Trans-Siberian Part 1- Moscow to Yekaterinburg

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And so begins our Trans-Siberian adventure. The first part of the journey is a 30 hour train journey from Moscow to Yekaterinburg. Its about 1,700km in distance. The cabins are nice and snug but unfortunately we don't fit length ways in them. Your carraige is guarded by a Prodivista who seemed to take an instant disliking to us for some unknown reason. We discovewred we were sharing withmiddle aged russian woman and a quiet Russian man. The journey flew along with no attempt by our companions to talk to us. We had boarded the train late afternoon and had noticed that the Russian man appearedto be drunk. He started to buy 2 cans of beer (And at one stage a fish for Ronan) at every stop and always managed to have them drunk by the time we reached the next station.

Unfortunately about two hours before we were going to bed he decided to introduce himself. This went rather smoothly and we discovered his name was Sergei. However his English consisted of the words "My Friend" and "We" and bizarrely "Whitney Houston". Not exactly enough to have a fufilling conversation. The lack of language did not stop him from talking at us in Russian for close to twenty hours. This involved grabbing our books when we were reading, shaking us awake when we were asleep and getting annoyed wen we listened to music. In fairness he was harmless. But the fact that we had no idea what he was saying to us seemed wasted on him. Lets just say by the end of the train journey we were fit to kill him.
We did establish that he was a Lieutenant in the Russian army on his way back to duty (Scarely).

We were extremely glad when we rolled into Yekaterinburg and looked forward to our beds.

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