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/