The Gentleman From Finland: Adventures On The Trans-siberian Express

by Robert M. Goldstein

Two days aboard what he believes is the Trans-Siberian Express, the author discovers he's on the wrong train. It is 1987, and he is traveling in the Soviet Union, holding a train ticket that mistakenly identifies him as a Finn. In fact, he is a short, dark-skinned Mexican-American-Russian-Jew, who speaks only enough Russian to proclaim that he is Bob, the tourist from America. As the trip unfolds, what begins as the fulfillment of a childhood dream becomes a journey with a cast of characters worthy of a Russian novel. A grim old woman takes his only pair of shoes. Smugglers stash contraband booze under his bunk, then ply him with alcohol and delicacies. A beautiful Russian woman rescues the author from disaster in one city, only to mysteriously reappear in another, fueling his growing paranoia that she is a KGB agent. Throughout the story, Goldstein interjects historical anecdotes, as well as his own family's past in czarist Russia. The Gentleman from Finland is a sometimes hilarious, sometimes poignant story of the misadventures of a traveler who discovers that a journey on the world's longest rail line is much more than just a big train ride.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction

230 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Robert M. Goldstein was born in Los Angeles, but grew up in Santa Clara, California, where he began his first bicycle forays. After graduating from Oregon State University in 1977 with a bachelors degree in Technical Journalism, he worked as a newspaper reporter for the Walla Walla Union Bulletin and the Bellevue Journal-American. In the late 1980s, his career took a different direction after he received his Masters degree in Public Administration from the University of Washington. Since that time he has held a variety of administrative posts in California and Washington. He has traveled extensively, and has published travel articles on Nepal, Bhutan, and China in the Seattle Times and Journal-American. His critically acclaimed first book, The Gentleman from Finland Adventures on the Trans-Siberian Express, chronicles a madcap journey across the Soviet Union. The book earned Goldstein the coveted Benjamin Franklin Award for best travel book published by a small publisher in North America in 2005. His most recent book, Riding with Reindeer A Bicycle Odyssey through Finland, Lapland and Arctic Norway, takes the reader along on a self-supported solo bike trip from Helsinki to the Arctic Ocean. Currently, he is the Chief Financial Officer of the Kitsap Regional Library. He lives in Seattle."

Reviews

[Sonja · Rating 4 out of 5]

A few years ago, Mr. Goldstein came to our Daughters of Norway meeting and gave a program on his book, Riding with Reindeer, which was about his trip to Finland which he mostly covered by bicycle. He was a very charming, funny, man and our group really enjoyed his talk. I purchased two of his books that day, Riding with Reindeer and The Gentleman From Finland: Adventures on the Trans-Siberian Express. I just finished the latter book and found it just as interesting as his Reindeer journey. He was a lot younger when he went on this Siberian trip - about 32 years old - this was back in 1987 when Russian life was a lot different (and a lot the same) as it is now. It was a very long one-way journey on the Express (over 5,000 miles) and, in spite of taking part of the journey on the wrong train, his story was just full of all kinds of interesting experiences with people, places, and weather. It was a great read. He was a journalist for the first part of his career life and his writing shows he learned his craft well.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the book very much and couldn't put it down. This was do to the fact that I wanted to find out what other characters Goldstein was going to meet on the Sibirsk, the Trans-Siberian Express or in the cities that he stops in not to mention the nightmare of arrangements it took to make the trip possible. Then there's the fact that his Russian consisted of "I am Bob. I am a tourist. I am American. I do not speak Russian." Scary! At least when I visited my cousins in western Norway we could find some common words even though they were speaking Nynorsk and while I had learned the official Bokmal. It was a fun read but I'm glad it wasn't me in the Soviet Union starting out on the wrong train.

[AS · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this, and there are definitely some very funny parts, but one thing I found disappointing was that his descriptions of the places he visits are very thin. I couldn't get a mental image of any of them at all, and that was one reason I wanted to read the book in the first place.
His interactions with people along the trip are especially funny, though, and I think it does a good job capturing the quirkiness and unpredictability of the trip.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm kind of surprised -- and also not -- that this book never made it far beyond a small, independent publishing house in Seattle. I hadn't ever heard of it before a friend sent it to me and demanded that I read it. It's kind of like "Everything is Illuminated" except way more sincere. And with fewer Nazis.

