Our train host empties the ashes from the heater. He carries them in a zinc bucket to a container on the platform.
It is 7:30 in the Krasnoyarsk time zone and 3:30 Moscow time, according to which the trains run.
Most of the passengers are still sleeping.
A few sneak through the corridors fetching hot water for their morning tea.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been dreaming of a train trip across Siberia to the farthest corner of Russia to Vladivostok.
I had also thought about how I would cope with the long journeys on the trains, wouldn’t it be too boring to do nothing, would I even manage with a big stack of books?
In recent years, after starting to feel the need to slow down, the idea of the Siberian train started to feel better and better.
I knew I was ready for the trip when the thought of sitting for days no longer felt like a burden, but a welcome respite.
Previously, I had neither time nor money for the trip.
On the contrary, we were broke when we left. We just had a different mindset than before.
Slowing down
My partner lost his job during our 6-month trip, I was an entrepreneur on a non-paid sabbatical and we were in mortgage debt. So the bottom of our pockets started to show.
At the same time, it was the best time in the world to go on a trip.
Traveling does not necessarily require big savings or income.
We put our own apartments up for rent, so we didn’t have to pay double expenses for living: home and travel accommodation.
That’s not the whole truth.
We paid more than we got money from renting, but it helped anyway.
Time slows down on the Siberian train
As we sit for the last hour of the 38-hour train ride from Yekaterinburg to Krasnoyarsk, I take out my laptop for the first time the whole trip.
It’s been a week since we jumped on the Tolstoy train from Helsinki and traveled the first leg to Moscow.
We chose the slowest trains because they were the cheapest. But they were also the most exciting ones.
Choosing, for example, a train that runs for two nights and one day instead of a train that runs for two days and one night, we also saved money on accommodation costs.
On a long journey, the perception of time changes. The one-and-a-half-hour train ride between Tampere and Helsinki I used to take a few times a week during my rat race years was often a painful journey.
In the final stages of the Transsiberian journey, I often felt melancholy.
I was sad the journey was already over.
I’d like to sit on the train much longer.
I didn’t even open the book I took with me.
I just sat there.
Looked around, observed people, and rested.
Woke up, drank coffee, took a nap, stared out the window, ate snacks, and took a nap.
Unlike we thought, we never got bored. The clock has just whizzed on like a deer.
When you focus on the essentials, small things become big and meaningful.
You have time to listen to your thoughts and body.
You don’t get rid of tiredness by saying to yourself “I can do it, I can do it”,
Instead, I fell from a cross-legged position to a lying position and fell asleep.
Eat when you feel hungry, and don’t think that the work needs to be done first.
The atmosphere of the train is peaceful. It’s quiet, people move like in a slow-motion movie.
Bringing out a laptop feels almost criminal, its furious tapping breaks the harmony of the environment.
A busy person’s should-drink-coffee timeline changes from five minutes to an hour. It takes time from desire to decision and implementation because there is no rush.
I look at the first sleet of autumn for a while before I dig out the can of instant coffee from under the bench.
The backpack is light, mind will be too
Flying to the other side of the world slips away like teleporting.
Traveling slowly, you understand distances and proportions.
Long-term breaks teach quite differently than bursts lasting a week or two. Hardly anyone comes back from a long journey completely the same person as when they left.
Distance brings perspective.
We only have our small backpacks (and a lunch bag for train journeys) on this trip as well.
However, my minimalism changed a long time ago from a de-cluttering towards matter to an effort to simplify the whole of life.
I don’t have to focus on the material, I know that I have everything I need in my backpack.
However, I still have a long way to go when it comes to slowing down mentally.
On this journey, I’m happy to see that I’ve learned little by little over the last few years how to change from an electric rabbit to a simplifier.
You can do things at a more relaxed pace. And you don’t even have to do everything.
Our new departure, becoming full-time nomads came as a surprise to us too, but now it seems like a good solution that can be recommended to other people who dream of such a thing.
For me, the departure was exceptionally easy with a decade of business travel experience.
If you are going on a trip lasting months for the first time, you should get information in advance:
How to plan work, how to budget for travel expenses, and the funds needed for living.
I hope to help those planning their takeoff by writing about my own experiences here.
What would you like to know about the minimalist nomadic life? Ask in the comments!
Disclaimer
I do not recommend anyone to travel to Russia at these times.
It’s an amazing country to travel and I’d love to get back to exploring more, but this isn’t the right time.
Yet I hope you get some ideas for your slow travel journeys from my post.
I wrote this post originally for my minimalism blog Minimaattori, but translated it here as I know many of you wish to follow our journey in English.