25th September Made it back here to fantastic Barcelona, and like Nuremburg, it's festival time; Festa Major, with fireworks, spectacles etc which is excellent. I'm staying with a lovely French girl, Olivia, with whom I worked in Port Aventura, just south of Barcelona last summer. Oh, another one too- Emilie, but she's not arrived yet, perhaps later today. God I'm lucky. They´re both here studying in Barcelona for a year, and have a wonderful apartment just ten minutes walk from Placa Catalunya which they share with an "entertaining" American also studying here called Ivan. When I ar [View Full Entry]

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Planned to crash at the station for a few hours in the middle of the night, on arrival at Nuremburg, but alas, no damn benches. So the alternative; left our packs in the lockers and ventured out, at 4am on a walking tour of Nuremburg. It was only then we discovered we'd arrived in the middle of the Nuremburger Altstadtfest (an huge annual city festival), and that all the hotels were booked, and/or had hiked their prices. Cracking. We followed the city guides posted conveniently across the city centre, and admired the city walls, churches, squares etc, among a lot of [View Full Entry]

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20th September Now this is going to have to be a very quick and short update, as I'm sitting in Cesky Budejovice with a train out to Plzen then on to Nuremburg this evening leaving in less than an hour! So arrived in Prague nice and early on Monday morning, made it to the airport with no problems to meet Ollie, even though I had wait for three hours (and his flight was late!). Scored a fantastic apartment for just $55pn, which although is perhaps a BIT much, it was right in the city centre on Bilkova, just above Casa Blu, [View Full Entry]

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Quick entry, writing from Elblag in northern Poland (just round the coast from Kaliningrad and east of Gdansk). I was fearful that Saturday would be a disastrous day, with my ambitious plans to fly, find my ticket, and then catch the hydrofoil to Poland bound to fail somewhere, but almost amazingly, everything went swimmingly shall we say. Got a taxi to the airport, Ems flew off to London from Sheremetyevo-2, and I from Sheremetyevo-1. I was worried they might not let my fly, or enter Kaliningrad as I did not have it listed as a destination on my Russian visa, but [View Full Entry]

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Well, made it to Moscow, very early on Monday morning from Kazan. As I think I mentioned before, there were some attractive gymnasts on the train from Yekaterinburg to Kazan, for a competition over the weekend. Well, in my carriage, and even in my compartment, I had some gorgeous, and 'very flexible' (in their own words) attractive sixteen year olds..! Exciting, hmmm. I think the travelogue is going to take a slightly different twist from now on, as previously, I was visiting places I'd never been too, but now it's more 'revisiting'. Monday, we found the visa registration office, they took [View Full Entry]

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Caught Train 315 Passenger (the lowest category of long-distance train in Russia) to Kazan, and although fairly slow and dirty, I had the pleasure of sharing a carriage with a hoard of attractive, but young Russian girls, gymnasts I think on their way to a competition some place. In my four-berth kupe compartment there was only me, and an elderly gentleman, with whom I managed to cut short any prospective conversation with the phrase, "Forgive me, I don't speak or understand Russian". Friendly gestures though led us to share our food, and then in the night, when he saw I was [View Full Entry]

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2nd September It's going to have to be a quick note, as I've got to get some dinner! Arrived yesterday, finally after 24 hours on the train, and checked into the quite terrible Hotel Sverdlovsk. Less than 400 roubles each a night, at this former Intourist, State-owned 1960's style monstrosity, and I could explain why. The bathroom is perhaps the most disgusting thing I've seen. I've seen better public toilets. In Russia. ha. The wallpaper is coming of the ceiling, the corridors are endless, and the lifts are cranky and can't be safe! On the upside, they did register our visas, [View Full Entry]

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Writing on Sunday evening, sitting in the station concourse (where I seem to have spent a lot of time over the last couple of days!) waiting for train 005 (UB-Moscow) to Yekaterinburg. Been staying here at the station guestrooms, which have been very good value, even if we have had to fall asleep to, and wake up to station announcements! Fantastic. There's been a slight change in plan for the final leg of the t-sib, to Moscow. Emily's decided to go directly to Moscow from Yekaterinburg, to see a friend who should (hopefully) be accommodating us there, and I'm going [View Full Entry]

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Nice, pleasant city, with some wonderful wooden architecture, open parks and an attractive and impressive War Memorial. On the downside the OVIR (visa registration office) is useless... they couldn't believe we'd come to Tomsk just to visit. "who are you here to see?", he kept asking!!! NO-ONE!! Get the impression most go straight past Tomsk. Oh, and the internet cafe stunk, and full of young sweaty computer gamers. Couldn't survive long in there. Bought a couple of tickets from Novosibirsk to Yekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk) on Train 5 from UB-Moscow for Sunday night (31 August), arriving Monday l [View Full Entry]

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Back in the UK I'm really not one for walking but amazingly here I managed to follow up our twenty kilometre hike in Listvyanka with another epic - fifteen kilometres in the Stolby Nature Reserve on the outskirts of Krasnoyarsk. After a difficult 5km uphill climb we found our first 'stolby', these huge, mysterious, strangely formed pillars of volcanic rock, some over 100m high (at the very top of these hills remember!). Impressive. On Sunday evening we met a couple of Russian couples in one of the outdoor beer tents along the Yenisey river. They invited us to drink vodka [View Full Entry]

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