Thirty Below
March 31, 2010 by admin
Filed under Linger Longer
Linger Longer: Driving the Trans-Siberian
Chapter 3: Thirty Below
Without realizing it we cross the invisible border into
Belgium. It begins to get dark as Si directs me through
Brussels, and determined to make some distance we thunder
across the countryside with petrol pumping around
the engine as fast as the adrenaline is pumping through
our veins. Passing through Düsseldorf, I drive on the
German autobahns late into the night. I feel wide-awake,
which isn’t surprising really as I’m still in nightshift mode.
When you work the nightshift you live like a vampire. It
was new to us and in a weird, fucked up kind of way I
soon began to enjoy my life living in the dark. Waking up
as the sun was going down and returning home at the
crack of dawn was totally crazy. There was a whole world
at night that became our community, and I’d often find
myself filling up a supermarket trolley at 3 o’clock in the
morning.
Nobody worked in the freezer by choice, we had all
ended up there through circumstance; a divorce, just got
out of prison, left the army, business collapsed. Our reasons
seemed less sane, we got bored of our cushy lives in
London, we wanted to be flexible for a while and travel.
In a strange way we had chosen to work in the freezer, but
maybe it didn’t seem all that bad to us as we knew it
would only be for a short time. The fact that we were also
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with a temporary employment agency made our circumstances
seem even more bizarre, particularly as we were
literally the only English guys temping in the freezer.
Well, that is except for Lefty, a young lad who seemed different
to most people and who had become a great friend.
Our fellow agency staff were from every country imaginable,
predominantly Kurdish guys from northern Iraq, but
also from other places around the world like Mozambique,
Nigeria, Ghana, The Congo, Serbia, Romania, Afghanistan,
Pakistan, Germany, Turkey, Portugal, France, Albania, and
Syria – to name but a few. This made working in the freezer
even more fascinating, and we’d spend much of the
night jumping between chutes and chatting to people from
all over the world. It felt like travelling, and it turned out
to be as much an education as it was hard graft. One guy I
got to know was called Abdul, a forty-year old man who
was born in Afghanistan during the Taliban regime. He
told me about the public floggings he’d received for not
having a beard that was two fists in length. As a university
student in Kabul, he had grown tired and fearful of the
repression, and in a bid to start a new life he had fled across
the border to Pakistan. He learnt Urdu and lived in Pakistan
for a number of years, smuggling immigrants by camel
across the border into Iran. He eventually moved to Iran
himself and lived there during the entire bloody revolution
and the Iraq-Iran war. After spending some time in
Kazakhstan, where he learnt to speak Russian, he travelled
across Europe and eventually made it to Great Britain as an
asylum seeker. He had spent the past three years trying to
scrape together a living as a tailor. The majority of the
money Abdul earned in the freezer he sent back to his
family in Tehran. He hadn’t seen his family for over four
years and had yet to meet his youngest son. We heard
many stories like these during our time in the freezer. Like
the guy from Mozambique whose best friend had been
eaten by a Nile crocodile and the dude from the north-
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western frontier of Pakistan, who shot a dog with an AK47
and kept a rocket launcher in his bedroom. If this wasn’t
enough, the Iraq war kicked off in the last month we were
working there. It was fascinating to be surrounded by the
people whose country was being invaded, and to see their
mixed reactions when the US army captured Saddam
Hussein. From the impression we got, life was quite easy
in Iraq when Saddam was in power, which seems strange
when this monster murdered thousands of their people.
Because of the oil in Iraq, food and cigarettes were free
and it was only necessary for one member of a family of
ten to go out to work and bring in cash to buy luxury
goods such as satelite TV, or imported food or clothes.
Most of the Kurds were from Mosel or Kirkuk and some
were from Turkey. A few of them told me how they hid
under lorries, and one guy claimed he had been involved
with the Mafia and used to hijack cars in Baghdad. I could
quite easily believe this, as he used to relieve his tension
by head butting the metal cages at frequent intervals during
the night.
