The train stood steaming in the midnight cold as if specters were being released from its bowels into the frigid, January air. Dark, woolen figures circled the area, moving luggage from snow to train-car with the utmost of inefficiency. The huge station clock read 12:35 in its auspicious, four-foot digital letters. It was time for me to go; I hugged my Russian family goodbye and slung six months worth of possessions over my shoulder. I couldn't look back now. Six months of my life were waving goodbye, and I couldn't stand to see it. The conductor's eyes greeted me with a glance of awe mixed with contempt as she checked my American identification with my ticket.

I trundled up the steps onto the car and down the passageway to my compartment. The train was warm, oppressive in fact. I peeled layers of clothing off my body as I sat down on my lower bunk in the four-bed room. I sat wondering for a few minutes whether I was to be joined in my little suite or if I was lucky enough to have a single for this seven-hour southerly ride to Moscow. 12:41 and one more minute to sit in my adopted town of Rybinsk. We began to roll at precisely 12:42. The only things on time in Russia are the trains, which can cause problems for the eternally late Russians. Such was apparently the case with my out of breath compartment mates who joined me just as we began to leave the station and my Russian life behind. A family of three: father, mother and son, joined me for the ride. We exchanged a quick set of strained pleasantries as their flushed faces faded and pulses slowed. We spoke no more for the rest of the journey. Our female conductor, dressed in the Russian style of tight, black skirt, knee high leather boots and an official looking blouse, walked by offering tea, cookies and sheets, the three staples of any train journey. I ordered all of them.

By one in the morning, according to my prized Soviet pocket watch, my fellow travelers were resting peacefully to the gentle clanking and whirring of the tracks. I sat on my cot, sipping tea and reading letters given to me by my foster family and the friends I made in the last half a year. They would get up and go through the daily, dirty grind tomorrow as I winged my way home. I could see my host mother walking briskly to the bus stop in her old fur coat and dilapidated hat, my friend Boris chopping wood at his family's dacha. Memories filled my head and tears began to burn their way down my frostbitten cheeks until I could no longer see to read, so I rose and quietly slipped into the passageway. I stood outside my compartment, watching the darkness roll by. Telephone lines whirred passed, interrupted only by their supports. The scene was occasionally punctuated by hunched figures seen through the windows of dimly lit crossing houses. I looked for them, but they didn't return the favor. There wasn't a sky or ground to speak of, just a dark gray emptiness.

At around three we rolled into a train yard. Widely spaced, bright lights floated high in the air and cast shadows across the tracks as smoke encircled shadows of men walked and worked around our Soviet carriage. I watched them closely with a kind of sick jealously as they struggled with their tools in the murky brilliance, but they never looked at me. What were they doing? More importantly, what was I? I could hear them working: screwing and wrenching, pounding and pulling. Every few minutes they would take a break to shuffle quickly down the tracks, I suppose to get the blood flowing to their feet again. We stayed there for a twenty-two minute eternity, they in their coldness and I in mine. Then, with a pop and a clang the cold steel of wheels and track squealed, I swayed and our train was smoothly off.

I leaned heavily against the smooth, faux wood paneling of the hall. Our conductor hurried by and we stopped at one of many intermediate stations. A chill came over me as I watched two ancient figures shuffle through the dirty snow to the entrance of my car. I heard our leather boot clad hostess open the door and quickly usher them in. Their coats steamed and they breathed heavily as they walked by with their two huge canvas sacks of provision and wares. Only their tired eyes were visible as they disappeared silently into a compartment two doors down from mine, surely to lie down for some much deserved sleep. Even though I was exhausted I didn't follow. I wanted to savor each grain of Russian sand in my life's hourglass. Two minutes later we were off. As the blackness outside began to speed up, I caught a glimpse of our conductor's reflection in the glass coming toward me again. She stopped and offered me a cup of tea with her eyes averted and arm fully extended so as to stay as far away from me as possible.

"Please," she said in as broken English as is possible for one syllable.

"Thank you," I replied in Russian. She blushed and moved quickly by to fulfill some other duties. I continued with mine: sipping my tea, leaning and watching the window. Nothing was visible beyond the porthole now, but I stared at it nonetheless. All I could see was my reflection in the pane. I watched my cup slowly empty and I saw my eyelids fall. When my head knocked against the cold wall, I finally gave up my post and went to bed, letting the whirs and clanks of the tracks slowly rock me to sleep with the others.

A few short hours later, I awoke to bad Russian pop music blasting through the static from the speaker in our coupe. I rose, made my bed and waited for Moscow. It didn't come all at once, but city of ten million doesn't really sneak up on anyone. I watched the huge, bland apartment complexes change into the westernized landscape of the city, until at last we stopped in the imposing, grimy Yaroslavskey train station. I stirred myself, gathered my belongings, and stepped off the train and out of Russia as I knew it.