Train from Yekaterinburg to Novosibirsk

For this two day journey we were in a second class carriage. These are very similar to third class but the carriage is divided into about 20 4 person sleeping compartments. This has the advantage of giving you more privacy but it also means that if you are assigned a carriage with annoying/scary weird nutter type people you are stuck with them for two days with no escape. Luckily, we were in a carriage with a very friendly Russian couple in their 40s/50s called Alec and Natasha.


They spoke no English so we had an opportunity for Karen to practise her Russian and, when our dictionaries failed us, to develop our sign-language skills. We were a bit worried at first when we found out that Alec was a member of the Russian army who spent 20 years on the Chinese border. Our fears were allayed when Natasha produced a whole roast duck from her bag and proceeded to rip it to pieces with her bare hands while Karen searched for a knife for her. We were amazed and pleased when they kept offering us more and more. We found that people were very generous in this way quite often in Russia. They also don't let you refuse their offerings without a fight. "Go on, go on, go on, go on. You will have another piece of duck now."



We certainly weren't arguing when they brought out the Russian brandy and started pouring shots to be downed. After the second or third we felt a bit bad that this exchange was so one sided. Normally, we found that Russian people would refuse our offers of food and drink but Alec seemed quite keen when we got out the posh vodka we bought in St. Petersburg.

As the shots were downed we began to worry that we may go beyond the point of no return. Wanting to avoid the embarassment and unpleasantness of us being sick we decided to distract them from the drinking with a game of travel Frustration. This appeared to do the trick and Alec seemed to really get into it shouting "Shest" every time he got a six and then got quite excited when he won. By the time we finished the game I think Natasha had decided that Alec had had too much and so, thankfully, we stopped drinking.

When we arrived in Novosibirsk we were met by Alec's brother who spoke a little English. Apparently Alec had rang him on the mobile before we arrived and had asked him help us get on the local bus to the hotel :-)

Photos for this journey can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ianwhitfield/sets/72157603794179836/

Yekaterinburg and Novosibirsk

So now we enter the cold zone. -20 degrees in Yekaterinburg and -26 degrees in Novosibirsk... It's a strange type of cold here compared to Britain. It's very dry and there isn't much wind so at first it can seem o.k. until you notice that your lungs feels a little strange when you inhale the air and that your nostril hairs feel like they're freezing. 20-30 minutes outside results in your face freezing and the immediate desire to rush into a warm cafe to avoid losing vital extremities.

Some of you may be thinking: "Well, you did choose to go to Siberia in winter Ian".. This is a very valid point but, in my defense, I wouldn't be British if I didn't get at least a small whinge in about the weather :-)

The atmosphere in Yekaterinburg and Novosibirsk is very different to St. Petersburg and Moscow. They are still fairly large cities but have a much more relaxed atmosphere. We hardly saw any police here and didn't feel that we would be asked for our papers at any moment. It seems as though people here are less under the watchful eye of the state because of their distance from the centres of power in European Russia. People in hotels and cafes greet you more enthusiastically and there is much less evidence of the all pervasive Russian glum face.

We mainly spent our time here relaxing and hiding from the weather in really nice cafes with hearty Russian food and drink. Karen discovered her love for Blinis (pancakes with stuff in them). She got a bit of a taste for Blini with caviar. I ate Solyanka (clear soup with various mixed meat and veg and a splodge of sour cream. This is a great way to warm yourself up. We also had a try of the Kvas (strange non-alcoholic malt drink that kind of tastes like liquid Malt Loaf).

We also took a look at the town squares which have beautiful ice sculptures throughout winter. We had a fun bum slide down quite a big ice slide in Yekaterinburg, much to the amusement of the Russian teenagers. They seem to be able to effortlessly slide down while standing up which was quite impressive. We thought about trying it but decided it was less embarassing to go down on our bums than to go down standing up and then go arse over tit.

Photos for Yekaterinburg can be found here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ianwhitfield/sets/72157603745890272/

Photos for Novosibirsk can be found here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ianwhitfield/sets/72157603750347769/

Trans-Siberian Express - Moscow to Yekaterinburg

This is where the Trans-Siberian starts. Moscow to Yekaterinburg is about a 30 hour train journey which took us across the border from European to Asian Russia.


We had booked 3rd class tickets for this part of the journey which means you are in an open carriage with dozens of other people, each with their own bunk. The trains in Russia are mostly clean and comfortable and each carriage has a manager called a provodnitsa who is responsible for order and cleanliness. This was a nice contrast to British trains where the only people on board are the driver and the person in the shop who will sell groups of lads vast quantities of Stella and then abandon the passengers to their fate.

