Thus starteth the Trans-Mongolian Railroad portion

We left on the number X train from the station in Beijing for Ulaanbaator. I knew that my friend from the ’05 Tokyo program would be on same train. I’d emailed Jay for tips on UB since he had served in the Peace Corps there a couple years back, as coincidence would have it, he was studying at Tsinghua for his LLM and was headed to UB the same day. We left the station and I went car to car looking for Jay until I found him with a fellow classmate, Richard, in first class no less! Since he booked in Beijing directly, it turns out he paid less than I did for his cabin which was the exact same as ours but without the two top bunks.

Our cabin had four bunks. My brother and I top a top and bottom and the only other person was a German lady…… for now. After catching up with Jay for a bit, I met the other two people on the train with him, the Mormon brothers (hereinafter “Mobos”), one of them fluent in Korean (“K-mobo”) and one in Japanese (“J-mobo”), both married to Korean and Japanese women respectively (more on them later). There was a dining car that served Chinese food and we hung out there for a while playing cards with an Australian couple and ate diner until we were forced out by a mini sandstorm in the dining car, the Gobi’s creeping advance on Beijing added sand sauce on our tomato and egg with rice dish as well as filled the air in a sepia haze. We headed back to our bunks in time for customs for China. After the China guards collected our visa info we moved a few hundred meters or so for the Mongolian portion. They collected our passports and we were permitted to get out at the station. We knew that China had different gauge tracks and so we needed to change the undercarriages of the cars before moving on. We got out and after a little while we heard a whistle. Jay said something to the carriage lady (he speaks Mongolian quite a bit) and we rushed back to our cars. Then it started moving very slowly but I thought it strange that everyone else was still on the tracks. We moved into a train depot and my brother and I went a car over to where the Mobos were. They separated the cars, locked us in (with the bathrooms locked too) and lifted the cars in the air 3-4 meters one at a time to change the wheels. It took a good 1.5 hours and was a bit rocky. After silently thanking Jay for our predicament (though we were more ignorant than he was) we all started talking about Korea and various other things we shouldn’t have started a dialogue over. Kmobo was very very patronizing, and very effective at it too I’ll admit. In retrospect, very much the stereotype from the South Park episode. After the 2nd “That’s a really really good point” I started getting a bit annoyed by the Fulbright scholars holier than thou attitude. He made it a point to say a couple times that, “yea we’re Mormon but don’t worry you can drink and stuff, we don’t judge”.

Everyone got back on and about this time a pot bellied Mongolian with beer on his breath tried to move into our car. He had a large package in a trash bag taped up real tight. We all looked at each other and asked if he had a ticket. He said he did and not to worry about it in broken English. He said he worked for the consulate so don’t worry about it. We asked when he got on, he said Beijing.
“Where have you been the whole time” The German lady asked.
“I have a ticket”
“Can we see it?”
“I have it, don’t worry about it” pointing at our stuff and then pointing up on the deck.
The German lady left to ask her new friend, the English speaking Mongol in the next cabin about what was going on. To be honest, I just didn’t want another dude in our cabin, especially since he was a bit boozed up.
“Fine, you don’t want me, I go, but I need leave package”
Now this sounded familiar. I saw the movie in my head where Claire Danes goes to prison when the package she’s holding has drugs in it and gets seized by customs and she has to eat poisoned fish heads and sticky rice. Then I saw the movie but instead of Claire Danes it was a guy that looked a lot like me. That’s when I had to speak up
“I don’t think so”
(This is where in the movie version of my trip I kick him in the jewels and throw him out.)
He stared at me and I pointed to the German lady.
“Ok. You speak English and?”
“Um….. Korean”
“You speak German?”
“No”
“I speak German!” -the German lady
“Ok”
He left and brought back another plump Mongolian, this one with glasses and well dressed, dress shirt and slacks. He spoke passable English and fluent German. They went back and forth for a while and it was agreed that he’d stay there. The package would stay with him.
We started talking to the German speaking Mongolian (the name coined by the German lady) and he seemed like a pretty decent guy, and made us people that judge books by covers much more at ease. He left and a bit later they came back and took the package and left. It turns out the carriage attendants run a side business, besides charging to use the what should be free samovar (hot water dispenser at the front of each car), they sell empty beds at discount prices to people they pick up. (Even turned out that the original guy did work for the Mongolian consulate.) and the package was clothing that Mongolians like to bring back when they go to China since things are much cheaper there. The guy in the next cabin that befriended German lady even had a bunch of people hold pairs of shoes he had for customs so they wouldn’t charge him.
They switched out the dining car to a Mongolian style one with a bad 80s diner motif and we went to sleep. We slept through most of the Gobi desert and woke to our arrival in UB and to realize when I opened my eyes that after all the ordeal with the Mongolian 4th in our cabin, they had put some lady there in their place in the middle of the night while I slept.