In the beginning, working a twelve-hour nightshift was
tough. You’d clock-in at the start of the shift feeling fit and
healthy, but by the time you clocked-out you’d practically
be in a wheel chair and sucking through a straw. I remember
watching Si battling to stay warm from across the
freezer. I could see a desperate man wrestling with his
mind and fighting hard to keep up with the masses of
boxes sliding down the chute. I felt angry with myself for
pushing him into this hellhole. I wanted to tell him to
leave and go back to London – to run as fast as he could
out of this icebox and jump onto the next train bound for
Euston. This wasn’t the right job for him. It wasn’t the
right job for me, but I didn’t have a choice – Si did! I felt
responsible in some way for putting him through this torture.
Before we left London to go on our first trip to the
US, Si had a good career in the internet. He still had the
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option to go back to London for a while and earn money
in a much easier way, but I knew he didn’t want that. He
was sticking to his guns. For the first time in his life he
could see a light at the end of the tunnel, and over the following
weeks as we became settled into the job, I began to
notice that he actually seemed to be quite enjoying his
labour.
It was around 2:30am whilst stacking boxes of frozen oven
chips, when Si ran up to me with a big smile across his
face and a plan that was to change everything.
‘Put down that box and listen to this!’ he yelled over the
noise of a nearby hydraulic machine.
‘Why, what’s up?’ I yelled back.
‘I’ve got it!’
‘Got what?’
‘An idea!’
‘Si, I’m working here. I’ve got to clear this chute before
Bateman comes back.’
‘Fuck, Bateman – Vladivostok!’
‘You what?’
‘How about we drive the Sierra to Vladivostok?’ he
beamed with excitement.
Throwing a box of oven chips into a cage, I patted my
gloves together and tried to comprehend what Si was saying.
‘You’re joking, right?’
Si dropped his smile. ‘No. I’m being deadly serious, you
little shit … think about it, what a journey! All the way
from Daventry to Siberia … overland.’
‘It’s not possible, is it?’
‘I don’t know, but I was thinking about an article I read
in National Geographic. It was about the Trans-Siberian
Railway that runs the entire length of Russia. Fuck getting
the train … let’s drive!’
Suddenly, a voice cried out from across the freezer.
‘Raven’s!’
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We turned to see Bateman, the evil nightshift manager,
storming towards us.
‘Raven’s, what you doing?’
Sticking out his chest, Bateman slid up beside us. He
was a large man with dark heavy bags under his eyes, and
had the manner of an army sergeant in some fucked up
boot camp.
‘What part of work don’t you understand?’ he growled.
‘What part?’
I leaned against the chute, and smiled. ‘We’re just warming
ourselves up.’
‘Warming up your fucking mouths more like. Try doing
some work, that’ll warm you up.’
‘We have been all night,’ I replied. ‘It just so happens
that every time you walk past we’re not working.’
‘Look, guys, if you want to chat do it in your break –
we’ve still got fifty thousand cases left to pick tonight. If I
catch you both gossiping again like two housewives over
the garden fence, you’re out of here – understand. The
Kurdish guys are bad enough, don’t make me get rid of
you two.’
‘Leave them alone, Bateman, you bully!’ a kid yelled as
he ran past.
‘Shut up, Lefty!’
Bateman pointed two fingers at his eyes and then at us.
‘I’ll be watching you.’
He stormed off and disappeared behind a chute rammed
with boxes.
I turned to Si with a nod. ‘Vladivostok. It’s a crazy idea,
but I love it!’
‘Excellent, so in six weeks we go!’
‘Yeah. In six weeks we commit suicide.’
After escaping the grasp of Köln, I force myself to pull
over at a service station somewhere outside Nürnberg.
Drawing to a sudden halt beside an orange VW Beetle, Si
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jerks forward and peers up over his fleece.
‘Where are we?’ he croaks.
‘Uh … near Nürnberg,’ I reply, tucking into a packet of
salt and vinegar flavoured crisps.
‘You what?’
‘Nürnberg.’
‘Nürnberg!’ Si shouts, springing up in his seat. ‘Nürnberg in Germany?’
‘Yeah, why?’
‘We can’t be!’
‘Why can’t we be?’
‘How can we be near Nürnberg? It’s not possible!’
‘We are – it’s a fact.’
