In Russia, train rides you

Buying train tickets is hard. Even for actual Russians, who speak the right language and presumably know how things work here, it's a slow process that requires waiting in long lines and a lot of talking. We even wrote down exactly what we wanted, in Russian (2 tickets to Ekaterinburg, Jun 9, in the evening, first class), but still the woman behind the counter responded with a whole string of questions that I didn't understand, followed by many minutes of typing and waiting, with a whole long line of people breathing down our necks. When it finally became clear that exactly what we wanted wasn't available, stress and frustration and confusion and exasperation took over and we just left. No travel agent magically appeared, though, so we just ended up in another set of train station lines. The first line we waited in closed as soon as we got to the front of it. The next line seemed to be marked for invalids, but the woman waiting in front of us seemed pretty valid. Suer enough, a helpful/nosy lady soon came over. "Devushka, this line is for invalids." "But she's not an invalid," I said, pointing at the woman in front of me. The nosy/helpful woman butted her way to the front of the line, as Russians are wont to do, and confirmed that, contrary to the sign, one did not have to be an invalid to be in our particular line. The woman behind the counter was nice enough, reasonably patient, and super efficient. No first class seats available, but we managed to book second class sets (more of an adventure) to Ekaterinburg, so tomorrow night we'll start sharing a train compartment with two strangers and 26 hours later (that's 3.30am local time) we'll be in Ekaterinburg. Whew.

Feeling like we'd just been beaten, we recovered with some coffee and a visit to the Kremlin. Then we saw torn-down Stalin statues with broken noses. And then we had a really good Georgian dinner, with more wine than we needed, followed by beers drunk on steps outside the train station. It is confusing and maddening and in parts (especially near train stations) smells overpoweringly of armpits or urine, but I love Russia.