It's important to note that the 'Express' part of the title for this journey was abandoned long ago and that the 'Trans-Siberian Amble' may be more appropriate with an average speed of under 50 mph. This is not necessarily a bad thing because it gives you a sense of contemplation and the kind of free time to talk, think and read that it's often hard to find in the busy shuffle of daily life. You can attempt that Russian novel you've never got around to reading, get intimate views of small, anonymous towns where the children go to school on skis and 2000 mile rivers are frozen all the way up to the Arctic Sea. The majority of the views out of the train windows are vast empty snowscapes which creep by with monotonous beauty. The bright winter sunshine reflects off the snow and the barks of silver birch trees making everything sparkle.

We were very lucky that for this journey we were sat with some really friendly Russian people and one person who spoke a little English.


One girl, Eena, was around 30 and was a nurse in an Aids Hospital in Norilsk which is an industrial town in the Arctic Circle which is known for Nickel mining. There was Tonya who was a Grandma and was from Yekaterinburg and spent a lot of the journey knitting. Then there were Artur and Ivan (my namesake) who came from Kazan, which is in between Moscow and Yekaterinburg and has a large muslim population and a beautiful mosque that we saw from train. Artur was a fireman with incredible boots. They were proper big fire-retardent boots with uber-warm felt lining. He mocked our trainers as being unfit for a Siberia winter and we feared for our toes. He also managed to beat me at chess within about 5 minutes. I sat staring at the board for minutes on end with sweat forming on my forehead from the intense concentration, meanwhile Artur would come back from making his bed and make a move which swept away my defences after 10 second's consideration.


As the guide book informed us is often the case with meeting Russian people, the conversation turned to money and the cost of living. The general impression we got was that wages in Russia for most people don't meet the costs of living. It seems that things have improved for some people since the economic turmoil of the late nineties but there was certainly anger at the epic scale of corruption in Russian society which seems to have turned from a totalitarian communist state to a totalitarian capitalist state within a very short space of time. The average worker in Russia is forced to spend half their wage on gas while the oligarchs that control the industries expolit their privatised monopolies to extract as much money from people as they wish and use it to buy mansions and football clubs abroad. As soon as we told people we were from England they would say: "Ambramovich"; "Chelsea" and shake their heads in annoyance at the state of their country.

We got a very good impression of Russian people from this journey. They are very kind, generous and open and will share whatever they have with you and go to extraordinary lengths to help poor clueless English tourists who barely speak Russian. I suppose sharing and helping other people is essential in a society where so many people have so little.

At the end of the journey Tonya inisisted on taking the time to walk us to our hotel near the station in -20 degree cold because she feared we would get lost on the way.

Photos for this journey can be found here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ianwhitfield/sets/72157603739778692/

Moscow - Djengie Yes...

I'm playing catch up a bit here seeing as we're already in China waiting for a train to Beijing....

Moscow is very different in character to St Petersburg. It's less European in it's architecture which is deliberate as the Communists moved their capital from St Petersburg to Moscow after the revolution to break with the past, which was symbolised by the Tsarist luxury of St. Petersburg. As a consequence, Moscow has a more severe atmosphere with huge tower blocks and imposing, functional government buildings. The police presence in Moscow is also quite intimidating and a number of people we met were hassled for ID while staying here. Luckily we avoided it.

Having said all that I get the impression that Moscow does have quite a lot to offer in terms of culture and night life. It's hard to take advantage of these when you're mute non-Russian speaking tourists.

We visited Red Square, The Kremlin and St Basil's Cathedral which are the big tourist attractions in Moscow. These were all very impressive, especially St Basil's. We managed to miss Lenin's tomb which is in Red Square. We didn't know before we read the guide book but this is not a regular tomb because it actually contains Lenin's embalmed corpse. You can pay to go in but I have to say we were ambivalent about this. Luckily the decision was made for us and the tomb was closed. Later on in our trip we were told that if it's closed you can still get in the back door by bribing the guards :-) Possibly and urban myth or a joke at the foreigners' expense. Although it would fit in with other reports of the corrupt Russian police. In the Moscow Times I read a report which said that traffic offences have reduced hugely since New Year due to a five-fold increase in traffic fines. This improvement is not due to the fact that motorist are worried about the bigger fines but that it is now worthwhile for the police to stop motorists because the level of the bribe to let the person off is proportionate to the fine itself. So, the system works...

I think the best thing about our day and night in Moscow for Karen was that the hostel we stayed in had a cat which liked to jump on my head with its claws...

Moscow photos can be found here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ianwhitfield/sets/72157603708050268/