Page 75 - Litteratteur Redefining World December issue

Litterateur redefining world December 2020

someone in Moscow one summer day handed paint to some poor worker and
said, “Go brighten up the place.”

The train itself is the tourist attraction here; it is hotel, dining car, and late-night
pub. The landscape outside remains as much a part of the journey as the

hallways inside, as much a companion as our cabinmates, and as essential to
the crossing as the dining car and the thousands of miles of tracks still ahead.
Still, in the States, we train through somewhere else on our way to where we are
going, but in Russia, the somewhere else is our traveling companion, the arc of
our narrative, the string of dynamic moments in our character development.
Tolstoy points out, “One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link
between man and nature shall not be broken.” This is true as well on a train;
especially so, since it is the “trans-Siberian” part of this journey that makes the
ride unique.

TSSR

Hallway of the train

Photographer
Michael
Kunzinger with
harmonica
between cars

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