The Trans-Siberian Railway: Moscow to Irkutsk

It was there before we knew it. We packed our bags in preperation and went to the kitchen in preperation for whatever intriguing concoction was rustled up for breakfast this morning. It was Russian pancakes, which was a nice surprise. They were pretty much the same as any pancake but quite small. After devouring 2 plates worth, we gathered all our belonging and marched off in the direction of Yaroslavsky station. Unfortunately, the weather had turned so it was a rather miserable day, the rain was just about holding off though. As ever we were far to keen for our own good, arriving at the station with a good 2 hours to kill before departure. So our time was spent being moved around by a security guard as we were always in the way and posing for a photograph each with our train ticket. The time eventually came and the train pulled painfully slowly into the station. After showing our ticket to the provodnitsa (carriage attendant) we were on to find our bunks. We had opted for 2nd class or "kupe", which is 4 beds in one compartment. The other options were 1st class which has 2 beds in one compartment or 3rd class which has 54 beds in an open carriage. Not long after we'd got in our roommates were in too. We'd got rather lucky, they were tourists too, going all the way to Irkutsk with us.

The train chugged out of the station bang on time, beginning its journey to Chita, a city in the Far East of Russia. For the first couple of hours we sat and got to know our roommates. They were Fleur (spelling probably not correct) and Annabel (spelling probably not correct, sorry, just incase you ever happen to stumble across this blog) and they were from the Netherlands. 

There's not a great deal of things I can write about the next 4 days, without being incredibly boring and saying we did a crossword, so I'll just try to pick out a few of our highlights.

It started out fairly warm outside, when we had the opportunity to hop off at stops, buy some fruit and provisions from the Babushkas selling all sorts of stuff and stretch our legs and take some photos of trains and signs.

We also met a few other people who deserve a credit that made the trip more bearable, although their names may have been forgotten along the way. Such as Anatoly the Russian, with whom we had a rather painful conversation with in the Dining Car one evening. He spoke very little English and our Russian is hardly fluent, so a Brazilian called Lucas had to do some translating for us. Chris and wife (sorry), who were also from the Netherlands, on their honeymoon and we played a couple of strange dice games with them and our room mates a few times. Leah and mother (sorry) who were from France, with Leah currently working in Southampton. And Johanna from Finland, who was forced to join us one evening in the dining car due the waitress needing a spare table.

By the time we'd reached the city of Barabinsk on the third evening, there was a noticeable chill in the air. I was regretting the decision to go for shorts for the half hour stop. By this time, the already grumpy provodnitsa was so fed up with being asked to lock our cabin that she just gave the key to us to lock it ourselves. The next big stop later that night was Novosibirsk, which is the biggest city in Siberia. It was very cold here and this was only in October, I wouldn't want to stick around to see what January is like. This time, a pair of comfy lounge trousers did the trick and kept the cold off, even if I did receive a few funny looks from the Russians on the station. We made an attempt to get a bottle of water and a small coke at this stop, through one of the tiny kiosk holes that you have to bend to speak through. They use a calculator to show you the price as they can't speak English. We were shocked when he presented us with his calculator and it read 2500 Roubles. Boy did we laugh, 25 quid? You must be joking. I said no way, took it from him and wrote down 250.0 (he obviously didn't understand the decimal point), to which he screamed "NO!!!!" and then preceded to tap in 250.00. We paid and left Derek Trotter and his dodgy calculator to his kiosk, even 250 Roubles was slightly expensive but on a freezing station platform in the middle of Siberia, beggars can't be choosers. We chose a different kiosk to stock up on some chocolately treats, which contained a lovely lady who actually spoke quite good English, it might just be that Mars Bar and Maltesers are the same in Russian as they are in English though.

It's a rather nice sensation to get rocked to sleep by the train as it rattles through the Siberian countryside. The beds were extremely comfortable but the room could get a bit toasty with 4 bodies, the heating on and grumpy provodnitsa lady having locked the window opposite us because we kept opening it.

Every morning the waitress would come along the carriage with a tray of freshly baked (probably microwaved) pastries for us to purchase. We declined politely on the first day but the next morning used it as an opportunity to try out our mastery of the Russian language, two, thank you, please and you're welcome was all we could handle (the latter 2 are exactly the same word) but we still manage to procure ourselves a sausage roll and a beefy ricey sort of pie thing, freshly bakerowaved, they were really tasty, nothing like a sausage roll while your still tucked up under your duvet.

One problem we encountered along the way the time differences. There are 9 time zones in Russia, so for example when it's 12 o'clock in Moscow, it's 5pm in Irkutsk, simple, as Irkutsk is 5 hours ahead. However, all the trains run on Moscow time only. Madness. If you're catching a train in Irkutsk and it says it leaves at 12 o'clock on your ticket, it is actually leaving at 5pm local time. Just bananas! Anyway, this led to all sorts of confusion over what the time was wherever we were. I tried to keep up with the time changes despite not knowing for sure when they changed, whereas Charlotte and the others decided stick with Moscow time, so they knew when the stops would be. I mainly did it just to be annoying and took great pleasure when asking or being asked "what's the time?" To replying or hearing "Moscow time or actual time", when you are 2000km away from Moscow. It's actually a really strange feeling heading that way round the world, the days seem to be over so quickly as you are always moving in the opposite direction to the sun. We did end up with a very mild form of jet lag.

