A Russian man has become an unlikely internet sensation after waking up covered head-to-toe in coal dust on a freight train bound for Siberia — with no memory of how he got there and his immediate priority being to call off work.
Dmitry, a young man from Yekaterinburg, had blacked out during a heavy night at a local club before apparently climbing into an open coal freight car and passing out. He woke up bruised, filthy and roughly 330 kilometres from where he had started, on a train heading to Tyumen in western Siberia.
Rather than panic, he picked up his phone and filmed a deadpan 54-second selfie video addressed directly to his colleague Sanya, explaining his situation with the weary composure of a man who had fully accepted his circumstances. “I’m in Tyumen, for f**k’s sake. I don’t even know how,” he says into the camera, face streaked black with coal dust, hair matted, squinting into the morning light with an expression of exhausted bewilderment. He notes it is 6am, that his neck hurts, that he has no idea when he will arrive, and that he will not be making it into work that day.
The clip, shared on Russian Telegram and on X by @BrianMcDonaldIE, went viral almost immediately, racking up thousands of reposts and drawing instant comparisons to the film The Hangover — with viewers dubbing it “The Hangover: Siberian Edition.” Commenters were particularly struck by the professional courtesy of a man whose first instinct, while sitting in a coal wagon en route to Siberia at dawn, was to ensure his workplace was properly notified of his absence.
Dmitry eventually made it home safely. He has since been widely and unanimously declared a legend — a title he appears to have accepted with the same remarkable calm he brought to the original situation.