[Christopher · Rating 1 out of 5]

As an ardent traveler who prefers the Trans-Siberian Railway for getting between Europe and Asia, I picked up Robert M. Goldstein's travelogue THE GENTLEMAN FROM FINLAND to see his take on this thrilling route. Goldstein traveled between Moscow and Khabarovsk in 1987, during the early days of glasnost and perestroika and the relatively last days of the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, the book was not published until 2005. People who browse through Amazon tend to revolt against one-star reviews, but hear me out as I make my case that this is an extremely disappointing book.

The reader easily sympathizes with the beginning chapters of the book, as Goldstein finds he has a chance of overcoming the bureacratic challenges and taking the train ride that has enthralled him since reading National Geographic as a child. However, once he actually arrives in Russia, he shows himself to be such a childish and insensitive tourist that the reader quickly begins to despise him. He has trouble communicating, mumbling things from a phrasebook and absurdly throwing in "glasnost" all the time. He tries to look like a poor, helpless foreigner in a crazy land, but one notices that he had plenty of time to learn a little basic conversational Russia before his arrival, but chose not to do so. He's even unwilling to appreciate the people he meets on the route. The cook in the restaurant car is a "troll", a group of Asian military officers are "munchkins". A blurb by one Nancy Pearl on the back of the book claims that Goldstein's travelogue will appeal to lovers of Bill Bryson's books. Sure, Goldstein has the same habit of puerile deprecation of people and customs just because they are different. And while Goldstein suggests that he is an experienced traveler, having even been to Israel and the West Bank before, he seems to become exasperated at the most trifling unplanned circumstances.

The book isn't even much use for learning about the Trans-Siberian Railway. For his first leg of the journey, from Moscow to Novosibisk, Goldstein mistakenly takes a different, local train, not the Rossiya train of the Trans-Siberian. The journey has changed in many respects since Goldstein's in 1987, and it is unfortunate that he made no attempt to show how it was by the time the book appeared in 2005. It's as if the manuscript was written in the late 1980s, sat in a drawer because something this awful couldn't easily find a publisher, and was put out with no changes nearly two decades later.

If you want to read about the Trans-Siberian Railway, Lonely Planet's travel guide gives the best overall view of the route as it is now, with some historical details thrown in. I very much suggest avoiding THE GENTLEMAN FROM FINLAND.

[Paula · Rating 2 out of 5]

You know when you read a book and you just don't want it to end? This was not that book. The Gentleman From Finland wasn't a terrible read by any means; in fact I found parts of it fun and enjoyable but by the last 50 pages or so I just wanted it over but couldn't give it up when I was that far in.

The author writes about his journey riding through Siberia on the Trans-Siberian Express on an epic journey that he had wanted to take since he was a kid and fell in love with trains. In 1987, regular tourists don't generally get to make this journey by themselves, but because Bob was the guests of friends living in Moscow, he got all the right paperwork to ride the train. Things in Russia are sort of like Alice in Wonderland, with not much being as it seems. In his quest to get paperwork to ride this train, Bob's passport came through an agency in Finland, a place he has never even been, but it seems that all of Russia now thinks that the Mexican-American-Russian-Jewish Bob is Finnish. He can't seem to make anyone understand that he is an American, so finally gives up. Throughout his journey, Finland keeps popping up in all kinds of ways, as if there is something that Bob is supposed to find out about his heritage.

Two days in to the very first leg of his journey, Bob realizes that he isn't even on the famous train. Between his extremely limited Russian speaking skills and the man at the train station not understanding him, he boarded a train headed to the same first stop. Bob finally arrives, a day early, to the hotel in the town of his first layover, but because they are not expecting him until the next day, the staff at the hotel pretty much pretends that he isn't there until the actual time that he was supposed to arrive. The scene was pretty comical, if you weren't Bob. Along the rest of the way, we meet some pretty amazing characters, some quite unbelievable really. Bob ends up getting sick along the way and the last third or so of the book is really the ramblings of his feverish mind. Believe me when I say that it was time for this train trip to come to an end.

[JulieK · Rating 3 out of 5]

A guy from Seattle rides the Trans-Siberian Express in the Gorbachev-era Soviet Union. The writing is a little amateurish, but the author was likeable and the narrative kept my attention through his sometimes difficult adventures.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think the Finland book was more fun, but this one covers some crazy adventures.