Chomp, Chomp, Chomp

TYUMEN, Russia — I'm lying on my bunk, attempting an afternoon snooze, when Olga calls my name.

"Jon. Jon," she says. "Food."

I fumble around for my glasses and then take a look at our compartment's small table below me. Spread across the surface is a feast: big hunks of light yellow cheese, two loaves of dark bread and piles of hard candy.

As I'm getting ready, Olga flips back her mattress and starts fumbling through her luggage. After a moment she brings out a white silver ball, approximately the size of a basketball. She peels back the outer layers, which appear to be paper towels, revealing the main course underneath: an entire rotisserie chicken.

I grabbed a fork and foldable bowl from my pack and scurried down to the table. Thus began the cabin's tradition of eating meals together.

I didn't expect communal dining on board. I've ridden on many trains, and usually don't share more than a bite or two with people in the cabin. Many Chinese eat food bought on the train, as costs are reasonable and fuyuans constantly troll the cars selling fruit and noodles. The trains in Poland didn't even have water, let alone any food to sell.

Yet dining is now our tradition. Olga is the ringleader, she decides when it is time to eat by taking out what remains of the chicken from her suitcase. The two men then rummage through their things and take out whatever they have. The food is placed on the table and eaten as one meal. Sometimes Olga will send me to the provodnista to buy dried noodles, so we all can have a bowl to slurp.

Less popular are the items I brought. I have two shopping bags worth of food, mostly purchased at an elitny supermarket near my hostel in downtown Moscow. The store caters to an upper class contingent, with fruit so expensive that appears to have been imported from Japan with tariff stops in several Euro-Zone countries, and a wine section that covers half of the voluminous basement. For $25, I managed to get some spreadable cheese, two apples, crackers, a couple bags of mysterious candy and a can of sour cream and onion Pringles.

None of this seems particularly appealing to the Russians, who always politely decline my invitation to share. The worst item I brought appears to be the chips, which Olga hates. On our first full day I offer her chips, and in response she sticks out her tongue and places her hands a few inches away from her hips. Chips, it seems, are too fattening.

The fear of a couple round chips seems strange considering our train diet. We eat copious amounts of meat, big hunks of cheese and hardy portions of crusty bread. There are few fruits or vegetables and nothing fresh. We are consuming a high fat, high carbohydrate diet and burning almost no calories each day.

I could care less. Often there is nothing to do on the train besides eat, and these communal meals help bring structure to the day. Upon waking, be it at nine o'clock or two in the afternoon, there will be a small meal. Then several hours later we will have a magnificent feast, and late at night we will chomp away at some leftovers. In between there will be sunflower seeds and endless cups of strawberry tea from the samovar.

The sunflower seeds appear to be a Russian train tradition, I see people in each tiny compartment cracking the black seeds open throughout the day to reveal the tiny brown bite inside. Young and old, seeds are for all. They appear to be a form of entertainment, for instead of reading a book or listening to music sometimes Sergei and Olga will just crack open seeds and stare out the window. Eating food is adequate stimulation, as long as digestion is nearly continuous.

Although these meals are mostly silent, I feel myself integrating into the lives of these three people by eating day after day with them. We are something of a family now, gathering twice a day to break bread and share in our bounty together. And while the conversation isn't quite up to a typical day at home in New York, I must say this – Olga's roast chicken is much better than my mother's.