A Breather

March 15

There are few things left in this world that give me that child-like feeling of pure overwhelming excitement. Picking pictures up from the photo store used to be one of them, but digital has more or less done away with that. Sometimes when I think about how big whales are I feels pieces of it, but the feeling of getting on a train has never let me down. I remember my first train ride, New York to Idaho. My dad had been prepping us for weeks. His pure, ingenuous enthusiasm was so contagious. I remember standing on the platform at 2a.m.as the train pulled in. It was one of those few times that my brothers and I were all perfectly united by our excitement, giggling together, feeling like friends. It was huge and loud. It smelled like quiet. My brother Davis and I were put next to each other and the rest of the family were a few seats back. I was a pretty fragile child, and that distance from my parents under such strange new circumstances would have normally put me over the edge. But I remember being caught of guard by this feeling of perfect contentment mixed with a little bit of pure glee. I felt safe. Davis and I smiled at each other and squealed under our hands. I slept peacefully that night, turning over when the train stopped and being lulled back to sleep by the steady chugging and swaying and chugging and swaying of the huge friendly beast.

Twenty years later I found myself standing on a train platform for an all-nighter from Moscow to Riga, Latvia. I was with four other traveling companions who thankfully were not too cool giggle in anticipation. It was dark and foggy and Russian men with mustaches looked at us suspiciously. I really didn’t know what to expect from a 16 hour 3rd class Russian train, but I can say that it passed all of my wildest expectations. Russian trains do not mess around. There is none of this sleeping half sitting up in a seat. One way or another everything on the train gets horizontal. We were given sheets, a pillow and a wool blanket. It was fun to watch people. One guy got on, immediately made up his bed, got under the covers, and opened a book which he didn’t close until we got off the train 16 hours later. We shared our little seating area with a round older couple who were incredibly sweet and helpful. We mostly perched on our top bunks while they sat underneath us sat leaning on their little table speaking quietly to each other. We spent the evening drinking vodka, eating bread with jam and cheese, telling stories, and laughing. One of the highlights involved being poked in the cheek by a random Russian man. I was lying on a top bunk and a perfect stranger simply stopped in front of me and poked me in the cheek. I was so incredibly shocked by the sight of his hand, heading straight for my face, that I forgot there was approximately one foot of headroom above me. I jumped up and hit the metal rack, hard. He, most likely being drunk, said absolutely nothing and walked away. We all started laughing absolutely uncontrollably to the point of tears. It made for a slightly awkward situation as he passed by quite often to smoke in the next car. We eventually fell asleep to the sound of the chugging train and a melodious chorus of snoring. We were woken early to show our documents at the border and spent the rest of the morning eating cookies, drinking real tea in real glasses, and being rocked gently in and out of train sleep.

Upon arriving in Riga, an old woman with a white bun passed us on the way out of the train. She smiled and talked and from the look on her face it seemed that she was saying very kind things. I did understand that her daughter lives in NY and speaks five languages. She asked us where our boyfriends were and then she invited us over to be guests at her house. We laughed sheepishly. We were not exactly sure how to respond and the moment passed. We all regretted not jumping on the opportunity. Riga was lovely anyway. The second we stepped off the train the sun came out and we were all instantaneously jolly. It was a bit of culture shock at first. Cars stop for pedestrians. This is a phenomenon I haven’t experienced in over two months. There are malls that sell clothes that aren’t rimmed with fur, women are a reasonable size, they wear flat shoes, and the people are just generally incredibly attractive. Aside from the fact that gypsies pick-pocketed my friend Ruby 20 minutes off the train, I loved Riga, a lot. The highlights included paying $9 a night for a bed, breakfast, laundry, and internet; late night ice-skating in a little cobblestone square surrounded by old stone buildings and churches, gelato, Thai food (we hadn’t tasted a spice or distinct flavor in over two months), wandering for hours through little cobblestone allies, listening to pieces of ice chiming in the river, listening to the clarinet wafting out of some high conservatory window, and the company of kind generous friends who chase after people who steal their friends cameras and like to eat and explore and share things and laugh and aren’t afraid of all drinking out of the same water bottle.

Tallinn wasn’t quite as exciting to me. Maybe I was just tired, but it seemed sort of canned. It was actually truly adorable and old and cobble-stony, but there were far too many shops full of things that only middle-aged tourists would buy. It was relaxing though. We did a lot of aimless wandering and I spent hours sitting outside of a coffee shop drinking tea, writing, watching people, and listening to the cornucopia of accents. We also had an interesting night of karaoke in a sleazy hotel bar where a middle-aged Finnish man sang us a horrible embarrassing rendition of some Elvis song. Our hostel was lovely and quaint. We had a kitchen and a dining room table where I made us all a big spaghetti dinner. There happened to be a guy staying there from Oregon who was the absolute quintessential Portlander from head to toe to voice to mannerisms. It made me laugh. He was very nice and showed us around town a bit. It was sad to leave the friendly faces of the Baltic’s. The bus ride home was more or less uneventful and void of all air circulation. Although we were lucky enough to sit in front of a little 3-year-old girl who serenaded us all the way home with funny little songs about loving her grandma. I walked in the door and was greeted by my host mom grabbing me and kissing me saying “My girl, my girl, I missed my girl”, and a bowl of delicious fruit in my room. She said they were the first of this years harvest.