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

Paperback - 15 April, 2005 - Rivendell Publishing Northwest
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By: Robert M Goldstein
ISBN: 0976328801

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Reviews by readers

The Gentleman From Finland is a Great Ride

I have read a number of travel memoirs, but rarely have I read one as funny and well-written as The Gentleman From Finland. The book works on a number of levels: as a laugh-out-loud tale of an innocent abroad; as an insider look at a Soviet Union that no longer exists; and as a poignant rumination on families and the past. Goldstein is particularly adept at capturing the absurdities of the situations in which he finds himself, whether it is seeking something to eat on the train or trying to get a room at a hotel where he is not due until the next day and thus does not exist. Thank god that Goldstein was willing to take this trip on the reader's behalf, because God knows I wouldn't want to do it. But I'm sure glad he did and chose to write about it.

A Tale of Mistaken Identity

Don't be mislead by the title: the "Gentleman from Finland" is in actuality a Silicon Valley baby-boomer whose childhood
fascination with trains results, through a series of
misunderstandings, in this ill-prepared and torturous journey across the desolate Russian wasteland on the Siberian Express.

Through his adventures and extensive background reading, the author makes the history, geography and politics of this obscure region not only palatable, but genuinely entertaining.

It isn't necessary to be an armchair travel buff to appreciate this fast-moving view of a thoroughly unfamiliar part of the world or to identify with the traveller's thoughts and emotions as he gamely makes the best of his uncomfortable situation.

A memorable snapshot of one man's encounter with a nation

Set in 1987, The Gentleman from Finland: Adventures on the Trans-Siberian Express is a memoir chronicling mishaps that escalate almost into the realm of the bizarre. The author, a short, swarthy Mexican-American-Russian-Jew, boards what he believes to be the Trans-Siberian Express yet discovers two days later that he is on the wrong train, traversing the Soviet Union with a voucher that mistakenly identifies him as a Finn. He speaks almost no Russian, and is lost amid a strange land - an old woman steals his shoes, smugglers stash contraband under his bunk, and a beautiful woman rescues him from disaster yet mysteriously keeps reappearing, leading him to fear that she is with the KGB. Sometimes wryly humorous, other times fraught with tension, The Gentleman from Finland is a truly unique travelogue offering a memorable snapshot of one man's encounter with a nation.