Плацкарт
Open Sleeper
B2 · Upper Intermediate · fiction · 10 scenes · Premium story
An upper-intermediate story set in the carriage almost everybody actually travels in — fifty-four bunks, no compartments, no doors, and two days between Moscow and Novosibirsk. Ira chooses it because in a compartment four people talk to you and here nobody looks at you, which is a mistake she finds out about within the hour. The customs are all real and none of them is written down: the shared lower bunk, the food that comes out immediately and may not be refused, the side berth nobody takes. And opposite her sits a woman of sixty-eight going to a son who has not spoken to her in four years — unannounced, because on the telephone he would say no.
Characters
- Ira (Ира) — 31, moving cities
- Valentina Ivanovna (Валентина Ивановна) — 68, going to see her son
- Kolya (Коля) — Shift worker, lower bunk
- The attendant (Проводница) — Carriage six
Vocabulary from this story
- плацкарт — open sleeper carriage
- вагон — carriage
- поезд — train
- полка — bunk, berth
- боковушка — side berth
- купе — compartment
- проводница — carriage attendant
- билет — ticket
- бельё — bed linen
- матрас — mattress
- стакан — glass
- подстаканник — glass holder