Customer Reviews

The Big Red Train Ride

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One reviewer suggests that the reader would want to just pick up and go after reading Eric and Wanda Newby's account of their ride through Russia on the Big Red Train.

It certainly did not have that affect on this reviewer, even if by reading it I did become a `fellow traveler' for a while. Instead it developed a growing sense of sheer relief that never again would one have to try, and usually fail, to contain those towering rages of sheer frustration and the resulting bad manners that the Russia of this trip and time created in this visitor.

Now mostly passed and gone, like one of Newby's Siberian stations with the attendant Station Mistress overseeing departures at the full attention, that Russia was as full of obstructions and stupidities as this book is full of interesting facts, apt and forbidden photographs and sparkling descriptions. Showing far more toleration than we could ever have managed and using his wit as a rapier sharp foil to fight off visits to wire factories, to parry multiple obstructions and carve up inedible meals Eric Newby passed through a Russia that is also now mostly and thankfully past.

His book's dedication is a doubled-edged plea from the author for empathy ... to the Peoples of Siberia who have to live there.

Another adventure with the Newbys find Eric and Wanda hurtling through Brezhnev's Russia on the famous Trans-Siberian railway. From collective farms to asylums, the Newby's take you along with them on their tour.

Part endurance challenge, part history lesson the book does suffer in part by capturing Russia at its worst: food shortages, restricted travel, stern officials and windows that won't open! But the Newby's accept it all with relatively good humour and like all their adventures, they manage to find lots of interesting characters along the route. I've always been able to think of lots of reasons NOT to visit Siberia, the trans-siberian train ride might have just given me one!