The Train Journalist

Trakiszki, POLAND - As the train slowed for the Lithuanian border crossing, a head popped out from the next second-class carriage and into view.

"Is this car going to Vilnius," the face said, referring to the capital of Lithuania and my destination.

"I think so," I said, but I'd almost missed this train earlier in the morning by hopping on the wrong track.

A Polish man, the six-person carriage's sole other occupant, nodded his head. He had been quiet company for the last six hours, saying only, "That is not allowed," rolling the double "l" sounds in a very Eastern European manner, when I attempted to nap with my shoes stretched across three empty seats.

I decided to leave him alone in the cabin and talk with this new gentleman, who cut an unusual figure. He had what might be described as a "Fu Manchu" mustache, a beret and long-hair put back into a ponytail. He was Jack Kerouac meets Pai Mei, the Western beatnik and Eastern mystic.

He introduced himself as a South Korean journalist who was travelling to Vladivostok by train, filing stories for a Korean newspaper each week. It was his fourth Trans-Siberian trip.

We swapped stories about the American heartland, he sharing examples from his time as a theology professor in Kentucky, me with my reporting stint in Kansas. We found a common source of complaint in mega-churches, and my new friend described, at some length, a congregration where parshioners were encouraged after services to visit an adjoining shopping mall.

"They have political power. They have business power. They have everything," he said of these church leaders.

Then he offered some advice on my itinerary.

"You must go to St. Petersburg," he said. "You never know when you'll be able to go there again. There might not be a next time."

"When I studied in Paris, I wanted to go to the Louvre but kept putting it off. I waited and waited, and finally I left, and never saw the museum. It wasn't until four years later that I got back there and saw the place."

Coming from this man, it's enough to make me think about changing my trip's route.