From Russia, With Love - Pt 3 - TransSiberian & Ekaterinburg

The TransSiberian. The worlds longest rail network spanning the length of Russia, from St Petersburg in the West to Vladivostok in the East. Officially though we've taken the TransMongolian route, which heads south at Irkutsk, through Mongolia, to Beijing.

We took the train from Moscow to Ekaterinburg taking 26hrs to travel the 1,670km's. We had upgraded to a two-berth sleeper so we unpacked and settled in for the ride.

First class is a surprise to me as the cabin was just as good, if not better than any European train I've been on. They had lots of little cupboards to store your belongings, and the back rest of the chair flipped down to become your bed, already equipped with a nice mattress, quilt and pillow. The provodnik (conductor) sold us tea in glasses with the most gorgeous holders and the waitress from the restaurant car came around with a menu for dinner that could be delivered to the cabin. It was very luxurious.







The view was beautiful, most of the time made up of fields and paddocks, but the thing that surprised me was just how populated the countryside is. The distance between towns was very short and most of the way you can see houses dotted around. We were stopping at stations on a fairly regular basis where the locals came out to sell their goods to the passengers, though I couldn't believe the first stop when they were trying to sell glassware and chandeliers. I was also surprised to see how busy the line was, as we would pass another train at least once every 10-15 minutes.

We slept comfortably through the night and welcomed the chance to bum out through the day, we didn't have a choice; we had nowhere else to go. So we read books, wrote a blog, checked through our photos and had an awesome day.













We arrived around 8pm in Ekaterinburg, were met by the owner of the local tourist agency and taken to our home-stay where we met Lydia, our host. She was the sweetest lady, spoke absolutely no English, and would shake her head in humoured frustration when we couldn't understand her. One thing we did find out though was that the building she lives in was doing yearly maintenance checks on the heating system and so there would be no hot water for two days. This meant baths with water heated on the stove and a cup Ð was interesting, but doable.







The following morning we were picked up by our guide, Daria, and taken on a walking tour of the city. The two main things Ekaterinburg have going for it are 1. It's the capital of the Ural region and basically the mining hub of Russia and 2. It's the place where the Romanoff family, the last of the Tsars, was murdered in 1918.

So she took us all around pointing out different buildings and monuments including the Cathedral on Blood, which is basically a shrine to the Romanoff family, who later were declared saints, situated on the spot that they were killed.



She also took us to the Museum of Mineralogy, a massive private collection of stones and gems now on display for the public. The picture that the statue in the photo below is painting is actually a slice out of a rock as it was cut; it wasn't put together to resemble a landscape at all. I thought that was quite cool.



After she left us for the day we walked around a little more, went shopping in their massive mall, finally brought me a Russian jacket and did a bunch of grocery shopping for the train trip coming up. We got to the bus stop at 5:00pm and found that the buses were packed and with all our shopping we couldn't be bothered trying to fight our way on so we sat there in the beautiful sun, at the bus-stop people watching until the demand lessened and we went home.







The next morning Daria came and picked us up again, except this time we headed out of town to the Romanoff Monastery, set in the woods on the site where the bodies of the family were taken after they were killed. When we arrived we found that the main cathedral was on fire and there were fire fighters and news crews everywhere. The cathedral was made of wood so it went up pretty quickly and it meant we couldn't go into any of the other cathedrals as everyone in the complex was standing around watching the fire. It was all very interesting and the other cathedrals were very beautiful from the outside, and the fire made the news.









From there we were taken to the monument at the official border between Europe and Asia. The time had come; we crossed the line, and were awarded with certificates and a bottle of champagne. After seven weeks and three days traveling through Europe with the whole point to take the TransSiberian across to Asia it was actually quite a nice moment to celebrate.





We spent our final afternoon trying to find an internet cafe where we could actually connect. Eventually we sat down in one place, ordered lunch and when we received the password found that it just wouldn't work. Fortunately there was a regular sitting next to us who spoke English, was super friendly, and knew the IP address that my computer couldn't automatically find so we were up and running. You all owe the St Petersburg blog being online to that gentleman. And he didn't even want any thanks.

The next leg of the trip saw us spending three nights and two days totaling 60hours on the train from Ekaterinburg to Irkutsk. There was no first class on this train so we bummed in it second-class, though we did book out the four-berth sleeper just for the two of us, which made me feel a little la-di-dah. The mattresses came in rolls that we lay down two thick, the sheets came in a plastic bag delivered by the provodnik and the pillows ranged from thin to heavy though all were lumpy. There was no tea or dinner served in our cabin and the bathroom definitely dropped a lot in style too. But we actually found the set up to be incredibly comfortable and the days drifted past extremely quickly.

So we slept and I read three books to Andrew's three-quarters, though to give him some credit, it was in Polish. We watched the scenery fly past changing little, from thin woods to open plains to small towns and back again. We watched the ladies at the stations sell smoked fish and bread rolls. We had brought food with us but forgot to get any cutlery, so we ate our canned corn with the lid we'd peeled off and our potato & bacon soup with spare contact lens containers. All in all, it was fun and restful, which I know we both needed.

















The final morning we woke early and sat eating breakfast watching the sunrise. It was an absolutely beautiful way to finish the journey. We had reached our destination, Irkutsk, and with it Lake Baikal.