TY - CHAP

T1 - A taste of travel or a bite of home. Eating on Soviet trains, 1960s–1980s

T2 - book chapter

AU - Kapkan, Maria

PY - 2023

Y1 - 2023

N2 - The chapter aims to explore the ways of eating on the 1960s–1980s Soviet trains and how they were used to domesticate the long journey. The source base of the research comprises interviews with the passengers. A passenger on a Soviet train could choose between the three versions of eating: using organized catering provided by the railways, buying food from the platform markets, or eating food brought from home. The chapter discusses all these possibilities and how they were accepted by the passengers or avoided by them. The principal scenarios of eating on a train are revealed by analyzing typical restaurant car menus and sets of home-brought food. Preferred tastes and flavours, as well as Soviet travel rituals related to food, are also of particular attention. The chapter concludes that food on a Soviet train implicitly was meant to create an illusion of an ordinary space in the unusual circumstances of travel. Travel on a train was largely built on the repetition of the familiar taste experience rather than on expanding its limits and finding new impressions.

AB - The chapter aims to explore the ways of eating on the 1960s–1980s Soviet trains and how they were used to domesticate the long journey. The source base of the research comprises interviews with the passengers. A passenger on a Soviet train could choose between the three versions of eating: using organized catering provided by the railways, buying food from the platform markets, or eating food brought from home. The chapter discusses all these possibilities and how they were accepted by the passengers or avoided by them. The principal scenarios of eating on a train are revealed by analyzing typical restaurant car menus and sets of home-brought food. Preferred tastes and flavours, as well as Soviet travel rituals related to food, are also of particular attention. The chapter concludes that food on a Soviet train implicitly was meant to create an illusion of an ordinary space in the unusual circumstances of travel. Travel on a train was largely built on the repetition of the familiar taste experience rather than on expanding its limits and finding new impressions.

UR - https://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcAuth=tsmetrics&SrcApp=tsm_test&DestApp=WOS_CPL&DestLinkType=FullRecord&KeyUT=001042623800004

U2 - 10.4324/9781003327820-4

DO - 10.4324/9781003327820-4

M3 - Chapter

SN - 978-1-032-35614-3

SN - 978-1-032-35613-6

VL - 136

SP - 26

EP - 38

BT - Eating on the Move from the Eighteenth Century to the Present

A2 - d’Errico, R.

A2 - Magagnoli, S.

A2 - Scholliers, P.

A2 - Atkins, P.J.

PB - Routledge

ER -