A Train Ride to Ukhta

After months of anticipation and preparation and after a long journey with too much luggage, I arrived in Ukhta Wednesday night. I came together with Ukhta's first snow (indeed, a warm and location-appropriate welcome). Nadya, with whom I've been in contact all summer, waited for me outside the entrance to my railroad car and took me in with a smile. I waved goodbye to the woman who shared my sleeping compartment. She stayed on the train for one more day, till she reached the last stop: Labytnangi (way up north). I, on the other hand, had made it to my destination!

For anyone who may not know, this school year I will be living in Ukhta as a English teaching assistant. I am here with Fulbright, a program for international educational exchange sponsored by the US government. The program, like others I tend to connect to, aims to increase mutual understanding between people of different nations. This blog will be my public journal, so follow along if you'd like.

Ukhta is a central city in Komi Republic, a region in Russia's Northwestern Federal District. The picture to the right highlights the region (This picture file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.) To get to Ukhta, you can take a plane, train or car (I think) from Moscow. Coming from New York, however, I took two planes, a commuter train, a taxi, some subways and finished with a 27.5 hour train ride that carried me 975 miles from Moscow. In terms of Russia's extensive territory, this train ride really isn't that long. But, it's the longest I've experienced. And honestly, it was great.

I boarded car #11 at Yaroslavsky Train Station in Moscow. This station serves as the western bookend for the Trans-Siberian Railroad, the longest railway in the world. My car had a skinny hallway with windows on one side and four-person sleeping compartments on the other. Galya, a middle-aged woman, was already in the compartment when I got there. I introduced myself as "Sara who can speak Russian (but only slowly) and who has never ridden a train before." She gladly helped me fit my luggage into the storage spaces under our beds like puzzle pieces. We read, relaxed and chatted, every now and then passing my small dictionary back and forth across the small table between us. No one else joined us in our compartment, so there was some extra room above us. As we stopped in different towns along the way, Galya filled this free space with items she bought from vendors using the backs of their cars as markets. She brought in a large sack of potatoes, 2-liter soda bottles filled with cranberries and lingonberries (I think), jars of jam, and bunches of oak, birch and pine sprigs (each to be used to exfoliate skin in the hot banya).  After seeing Galya with all her treasures, I immediately hopped off the train in search of food (I had assumed that the train would have a restaurant car, or at least someplace to buy snacks. Unfortunately, I was wrong). A couple vendors and small shops with corner-store type items lined the edge of the railroad in Kotlas. I bought and then stuffed myself with carbohydrates when I got back on the train. It was already dark for hours before I got off the train in Ukhta. Galya stayed up to help me maneuver my luggage and get off the train safely. I found a lot of comfort in this.

Getting off the train into Nadya's old Lada was a very quick transition from travel to get-acquainted-with-your-new-home. I've been here for four full days now. I've taken in so much, so much I want to talk about (and so much that will come in my following posts).

For now: spokoyny no-chy (спокойной ночи!). Good night! I'm off to bed.