IX. SYSTEMS

No system works normally in Russia. If an intercity train arrives on time, it’s sure to be in the papers next morning. If you are lucky, you get your morning post by 4 p.m. which is also the time of the evening post. A lot depends on the mood of the post-man or whether she has already taken her child to the kindergarten and done her shopping.

But to look on the bright side, public transport allows one to get to every corner of the city or the country. The fares are low and besides, at least 4 out of 5 Russians ride free: the pensioners, the police, civil servants, army personnel.

The few Russian cities that have a metro are justly proud of this unusually efficient means of transport. In Communist times the metro was meant to serve as a showcase of the country’s victorious socialism and a lot of effort (and money) was spent to this effect, not without good results.

With prices of plane tickets soaring higher than the planes, the railway provides the chief method of transport in the vast Russian expanses. If you want an idea of how huge Russia is, take a trans-Siberian train which will carry you across the country, through Siberia and the Far Eastern Russian provinces, down to the shores of the Sea of Japan – the journey lasting about ten days. It will take you a whole day to pass by Lake Baikal alone. According to Siberian Russians, in Siberia 100 years is no real age, 100 kilometres is no real distance, 100 millilitres of vodka is no real drink.

When the first Russian railways were being laid, the wise strategists decided that the Russian railway gauge should be made slightly different from the Western one, to prevent enemy trains from bringing in troops and ammunition. Somehow it never entered their heads that the difficulty would be mutual. From that time on Russian trains have been doomed to the long and tiresome process of changing the wheel units each time the train crosses the national border. Sometimes it is difficult to rid oneself of the impression that Russians are very good at creating problems and then heroically overcoming them.

A number of good roads and motorways do exist but in many cases unmade roads are a test of endurance, especially after heavy rain.

Date: 2015-04-20; view: 995