Si peers down at the map. ‘Jesus Christ, you’ve driven
fucking miles! What time is it?’
‘I don’t know the clock doesn’t work. I think it’s nearly
morning.’
‘Why didn’t you wake me up?’
I shrug. ‘Dunno. The past few hours have been a bit of a
blur, to be honest with you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s these German autobahns. I couldn’t stop driving. I
just wanted to drive and drive. It was like I was hypnotized
… stuck on autopilot.’
‘Fucking hell, Chris! The last time I looked out of the
window we were just leaving Liège.’
‘Liège? Nah, that was ages ago, wasn’t it?’
‘You should know, you’ve been driving.’
‘All right, calm down.’
‘NO, I won’t calm down! It’s a bloody good job you
stopped when you did, otherwise we would have been in
Vladivostok in about five days.’
I smirk. ‘Yeah. I caught myself starting to drift off, so I
thought I’d better pull over.’
‘Drift off? You could have killed us both, you idiot!
That’s the last time I let you drive when I’m asleep. I’ve
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nearly missed the whole of Germany because of you.’
‘You didn’t miss much. There really wasn’t anything to
see … well, apart from miles and miles of tarmac. Oh, I
did have a race in a tunnel with some prick through the
centre of Köln, though. That was quite interesting.’
* * *
After a quick freshen-up and a very strong coffee, I take
over the driving and zoom down the autobahn towards
Regensberg. Chris climbs into the back of the car and disappears
beneath his sleeping bag. BMW’s, Mercedes and
monster size Audi’s eat up the tarmac in the fast lane, and
chasing their taillights we drive swiftly into the Bavarian
countryside. Castles rise from the lush green forests that
stretch out into the distance, and relieved to be away from
the noise of industrial Germany we venture further
towards the depths of Eastern Europe.
Glancing over my shoulder, I can see that Chris is sound
asleep – most probably dreaming about being a gangster
pimp in New York, or being stuck on a desert island with
a hundred naked girls and fifty crates of beer. I’m not surprised
that he’s still dead to the world, especially after his
mammoth eight-hour ‘non-stop’ autobahn experience,
which I must admit I can totally understand now.
Avoiding the city of Regensberg, I happily turn off the
autobahn and follow signs to a town called Passau on the
Austrian border. It’s early afternoon and spying a petrol
station outside town, I decide to fill up the Sierra before
we head north for the border with the Czech Republic. Not
wishing to disturb Chris from his surreal dreams, I quietly
remove the key from the ignition and unhook the hose.
The petrol pump jumps into life and shoving the nozzle
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into the fuel tank, I press the lever and shoot the liquid
into the car. Watching the numbers on the screen clock up
at speed, the sound of the gushing fuel signals to my bladder
that it needs to be emptied. Struggling to lock the
petrol cap in place, I remove the key and hurry over to the
garage to pay. A large Bavarian gentleman with a bushynicotine
stained mustache stands at the till and talks loudly
in a thick German accent to the guy behind the counter.
They seem to be having a serious discussion, so I wait
patiently to be served and try to distract myself from the
fact that my bladder is ready to burst by thinking of other
things … nice things … things that don’t involve fast flowing
water. Both guys can clearly see that I’m ready to pay,
but they ignore me and continue with their debate.
Feeling annoyed, I begin to tap my foot on the floor and
hum a tune. The gentleman in front stops talking and
turns to me. I beam a smile and peer over at the cashier.
The large guy finally steps to one side and I slap my
money on the counter. Running my purchase through the
till, I take my change and leave without so much as a
danke. I glance around in desperation for the toilet, and
spot a small brick building around the back of the petrol
station. I head swiftly in its direction. I enter the dark closet,
flick on the light switch and slam the door shut behind
me. The place is grim, with crusty shit plastered around
the rim of the bowl and shit stained pieces of tissue paper
spilling out of the bin. Trying to block these images from
my mind, I feel relieved to see the toilet bowl and quickly
tear open my flies just in the nick of time. Relaxing, I let
out a deep sigh of relief as the pressure on my bladder is
released. Shaking my fella dry, I pop him back in my pants
and turn to the cracked mirror on the wall. I rinse my
hands under the cold tap and dry them on the bottom of
my T-shirt. Winking at my reflection I turn and reach for
the door handle, but to my absolute horror there isn’t one!
