The author of this book managed not only to fulfill a dream, but also to turn the story of his adventures into a gripping tale that’s impossible to put down. Together with him, you’ll travel from Kursky Station to the wonderful Lake Baikal—through tiny settlements and big cities.
“I’ve got a dream, as they say. And it has been lodged in my subconscious for a long time and pops up every so often. The gist is this: I’m crazy about commuter trains and trains—more than anything, of course, commuter trains. And I also love traveling. Who doesn’t, really. In fact, all of Russia—from Murmansk to Vladivostok—is threaded with one such railway vein, and all the suburban commuter trains are connected to each other. And I’ve wanted for a long time to ride from Moscow to Baikal ‘on the dogs’—through Shakhunya, Ishim, Taiga, and Zima. In total, that’s 33 commuter trains and 2 trains. I made a plan—works out to exactly 12 days. And so that you can sleep everywhere with new people, photograph at every station, and in the commuter trains record the monologues of my neighbors about their hard lives. This has to be done. Someday.”