Lasciammo la città segreta di primo mattino. La guardia ai reticolati ci restituì i passaporti con grandi risate e ce ne andammo a tutta velocità. Eravamo di nuovo in ritardo e ci voleva più di un'ora per la stazione di Ekaterinburg (nell'occasione Sverdlosk aveva cambiato nome), dove ci aspettava il treno delle 8 e 35. Questo era il turno in cui avevamo deciso che mai più avremmo preso l'aereo. Ripercorremmo la strada sul lago ghiacciato a velocità folle; io tenevo gli occhi chiusi, stretti stretti, mentre tutti cantavano a squarciagola 'O My sun, perhaps to exorcise the god of ice. We arrived at the station at 8 and a half, just in time to hug his friends, still a bit 'groggy for the previous evening. Even the shadow of the train. Zhenija was horrified. It was impossible that the Trans-Siberian train was late. Indeed. The time the ticket was written with the time zone of Moscow, and then we arrived with two hours notice, we explained the ruddy station master, who immediately took over backwards to help us, even gave us his room for personal leave your luggage, absolutely unsure of the time, testified seriously, the luggage room. We repay left a series of Italian coins for his personal collection. We went so for a walk outside where it was in full swing a large market of Babuska. In the unending line, a group of old ladies offering goods of all types arranged in wooden boxes to keep them raised by dirty snow. Ekaterinburg had become a great crossroads of trade in goods poor, who came from China along the Trans-Siberian. A large group of soldiers with intabarrati schapke ordinance, complete with a red star in controlling the movement of the market, illegal but tolerated, because, as he said the custom of the time, not expressly prohibited. A thick barrier Zhiguly loaded with household goods marked the boundaries of that point of spontaneous exchange. Once or twice a month, took the news entrepreneurs il treno e arrivavano fino al confine cinese dove si favoleggiava di un immenso mercato, una vera e propria città dell'oro dove tutto quanto si produceva in Cina veniva scambiato a colpi di dollari sonanti. Vestiti, scarpe, alimentari di ogni tipo, biciclette e ogni altro ben di dio che la macchina ben oliata di quella che stava per diventare la fabbrica del mondo, cominciava a sfornare a ritmi vertiginosi ed a prezzi assolutamente concorrenziali. Prezzi, che man mano che il treno si spostava verso ovest, ingrassavano, si facevano più corposi, secondo un meccanismo commerciale a lungo sconosciuto, ma ben presto imparato. A Ekaterinburg, stazione intermedia, i prezzi erano ancora sufficientemente interessanti per spingere le Tamare e le Tanije moscovite ad get in there with bare hands and left laden with bundles. Over time, the hunger of the gain pushed up to Beijing, the famous Russian market, in the district behind the embassy, \u200b\u200bwhere they gave you the price of sweaters for a minimum of twenty-five pieces. We took an ice cream from the one old woman who was still very good this traditional item of the dying Russian industry, now surrounded (old lady and Industry) from stalls offering Mars bars, Snickers and Ferrero Rocher, a true object of desire of many adults and children who wandered here and there, stopping still and dreamy eyes as Hansel and Gretel in front of the gingerbread house, rubbing her eyes with unreachable balls of gold paper boxes piled in a pyramid on the grim witches. Perhaps those, however, came from China. Finally we boarded the train, which was obviously right on schedule. It took all day to climb the Urals with long sinuous curves in the valley between the hills covered with forests white. A stunning landscape. I was attached to the window, almost hypnotized by the charm of that picture changing, perhaps because I was numb from the cold, even if covered by sweaters and dublionka, because the heating did not work. We arrived in Ufa Bashkir in the evening. We swore that next time we flew.
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