Running my fingers frantically over the hole where the
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handle should be, I desperately begin to scan every inch
of the doorframe.
‘Oh, shit,’ I whisper under my breath.
Panic hits me. Feeling my heart beating violently inside
my chest, I look around the tiny room for an exit.
Everywhere I look I see dirty black tiles, and I find myself
holding onto the walls as the room begins to spin. Turning
to the sink, I grab hold of the basin and lower my head.
‘Fuck, stay calm!’
The room stops spinning and I try to gather my composure,
but my pulse is sent racing out of control again as it
suddenly occurs to me no one knows where I am. What if
no one ever uses this toilet or Chris, the lazy fuck, sleeps
for the next five hours. I’ll be trapped in this cesspit, left
to rot and die alone. Being trapped in a small space is one
of my worst fears. You’re helpless, confined between four
walls, which at this moment in time seem to be closing in
on me. The last time this happened was when Chris and I
were seven years old. He thought it would be funny to
lock me in the downstairs cupboard, and I’ve been terrified
of being trapped in small spaces ever since. Looking
up at my reflection in the mirror I can see the terror in my
eyes. Turning away, I lean against the sink and look slowly
around the room. There’s a sky light in the roof and a
small extraction fan on the wall to the outside, which sits
motionless. It stares at me with its star shaped form and I
try to find something else to focus on, but my eyes bounce
around this shit hole and I’m forced to stare at the floor in
an attempt to stop myself spinning again. Composing
myself, I turn to the door.
‘You’re gonna have to do something, Simon,’ I whisper
to myself. ‘What would Jack Bauer from the TV series 24
do in this situation? I know! He’d break down the door.’
Taking a step back, I brace myself against the wall.
‘You can do it, buddy boy. One hard kick and the door
will fly open.’
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Releasing a high-pitched squeal, I leap into the air
‘Matrix’ style and karate kick the door. My right foot hits
the lock, but instead of the door swinging open and handing
me back my freedom, I find myself falling like a brick
onto the concrete floor. Scrambling to my feet I contemplate
karate kicking the door again, but I change my mind
and resort to banging on it as hard as possible and screaming
my tits off. Pausing to listen for a response, I lean back
against the wall and look up at the ceiling. Returning my
attention to the skylight in the roof, I stand on my tiptoes
and reach up above my head. I can’t quite reach the catch.
Deciding to climb up onto the sink, I hoist a foot up onto
the side and pull myself up. Balancing on the edge, I reach
for the skylight and grab hold of the catch. Tugging at the
metal handle, it appears to be wedged shut. Taking a
moment to adjust my balance, I take a firm grip on the
catch and prepare to wrench it open. Putting my full force
into it I pull down with all of my strength, but hearing a
crack below, I lose my grip and leap off the edge of the
sink as it breaks off the wall and crashes to the floor.
Stumbling forward, I slam into the far wall and skidding
in the piss around the toilet bowl, I slip to my knees and
plunge my right hand into the brown, foul smelling toilet
water.
‘Help!’ I scream.
Hearing the door swing open on its hinges, I look around
and see Chris standing in the doorway with his hands in
his pockets and a cigarette hanging from the corner of his
mouth.
‘Si, what you doing?’
‘It’s not my fault!’ I yell, vigorously scrubbing my
hand with a brown stained towel. ‘I’ve just put my hand
down the frigging toilet!’
Chris peers over at the toilet bowl, and shivers. ‘Why?’
‘I didn’t mean to do it, you twat. I was trying to get out!’
He nods reassuringly. ‘I totally understand. Come on, let’s
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get the fuck out of here.’
Chris drags me out of the toilet and over to the Sierra.
‘What took you so long?’ I mutter, falling into the passenger
seat.
‘I didn’t know where you were. I woke up and you
weren’t around.’
‘I was stuck in the toilet, you numb-nuts. The lock was
broken!’
‘How was I supposed to know that? I’m not psychic!’
‘We’re twins, you should be.’
