The first leg - London to Moscow

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Hi! And we're here...the trip has started properly now....

It was, however, a bit weird doing the journey into London on a commuter train, knowing that I would be continuing on until Hong Kong...via Siberia & Outer Mongolia

I successfully met Dad in Camberwell, and then we eventually ventured onto the bus to the station - there was a minor hiccup at this stage - a protest in London, so a couple of buses later we arrived at St Pancras, but fortunately still with time for a couple of beers...nice.... (Well it's always best to start that way I think).

The journey to Cologne was pretty smooth, and before we knew it (with some general rowdiness from our french friends behind us (wh had been on the train from Paris), and some amusement at the trainspotters leaping up as soon as we went past sidings to note the various train numbers, ah well each to their own.... and even better than that Peter was there as hoped...errr...I mean expected?!?!

Then the interesting bits started.....First of all the train timetable had changed (that day, and neither we nor anyone else knew about this), then first time around the train was due to be delayed by 70 mins (from 22:48), so we cracked open the wine & met a lovely Canadian 😊 (Hi Lindsay - you should have the link by now, and hope you met the BF OK!). The the delay slowly extended to 120 minutes, then 160, and finally 200 minutes...so a few bottles later, the train arrived..result! We even managed to get the right cabin, and squeeze into it....wow..they are cozy cabins! A couple of the women in a cabin just down also seem to think I have swine fever, and just will not believe that I have a cold - every time they walked past, they have their mouths covered, and I got a proper tellign off in russian for not covering my mouth...waggy finger and all! Shame I couldn't understand a thing...they wouldn't believe I had hayfever (or rather they couldnt understand me....)

The crazy thing is the speed of the train - after being 3 hours+ late, you might have though that they would try to catch up - not a bit of it, they stuck to schedule, and chugged along staying 3 hours behind, even when we stoppped in Warsaw for 2 hours for the staff to go shopping - not us though, we were shunted into a sidings, so no beer for us boooo 😞
Oh, and the provodnitsas/conductresses really are as scary as you might think (very sturdy too) - we did make her smile after ooh about 24 hours I think, And she smiled a 2nd time as we crossed the border to Belarus - were the border guards wear big hats, and the mosquitos are rampant.
So 36 hours later, we're now in Moscow, and had a walk round the outside of the Kremlin, and in less than 24 hours, we're off again, this time for a 4 day journey down to Irkutsk.

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