Fillin’ N

I don’t know if Mongolian children can spell chicken; there are no chickens in Mongolia, I don’t think. I assume that, as our History of Siberia textbook says of some Siberian livestock-breeding group, “domesticated birds are unknown to them, as are bees.” As for non-domesticated birds, we saw some very huge vultures, some sort of brown speckled hawk, lots of little dart-y birds that were never still long enough for me to really see them, and lots of a bird that is apparently magpie, though I have never known what a magpie is in English, so I don’t know whether this is so. If a magpie is a biggish black-and-white bird with a puffy-looking chest and really long tail, that’s what they are. I like them a lot.

I don’t remember what I said in my last two blogs. I planned on writing some sort of linear, narrative account of our trip to make up for their scatteredness, but then Natasha already did that, so just read Natasha’s blog. I wish I had it to look at right now, so I could see if there was anything deserving further comment, but I am sitting in a train at the Russian border rather than in a place with internet access, so it is not available. Let’s see what I can come up with in the way of interesting (well, only for me maybe) details.

We went to a museum in Ulan Baataar (apparently, judging by the sign on the train station, I have been begrudging the capital of Mongolia one if its rightful ‘a’s) where there was some sort of bronze-age petroglyph that looked most strikingly like one of the pages in a Richard Scarry book- that page with all the different kinds of cars, the banana car and the apple car and whatnot. Except the bronze-age people weren’t as advanced as Richard Scarry and they just had carts. But it was the same basic organizational pattern of page. Or large stone, as the case may be. It was a cool musuem, all in all. Made me sort of wonder, though, how out of all the civilizations to have occupied the Mongolian territory, only the Genghis-Khan crowd managed to take over most of the world. There were these amazing artifacts of several highly advanced civilizations before Genghis, high-quality tools, beautifully-decorated building materials, systems of writing, etc. And then we got to the Genghis Khan era part of the museum, and it was evident civilization had taken a few steps back; everything was suddenly rudely made and basic. Maybe ruthless military campaigns takes a certain unconcern for art and culture. I don’t know though.

Food in Mongolia had taste. This corresponded with a recent plunge in my appreciation of Russian food, so I was constantly delighted. Russian food is not bad, necessarily, it is just sort of without imagination. There are only two tastes: sweet and fat. These are both good tastes. But there are others, that these people refuse to consider. Tomato sauce, for instance, is beyond them. And salad dressings other than mayonnaise. And meat that is not fried or otherwise infused with fat. [Speaking of meat, they eat a lot of horse. It is surprisingly good. I can’t figure out why it’s illegal in the United States; maybe this is a result of my prolonged exposure to a less squeamish culture, because I don’t remember ever asking this question in my American life.] In Mongolia there is taste that does not rely on fat or sugar. The meat has taste, the milk is unpasteurized and therefore has a lot of taste, the bread is less heavy even, they drink tea other than Lipton’s Yellow Label, etc. The country even smells bold, a mix of the strong milk and some bitter cooking grease and the horse-dung fires burning in the metal ovens. Most of the country lives in gers, even in the city; this is sort of amazing to me, a whole country of people who live in tents, not just some colorful fringe population.

Hey, it looks like we’re finally moving. We have been sitting on the Mongolian-Russian border since 4:00 this morning. It is now 2:30 pm. About half the time on the Mongolian side of the border, half on the Russian side. They like uniforms here. The variety is impressive. I should note in all these hours on the border my bags were not inspected once. So I’m not entirely sure what we’ve been doing. There are these women who roam the corridors trying to get other passengers to help them smuggle goods over the border; we refuse, but most other compartments seem to agree. I have no idea why; the women don’t seem to be paying for this, just asking as a favor. Maybe there is some part of this system I don’t understand. For instance: how do they know people will give back the very nice coats they are transporting, after they cross the border with them? They certainly would have no legal redress.

We had a nice Hallowe’en celebration on the 3rd, as we were in a ger on the day most people celebrate that holiday. I am very proud of the tangerines I carved like pumpkins. Just the skin, of course. We also made lollipop-tissue ghosts. And bought lots of bad, cheap Asian chocolate, eaten by our fellow hostel guests. We’re not actually going anywhere in this train right now after all, by the way; we just go back and forth every once in a while, maybe joining up to new cars. But back to the hostel, there was an amazing number of people there spending many months just travelling around Asia. I don’t get it; does that much of the western world not have a job but have money to spend on constant travel? I’m not sure I would like that; staying in hostels is cheap and interesting, and I like trains, but they are activities that depend on their temporary nature to be enjoyable, as far as I am concerned.

I like Ulan Baataar a lot. It is quite unpretentious, and is totally lacking in the closed, guarded feel of Irkutsk. It seems to bear not grudge against foreigners. People try as hard as they can to find common languages. Stores wish to sell you things, people want to talk to you, Mexican and Korean and Italian and American restaurants cheerfully coexist with Mongolian ones. It is incredibly touristy but without being fake; it doesn’t seem to be trying to create an image of any kind, just to sell things that people want to buy. Lots of people wear traditional robes, but not to make cultural statements, or lure people into restaurants, or in a self-consciously historical way at all, just because those are the clothes that they wear. The main square is huge and open and has a huge monument to Genghis Khan. There is cheap internet everywhere. The city is just bustling and colorful and comfortable; I’m sure I would get tired of its unapologetic capitalism in a few days, but its contrast with Irkutsk put off such irritation for the entirety of my stay there.

The musician we saw our last night of our trip through the steppe was so cool. Throat-singing is awesome; I had heard it before on cd’s, but it’s a whole different experience when you see the human throat that these weird sounds are coming from. The instruments, though, I though were even cooler, and just the melodies of the songs. And the little, wrinkled singer exuded ancient, proud nobility, from his careful, courteous English and Russian to his devoted attention to his songs (mainly about horses, as I remember), to the beauty of the big flat harp he built himself, to his pointed hat. I’m so amazed that he works as an air-traffic controller.

I guess I should do my homework. We will get back to Irkutsk about an hour before our classes start, and I have a lot to do.

Note: We were on the border for almost 12 hours. It was ridiculous. At least the ridiculous officials had awesome hats.

Further note, regarding my swift transformation into a very bad student: I just wrote an essay for History of Siberia, the last sentence translating to: “Mammals are doubtlessly the true wealth of Siberia.” Agh.

Sad note: I left my tapochki at Golden Gobi. This made the train ride back considerably less pleasant.