‘Si, you know I don’t believe in all of that GPS crap.’
‘It’s ESP, you idiot.’
‘Whatever…’
‘Jesus Christ, that was fucking horrible! Look at me I’m
still shaking, I thought I was going to die in there.’
‘Don’t be so dramatic.’
‘Piss off! I really lost it. I felt like a caged animal.’
‘I can’t believe you broke the sink?’
‘I had to get out, I’ve never been so scared. My whole life
flashed in front of my eyes, it was horrible. I’m telling you,
Chris, just horrible!’
Driving north, Chris follows signs for the Czech border.
Rain clouds fill the sky as we head deeper into the countryside,
and approaching a barricade situated in the middle
of nowhere, we draw to a halt in a torrential downpour.
A stern looking border official wearing a long green
raincoat, steps out of his guard box and peers through the
passenger window. Water drips rapidly from the brim of
his cap as he reaches out his hand and takes our passports.
He then turns around and disappears back inside his
guard box. Re-immerging a few minutes later, he hands
back our wet documents and slowly nods as if to suggest
everything is OK. With a friendly wave, we pass through
the barrier and continue on into the Czech Republic and
the forests of Sumava.
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‘Well, that was easy enough,’ Chris grins, swerving
around the large pools of water dotted along the roadside.
‘So this is the Czech Republic, then?’
A bright bolt of lightening forks dramatically across the
sky directly above us, followed closely by a loud crash of
thunder.
‘Fucking hell,’ I mutter, watching the window wipers
dance vigorously from side-to-side. ‘I feel like I’m in the
Michael Jackson ‘Thriller’ video.’
Shinning the torch down on the map, I follow the road
with my finger. ‘We need to find a turn off on the right for
Cesky Krumlov.’
Chris dabs the brakes as we race past a woman sheltering
beneath a small umbrella.
‘Did you see that?’ he cries glancing in the rearview mirror.
‘Yeah, what the hell’s she doing? Do you think we
should offer her a lift?’
‘Don’t be stupid, Si. She’s a hooker!’
‘Really! What, out here in the middle of nowhere?’
Chris nods. ‘Yep.’
‘How do you know?’
‘It was obvious, wasn’t it?’
‘Was it?’
‘Of course! Couldn’t you tell by the short skirt, or by the
way she was stood with one hand on her hip and her arse
slightly raised. Her tits were practically exposed to the
Czech countryside. She’s probably catching the rich
Germans crossing the border.’
‘She can’t be!’
‘Why not?’
‘I haven’t seen one single car since we left the border.
Surely she must realise that tonight of all nights is a really
bad night to be working. I mean, there’s a full-on rainstorm
going on here – a torrential downpour! She’ll get
struck by lightening holding that umbrella … Hey! There’s
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a sign for Cesky Krumlov, turn down that road.’
Another bright flash of lightening illuminates our faces,
and is followed even more closely by a bone-shattering
boom of thunder.
‘Shit, that was too close for comfort!’ Chris yells.
The rain begins to fall harder, and although the window
wipers are on full speed they fail to clear the buckets of
water pounding the screen.
‘Si, this is dangerous, I can’t see fuck all!’
‘Pull over, then!’
‘Where?’
‘Anywhere!’
‘I can’t! A car might -’
The window screen suddenly turns white as hailstones
engulf the car. Chris slams his foot on the brake pedal and
the car skids to the left. I instinctively reach over and grab
the steering wheel, and we both hang on for dear life as
the Sierra spins 360 degrees in a perfect circle. While the
sound of hailstones drown our screams, another bolt of
lightening illuminates our frightened faces as the car
mounts a small embankment and slides sideways into a
hedge.
Continuing to scream at the top of our voices, Chris
quickly flicks on the hazard lights.
‘What the fuck happenned?’
‘No idea, but i think i’ve just shat my pants!’ Chris shrieks,
As quickly as it started, the hailstorm comes to an
abrupt halt and peering through the now visible window
screen, we gasp as we realise we’re less than a few feet
away from plunging into a deep dyke.
Still gripping the steering wheel Chris turns to me, and
laughs. ‘Welcome to the Czech Republic!’
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