I slowly stood up and started to follow the crowd, supposedly to the platforms. A minute after I got out from the building I started to feel a bit chilly. I wanted to go back and just leave in the last minute, but the crowd was too big, I had no chance to make it. People were pushing eachother for getting closer to the doors. It was proper annoying, I just started to film and commentate/swear how much I hate the crowd, and let them go. I wasn't gonna take part anymore. The odds of missing the train were quite low. It has never happened that I had a seat reservation and they closed the door front of the queue because it was time. Anyways... somehow a new train staff shown up and called me to show my passport. I got on the train and find my seat. On the train there was a very narrow corridor. On the right side of the corridor there were bunk beds(they were inserted but their positions were like bunk beds, one above the other one) parallel with the train, on the left side it was like an open cabin same length as the beds on the right but four(two bunk beds) of them in perpendicular position. Those six beds were one unit. The people who had those beds were spent the most time together. These units were like a cabin, but the corridor was running through those units.

I don't remember the order of arrival, but I remember that my 5 passenger companion was... Basically the opposite what I expected. I had one of the lower bed of the four. The other one was taken by an old granny like lady. The upper one parallel with the corridor was taken by a 15 years old boy who was traveling with his younger brothers and grandfather. And the other three beds were taken by solo females similar to my age. Noone was playing chess(actually kids played chess on an iPhone in the last two days) drinking vodka from bottle, bringing bear on the train or looking ugly at people who passed them. There were no knives in the table, just people trying to save a few rubles on transportation and avoid to bore themselves to death. People had smart phones, tablets and books.

The old lady kept doing stuff. Probably it wasn't her first time on a sleeping train. She moved in to the train like I moved in to the dorm at the fifth - last year of high school. The only difference was that she was probably sober. I'm often afraid of talking to older ladies and it wasn't my time to overcome that (I will when I'll be old too). The girl who had the bed above the old lady's looked a bit tense as she crossed/grabbed her own forearms. I wasn't gonna bother her before she looks at least a little bit more comfortable. The other girl who had the bed above mine looked more travel experienced. When the train staff walked through the wagon and gave everyone a set of bedsheets, EXPECT ME(!) I typed in Google translate that "no russian no bedsheets" and shown it to her. She was sitting next to me. The beds were not made yet. She was laughing, so I made some other low effort joke about my missing bedsheets. She was laughing at everything indeed. I like people who handle uncertain situations just with laughing. She also got concerned about my bedsheets so she talked to the staff. They said I didn't get bedsheets because I didn't give them my ticket. I gave the ticket, they gave me the bedsheets. I said "spasibo" (thanks) and start talking about stuff with Katya(the girl I was writing about in the previous 5 sentences). She also travelled around Europe in March. And asked lot of questions about my travel. It was cute how she were making her way to speak English sometimes saying only one-one word that she were comfortable about like "okay" or "yes". We were the only ones who talked that night.

The bed about feet from my feet was Olga's bed. Without the corridor our beds would shape an L. The first day when I opened my eyes the first thing I saw was her stretching like a cat, I quickly shied away and I turned on my side, and tried to fall back to sleep. I couldn't fall back to sleep but I wasn't fully awake either.

A Russian mug of hot drink landed on the table next to my pillow between the two beds. The girl above the old lady made it.

 - Are you drinking tea with milk?! - Google translated it.

 - This is coffee. - she answered saying it with a really soft accent.

 - in England we drink tea with milk and it looked exactly the same. - I was still typing.

 - so you are from England?

 - I live there - said it realising that she speaks English.

On 61seat they mentioned that there's a samovar in every wagon for hot water supply, but indeed I had no idea what a samovar actually is, so we talked about hot water and about how to get it. At that point of conversation I was thinking that it might be true that smarter people have less friends, because they ask less stupid questions, so they have less opportunity to interact. Fortunately with Alexandra or Sasha as she preferred to be called had more to talk about than the hot water so after she shown me how it works(open a tap and hot water runs like in Harry Potter), we discussed other stuff. In English! I was really missing the language. She was quite concerned about looking stupid struggling with the language but her English was much better than she thought it is. And taking an effort is the opposite of being stupid anyways...

After I had my tea Katya also woke up. And we talked more. She was from Omsk and was planning to get a job in Moscow as a copywriter. With writing we had an other thing in common and to talk about. She was the first who get off in Yekaterinburg.

For some reason the 5 can be a better number than 6 or we just needed to "lose" someone, but after Katja's left, social life started to be buzzing more. I talked to Giorgi as well. He was the only other one from our super six Moscow crew who was also heading to Vladivostok. When I learnt about it we fist bumped and established the komanda(team) Vladivostok. By our first talk he offered me some dry fish from under his pillow and he kept offering it everyday. He was a good kid.

Soon enough his younger brothers joined us. My first thing was to challenge Ilya to a staring contest. Cheap game for the train. Teardrops were running down on both of our faces but he wouldn't give up. He won. Ilya was the middle brother. Latter he was the one I spent the most time with. As a middle brother he didn't have the physical strength to rule the brotherhood, but because there was a younger one than him he couldn't utilize the victim card either so he had to be smart. So was he. He had a scare on his forehead. Not an ugly one, the cool one. He got headbutted by a cow. When he told me I was laughing.

 - cows are dangerous animals!

 - I know that's why I'm laughing, last summer I stuck on a mountain because of them, finally someone sees it.

At the same time Kolja the smallest one was playing with Olga. It became one of Olya's four most common activities. She was either sleeping, making food, eating, reading or playing with Koyla. She taught him that game when they sit front of eachother, clap then gave a cross five(left to left) then clap again, swap hands (right to right), clap then a double one and just keep repeating it faster and faster. After I played it with Ilya, we played an other game when one person has their hand with palms up the other one with palms down on the first person's hand and the one under has to hit the upper side of the hand of the other person. We never counted scores.

Later we played truth or action. Sasha was a savage in that game, she asked Giorgi if he is in love with someone. Every 15 years old boy is in love with someone. Come on! He tried to lie, but his brothers exposed him. Was funny. In first round everyone was answering so I said action just for encouraging the guys. Later it turned out that in next round everyone had to do the opposite so I could get away with truth, but instead I had to walk to the staff room and say "I love you" in Russian to Daria, the girl who checked my ticket. In next round Giorgi performed a gypsy dance, Ilya and Sasha ate a tea bag and Olga had the same task that I had.

At some point a woman in her 30s took Katya's bed, but our komanda Moscow was too closely established for recruiting new members. She looked okey it was more of the circumstances.

It wasn't a new thing that I like kids, but they were always somebody's kids and never talked about them in the way we talked about them with Sasha. She said they remind her to her own childhood. It really made me think, and I fell asleep with this though on my mind. I was thinking of going to the zoo with my grandma then just jumping on the park trampoline. Then have some ice cream. It was 4 months ago already when she passed away but my eyes still teared up. I wiped them off and turned on my side towards the wall...