drove from Arizona to my home town, El Paso, to see family and friends there. I spent a few days catching up with friends during which I did a quick trip to Juarez mostly to pick up a case of Mexican beer to share with cousins up north. In this case my selection was Tecate mostly because it was the only beer available in cans and as I had to carry it by hand back across the border so bottles were out. Driving across the border was something few people did anymore. Car theft had become too much of a risk and I could not afford to be losing my truck at the beginning of my trip.

I pulled away from my family home early on a Summer’s morning and made my way to the highway. It took a couple days to reach relatives up in South Dakota. I had not seen many of my cousins in years so I spent the better part of a week staying with one family or another – all on my mother’s side. But the road was beckoning and I had to say my goodbyes, gas up, and find a highway.

I stopped in Minnesota to see some family on my father’s side. Once again, it had been years since I had been up there and so I spent most of a day and an evening visiting.

After the Midwest I had some friends in Kentucky to see and so I drove down through Chicago, heading south. After a short stop near Ft. Knox I headed eastward. When I hit Charlotte, I had been on the road for a couple weeks and was feeling tired. There was plenty of daylight left but I decided that I could miss my scheduled stop for that day and found a motel. After checking in I ran out for some fast food and a six-pack. I holed up in the room and just relaxed watching TV. The short break from driving was just what I needed.

As I drove through Virginia, which I considered the last zone where the presence of my 12 gauge companion might not get me into more trouble than it was worth, I pulled into a small town gun shop and sold my shotgun for $90. I figured the $60 I lost was well worth the peace of mind it had brought me along the way.

When I got to the east coast I headed to Maryland where I had family. I spent my last week of living in the US locating a few last minute items, getting information from different embassies, and selling my truck.

There was a company called Airhitch which had advertisements in travel magazines. They offered extremely low-priced transportation to and from Europe. My recollection isn’t clear but I believe I paid $175 for a one-way leg from the US east coast to a city in Europe. The way it worked was you paid them the set fee for a voucher to travel on an aircraft leaving from the US east coast to Europe – the locations were not fixed. When Airhitch got your payment they mailed a letter to you with your voucher and a number to call. You called the phone number, told them your name and your code from the voucher, and they would tell you which origin-destination options were available on which days. For instance, they might have seats on a Newark to London flight on Tuesday, WDC to Vienna on Thursday, and Boston to Frankfort on Friday. You pick the option that works best for you. In my case they had a JFK to Paris flight close to the day I wanted to be going so I opted for that. They gave me the gate number, departure time, airline, and flight number. Of course, on departure day when I arrived at the airport there was no flight scheduled from that gate but there were a half-dozen Airhitch flyers like me and we eventually got the company on the phone and found out where to go. The airline was an African-based company which I had not heard of before but I had a seat on it and that’s all that mattered.

I arrived in Paris on the morning of a perfect Summer day. I wanted to get to Germany as quickly as possible but needed to maximize my funds so I booked an overnight train with a sleeping car – as it was cheaper than riding the train to Berlin during the day and then paying for somewhere to sleep that night. It also gave me a day to see a little of Paris.

I bought a small lunch from a bread shop, found an empty bench on a charming little street, and sat down to enjoy my day. My backpack was an Army surplus ALICE pack and with all my gear it weighed a bit more than 50 lbs. I spent the day nibbling on my lunch, checking my plans and making some notes, and reading a book. As evening came on I packed up and headed back to the train station. On the way I stopped to pick up something to eat on the train. I had no problem finding the platform and boarded my train when it arrived.

The train arrived in Berlin at 07:00 AM. I started looking for a place to stay and began calling three phone numbers Frank gave me. By this point in time Frank had expected to be staying with any one of three friends he had in Germany and I was to call them to find him. It turned out that none of his friends were at home during the daytime – and I wasn’t finding much success contacting anybody. I got a bed at a youth hostel – hotels were way out of my budget – and did some looking around the city.

On the morning of the third day in Berlin I reached Frank at his friend’s house in a small city in southeast Germany. His friends invited me to stay there so I got my backpack, bought a train ticket, and headed south.

After a couple days with his friends, Frank and I were back in Berlin. Frank had a small two-person tent which helped us keep our costs down – although campgrounds in Germany proved to be only a little cheaper than youth hostels. The Summer of 1993 was unseasonably cold – and packing in Arizona in June gave me no concept that I would need a sweater any time soon. I had to find a camping store to buy a fleece jacket and a sleeping pad for insulation from the cold ground.

Crossing the line where the border between east and west Berlin used to be was still obvious – not only were the buildings and construction starkly different in case you didn’t recognize that there was a tripod constructed of three BMP’s (Soviet Fighting Vehicles) painted in bright graffiti stacked upright along the side of the tracks as you entered former East Berlin.

After a few days of seeing the sights we took a train down to Prague were my friend Jack was living – working for a Dutch company. Jack had an apartment and a car and had offered to put us up while we were there. We hung out and were introduced to Jack’s social circle – a group of various expats of many nationalities. Jack, being a proper polyglot, had a wide social circle spanning a few languages but most of his acquaintances spoke English as well.

Jack introduced us to Sonia who was a Russian researcher who had recently returned from 3 years working in Japan. She had a boy, Vadim, who was in grade-school and was fluent in Russian, Czech, and Japanese. She also had a van which she had brought back from Japan which she needed to get to her hometown, Saint Petersburg, where she know it would be worth several times what she had paid to purchase and ship it to Europe. As Frank and I were heading in the same direction she agreed to help arrange our transit visas and procure tickets for the Siberian Railway through Russia and we agreed to drive her and her son to Saint Petersburg. She said she wasn’t a very good driver and needed help from somebody who could handle the long drive.

With our path to the East decided, Frank and I had only to prepare our visas and wait while Sonia got her affairs in order. This gave us a number of days to enjoy Prague.