Long the final full day we started to see the odd patch of snow here and there along the side of the tracks but it wasn't really anything to be excited about. The final large city before we reached our destination, was Krasnoyarsk. Here we had another long stop, equipped with our pyjama bottoms and anoraks once more, we headed for a browse around the station. We made it as far as the entrance to the station and didn't fancy venturing any further as it was pouring with rain. I'm sure on a lovely summers day Krasnoyarsk is a sight to behold but on a miserable rainy day in October, I was glad we hadn't decided to stay the night. As we were standing on the brink of the rain, a man came up behind us and started chatting to us. At first we had no idea what he was saying but eventually realised he was talking English, not something we were really expecting. We went through the usual tourist tattle of where have you been etc. and he was really surprised to find out we had been on the train all the way from Moscow. He had been doing short jumps from major city to major city. We stood atop the steps leading down to Krasnoyarsk and wished him well as he braved the rain, expecting to never see him again. After a few snaps of the station and the locomotive doing all the work at the front we settled back down into our cosy cabin to finish our 4 day train ride to Irkutsk.

As we got closer, the snow started to get more and more and we were rather excited to arrive and experience the infamous cold temperatures of Siberia. We hopped off at a final station to grab a quick photo of a statue, in such a rush, that we neglected to put our shoes on and Charlotte forgetting her coat. It was freezing and wet but we knew we'd appreciate the warmth of the train so much more when we got back on the train. A cursory glance at our Lonely Planet book when we got back on the train, informed us that the last time they had been to that particular station, a policeman had arrested their author for taking photographs of the platform. Maybe we should read things like that before we rush in to things.

As we were still sort of on Moscow time, we all got an early night, as our train was due in at 03:30. Although, this actually meant it arrived at 08:30 Irkutsk time, which is perfectly reasonable. Somehow we managed a good night sleep and woke to a fresh blanket of snow. It was like waking up to a white Christmas (I would imagine). We pulled in slightly late at 08:42 but to only lose 12 minutes over 4 days is pretty good going. British trains would have ground to a halt at the first sight of a snowflake. We disembarked, still bobbing up and down from the constant movement of the train and said our goodbyes to our cabin mates.

Off to explore our tiny speck of Siberia and the imperious Lake Baikal.

Moscow : Part Dva

So the every day posts didn't really work out, a combination of illness and lack of wifi didn't help. So I'll recap what we did in Moscow on our last few days there.

Friday morning we had our breakfast cooked for us yet again, this time it was a porridge, mixed with apple and cinnamon which we both thoroughly enjoyed and set us up well for the day. We didn't get out the hostel until quite late on in the morning and it had turned into a lovely day, pushing 28 degrees, which is quite rare for that time of year in Mosocw. We followed our same route into the centre of the city but took a right just before we hit Red Square. In the distance, through the Moscow haze, we could see a huge Russian Orthodox cathedral, so we walked in the direction of that. No matter how far we walked though, it didn't seem to be getting any closer. Eventually, we made it and after passing through some less than impressive areas of the city with no tourist presence we were pleasantly surprised to see quite a few milling around the cathedral. Our map helpfully informed us that this was the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. It was a very impressive building, with its gold domes shimmering in the sunlight and situated in a great location, right next to the Moskva River. We wandered across the bridge over the river opposite the cathedral, took some snaps of it and admired the views of the Moscow rooftops down towards the Kremlin. With nothing else of note in this part of town, we made our way down to the banks of the river and walked along in the direction of Red Square. We passed the Kremlin, it's impenetrable red brick wall looming over the river and came to the back of St.Basil's cathedral and Red Square but we were unable to get to them due to the 8 lane motorway in the way. We managed to find an underpass a mile or so down the road, so after our slight detour, we had made it to our destination. By this time our porridge had worn off and we were pretty much out of energy so we decided to hunt down a supermarket to pick up some much needed lunch. In Moscow though, this is easier said than done. Food is plentiful, we stopped by a kiosk and picked up 2 pies which had meat and rice in, they were tasty apart from the large amount of fennel stuffed inside them. After that we needed a drink and this is where the problems started, we couldn't find a supermarket anywhere. We had a look in the state department store (more on that later), known as "ГУМ" or "Gum" to you and me, then round the roads linked to Red Square but nothing. Exasperated, we decided to try once more in "Gum". Low and behold, tucked away on an entire stretch of the ground floor, was the "Gum" grocery store, how we missed it I'll never know but we got our drinks and sat on a bench to relax. While drinking we were admiring a Christmassy jumper in a window of a shop, when we finished we had a look in to see if it was in our price range. At 20,000 roubles (£200), it's still on its hanger in the shop. We had seen a pin badge earlier in the day at an underpass souvenir shop (they tuck themselves away underground to get away from the biting winters), so we made our way back to pick up one each and then headed for home in preparation to meet a dead man the next day.

