Alexander the 'Great'

After Novosibirsk our train was noticeable empty for a full half-day.  We had spent over 4 days crammed with 54 of us constantly into this car, and now there was no one sitting near us.  It was a welcome relief, but also a tad eerie and lonely as we had grown accustomed to the constant presence of others in such close proximity.  Slowly, and one by one at successive stops, berths began to be claimed, and by late evening our car #5 was again reaching full capacity.  Though this time with a wholly different passenger type.
Only four of us rode entirely from Vladivostok to Moscow.  From this point on we rode with much more urban passengers.  Wearing modern clothes, using iPhones, iPads, iPods, no one speaking with one another, each only riding for short journeys.  We had left the 'Siberian man' behind and now rode with the Moscow student, the Omsk business man, the Perm IT professional, and the chic city girl complete with hip-hugger jeans, designer purses, and far too liberal cosmetic habits.
Immediately across from our lower and upper berths eventually sat a single woman and three men.  Incorrectly assuming not one of them could speak English, we spoke freely and commented on the newcomers.  Towards nightfall, one of the men suddenly spoke English and introduced himself as Alexander.  We came to find he was working in the IT field, and often commuted between Omsk and Perm for work, as he was doing now.  The other men never spoke much of a word to us, though we did discover one of them raised chickens (he offered us hard-boiled eggs he had collected just that day...I've never had such fresh eggs nor seen such bright yolks) and the other man had fought in Afghanistan for the Russian Army.  Now, it must be noted that our Patron Saint and Siberian alpha-male Sasha had warned us that Russian city-folk would not be as warm and accepting or caring towards us or others in general.  And our overall experience with these three new train-mates, as well as our eventual experiences in Moscow would prove Sasha perfectly correct.
Alexander, while talkative, shared none of Sasha's warmth or patience for our lack of knowledge of Russia.  The first night was filled with basic questions of who we were, where we were from, why we were there, and things along this line.  Not once did I feel as comfortable or as much of a bond with Alexander as I had with Sasha the moment we met.
The next day things would get more interesting and revealing.  Slowly the conversation opened into more current topics, and as always happens in these cases, both myself and Alexander became the 'ambassadors' or our respective countries' views.  The Syrian issue:  Alexander says Russia can not figure out why the US must meddle...in fact, he claims Russians never want war...so why become involved in Syria, it is 'their' problem. (having just spent 3+ hours in the 'Occupation Museum of Latvia' here in Riga, seeing first hand what this 'non-interventionist' policy did to the Baltic States, among others, I would now quite firmly call BS to his 'angelic' claims of Russia only wanting peace)  Alexander claimed Americans are all dreamers.  That Russian education is the greatest.  That Americans can not and do not think for themselves.  I really enjoyed picking his brain and hearing such claims, it was an eye-opening and direct view into the Russian perspective of a clearly well-educated man.  Only twice did I call him out in front of his friends.  Once when he claimed he could drink 20 bottles of vodka in a night.  (Obviously he thought we did not think at all about Russian strongman claims) And also when he stated that the only reason the Americans were in Afghanistan was to get the drugs there.  I told him that while that may have been true for the Russians, the US had plenty of smack and powder coming from south of the border.
The entire conversation was much like an encounter between two Dostoevsky-ian characters dueling intellectually about things both current and abstract.  I would freely admit that the average American is woefully uninformed about world affairs, that much is painfully obvious(in fact with almost every host/guide we meet at touristy places around the world, they all have some hilarious/embarrassing story about an American tourist they have met, yesterday's stories were about the how Americans can fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan yet not find them on a map, and the American from L.A. who asked, "What language do they speak in Australia...")...but it was equally fascinating to see the extent to which misinformation can cloud even a well educated mind.
A man must educate himself irregardless, though always respectful, of others, and always remain rigorously free and fiercely independent.
I greatly appreciated the chance to meet and talk so deeply with Alexander, he made a very definite impression on me.