Steven Fisher, formerly of Citibank Moscow and Kyiv, is curating a collection of essays on expatriate life in the 1990s and 2000s. This is my contribution.

I spent several years of my adult life in Russia. Beginning in 1998, and for many years thereafter, I lived each summer in St. Petersburg, where my wife was born. From 2001 to 2003, I conducted dissertation research at the New Economic School (NES) in Moscow. In 2007, I returned to NES as a Fulbright-Hays Fellow. Among my happiest memories from those years are the long train rides I took within Russia.

Russian economic activity fluctuated during this period, and the government slid steadily into unrepentant authoritarianism, but the trains kept getting better. I recall an early ride in platskart (budget class), sitting in the dark at the station, lights off to conserve power. Only once the train began to move could we see well enough to arrange our things. Yet even then, the trains ran “bang on time,” as I remember a Lonely Planet guide observing. Eventually, as new money arrived and rolling stock was upgraded, rail travel became reliably comfortable.

Trains were places of conversation, and I had many over the years. On a journey to Saratov, I sat in the dining car with Konstantin Sonin—a prominent Russian economist and now my colleague at the University of Chicago—and sketched out an early model of “Bayesian persuasion.” On another trip, I spoke late into the night with a Russian naval officer based in St. Petersburg. I’ve occasionally wondered if he felt compelled to report our exchange.

Every train ride ends. If one is lucky, the conversation continues after disembarking. For the truly fortunate, that happens over kalitki (open-faced pies) and tea, as it did when I traveled with my wife’s family to the Karelian village where my mother-in-law was born. I’ve eaten at some fine restaurants, but no other meal was quite so satisfying.

Eventually, I graduated to kupe (compartment class), with a locking door and a bed long enough for my feet. It was an upgrade—but with higher stakes. On that same Saratov trip, Konstantin negotiated a cabin change after I complained about the unbearable body odor of two men sharing our space. “How did you manage that?” I asked. He smiled: “For Russians, foreigners are a little bit boss, a little bit child.”

That last memory is bittersweet. Gone are the days when I could be humored in Russia for my idiosyncrasies. Today, soldiers ride those same rails—to kill Ukrainians, and to be killed. Yet I did recently board a Soviet-era train—this one, however, from Poland to Kyiv. The conversation was excellent, the ride smooth, the journey complete.