‘Are you married?’ Sergey, the middle-aged man in the bunk below mine on a train from Moscow to Vladivostok, asked me in Russian. We were somewhere east of the Ural Mountains, about 40 hours and 1700 snowy miles into the six-day journey to the Pacific coast. Sergey was going all the way; I was getting off in southern Siberia to see Lake Baikal, the world’s oldest, deepest lake.

Queues to board commercial airplanes have gotten noticeably longer, more chaotic, and sometimes testier. Increasingly restrictive bag policies and sold-out planes inadvertently encourage more passengers to board as early as possible to ensure their place on the plane.