Breakfast was cooked for us again, a Russian one of a porridgey rice thing, which was okay but nothing spectacular. We took our usual route to Red Square and joined the rather long queue to see a Communist icon. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin died in 1924 of a stroke. For the first few days, his body was on display for all to see. So many people turned up to see their former leader that they decided to go against his wishes of being buried next to his mother in St.Petersberg and keep him on display permanently. They charged a group of scientists with coming up with a way of preserving his rapidly decaying body. It basically consisted of dunking him in a large vat of wax. Nowadays, despite calls for him to finally be buried, he lies in state in his own mausoleum on Red Square and is one of Moscow's most popular tourist attractions. The long queue moved fairly quickly and before we knew it we were having our bags searched by the police and moving through metal detectors. We were clean, no threat from us. This whole part of Red Square is known as a necropolis, as hundreds of Pro-Communist fighters and politicians, as well as cosmonauts are buried here, including Joseph Stalin and Yuri Gagarin. You walk past plaques on the wall of the Kremlin, marking the people buried inside until you eventually reach the mausoleum. It's heavily guarded and policed. It's very dimly lit and you follow a pathway round until you reach the main chamber, where Lenin is situated. You aren't allowed to stop and you aren't allowed to take photos. Despite the pitch black conditions, he is well lit and almost looks like he belongs in Madame Tussaud's. This is probably the weirdest thing Charlotte and I have done and will do while travelling. He seems to follow you as you walk around the room and you cannot take your eyes off him. I'm sure his fingers twitched...? It was strange to see the body of a dead man, so revered by his country, they've kept him preserved and on display for so long.

 Next up, we headed for the Kremlin, to have a look around where the President lives. The main ticket was easy to get, just from a machine off to one side but we decided to queue to get one to enter the armoury too. After 15 minutes we noticed a sign above the kiosk that the person was on a lunch break and would be back in 5 minutes. No wonder the queue hadn't moved an inch! When she got back it started flying, when we got to the desk though, we were unable to get a ticket, as they are only sold from 40 minutes before the start of the tour and are limited. We left it and just stuck with the main area of the Kremlin. After some more security checks we were in, and free to wander around the grounds to our hearts content. The main attraction is the cathedral square, which is home to 4 impressively large domed cathedrals. I won't bore you with all their names but when stood in the middle it is a very impressive sight. Our ticket included entry into a couple of them so we decided to utilise this and compare them with St.Basil's (which we had found out was 9 or so small churches all roled into one, hence its size). One was quite similar, with small passageways leading from room to room and the other contained a large open room, with artefacts and museum parts dotted around. After the churches we wandered round the gardens of the Kremlin, which offered great views out over the city. On our way back to the square we passed the tsar cannon and bell. The cannon is a huge bronze cast piece, one of the largest calibre weapons in the world. It's never been fired in malice and only once otherwise. There is a stack of cannonballs next to it, which are actually too big to fit in the barrel. Just down from the cannon is the Tsar Bell, which is again, cast from bronze. It was cracked while casting and subsequently has never been rung. It is currently the largest bell in the world, coming in at over 6 metres tall. Our final visit inside the Kremlin was to visit the patriarchs palace, which is now a museum holding hundreds of piece of mainly Tsarist history. After the long day, we made a quick stop at "Gum" to refuel with drinks and baked goods, then headed back to our hostel via the world famous Bolshoi Theatre.

For our final full day we had our most interesting breakfast yet. A rice pudding with Apple and cinnamon. I struggled through mine but Charlotte couldn't stomach hers and had to throw it away, we were still very grateful for receive it though. Our first port of call was to establish how to get to Yaroslavsky train terminal to catch out train the next day. We negotiated the complicated Moscow Metro with ease and found it in no time but then struggled to find the entrance back into the metro. Eventually we found it and decided to head back to Red Square one final time to browse the highly recommended Metro station at Ploshchad Revolyutsii. It was a very impressive platform, with statues lining all the archways leading to the trains but it was awkward to take a photo due to the terrible lighting and the constant flow of people. We left the metro to do one final bit of souvenir shopping. The whole way round Eatern Europe we had resisted the urge to buy a Russian Doll, they are quite common in the Baltics, and we wanted to get one from Russia itself. So after scanning the stalls and a souvenir shop, we picked out 1 each, containing 5 in total and bought them, for a pretty reasonable price. With Москва complete we headed for home once more, pleased with our 5 days work. That evening it was lovely to Skype my parents, Rob and Hannah and also my uncle Stewart who is over from Canada visiting. We'd just enough time to have an "interesting" conversation with a Russian about immigration (the details of which I won't share) and head to bed, it was like going to sleep on Christmas Eve as a child!

The next part of our trip is what the whole thing is really built around. My lifelong desire to ride the Trans-Siberian railway. Albeit not all the way to Vladivostock but with Mongolia and China on the horizon, I won't complain about that!