Hello, my name is Harlee and I teach Conversational English in the USA. I travel a lot into E. Europe, Russia, Siberia, Ukraine and the Balkans. As you can imagine, I have had some funny experiences while traveling.
Once, while traveling for 22 hours by train from Izhevsk, Russia to Moscow, I was traveling with two American friends, married to each other, and a Russian man whom neither of us knew.
My friend was speaking to the man in Russian and informed me that this man had his wife in a different coupe a couple of cars down, and wanted to know if one of us would mind taking his wife's place in her coupe so that she could come to our coupe to be with him. Well, since I was the only single person in the coupe, I agreed. A few minutes later this very pretty Russian girl came to our coupe and in very poor English announced that she would take me to the other coupe were her two cousins were.
I wasn't sure what I was getting myself into, but I went with her, so that the man's wife could take my place in our coupe. I felt quite strange in the coupe with two Russian girls and their young cousin. they offered me whiskey, which I refused, vodka which I refused and cigaretts which I refused. They they plyed me with hundreds of questions about America, for I was the first American they had ever met.
I was a little concerned when it was time to get undressed and go to bed. By this time the two girls were pretty well drunk and one of them, along with their cousin, went to sleep. The third girl, the one who came to get me, then motioned for me to turn my head while she got undressed. Then she said "OK." and she had changed into her night clothes and got under her covers. I laid down with my clothes on and covered myself up with a blanket.
Early in the morning as we were still moving and it was beginning to get light, I noticed the girl [sleeping across from me] was all curled up without her blanket, which was on the floor. So, being a gentleman, I covered her up again with her blanket and she never woke up.
We arrived in Moscow around 8:00 AM, and after saying goodbye we went in our separate directions, never to be seen again. Traveling really is a lot of fun and you meet such interesting people!
