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Published: October 16th 2009
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A six hour train ride to Moscow is what the day had in store for me. The wind in St Petersburg that blew straight through you, threatening to take your umbrella with it, quickly put an end to any ideas we had to spend our last few hours wandering the old streets. Back to the hotel and a long lunch, before jumping in the waiting car to take us to the train station. Thankfully, since traffic was about as awful as the weather, the station was only 20minutes away. Leaving Chris to decipher the information board written in Cyrillic, I found the ladies restrooms. 17roubles for a hole in the ground, ah Im back in South Asia except 17roubles is a lot more than the 1ringet you would pay for the bathroom in Malaysia, and part of me feels I may have found the worse public toilets yet. Anyway I digress. Back to our search for the platform which Chris didn’t have much luck with but luckily when I went to information to ask, the lady in information couldn’t, but a local who spoke very good English explained it to me. We need not have worried though because walking towards the
platforms it was very obvious which train was departing for Moscow and we still had half an hour before it left so we headed to our business class carriage. The only luggage ranks were the ones overhead that Chris did a very good job putting our luggage onto, we settled into our seats for the journey ahead. After this trip, Im never going steerage again, it’s like being on a plane “What would you like for your dinner madam”. I knew we got a light meal, I never expected a choice and despite only expecting soup we were given a lovely meal of pork and chips.
The passing scenery makes me determined to do a Trans-Siberian trip in winter, snow was lightly falling outside but had obviously been falling long enough to leave the trees covered in snowflakes. It really was gorgeous and unfortunately neither of our cameras could capture it in the moving carriage. Stopping at a station approximately 2hours into our journey, I saw rugged up old women carrying fresh foods past the windows. I’d read about this in the Trans-Siberian research I have done. In the middle of nowhere, these women make their money selling fresh
foods to the passing trains. With a 10min stop, it definitely would’ve been enough time for purchases, however being left in the middle of a cold Russian night was not high on my list of priorities this night so aboard the train we stayed.
Ipod plugged in my ears, watching the scenery past me by gave me a chance to reflect on the last 5weeks. Such an amazing trip, so many different and vastly different things in one trip. From the desert heat to the freezing snow in the space of 24hours. Drinking copious amounts of beer in Belgium to a place that was once behind in the iron curtain and to this day is still feared by many. From Phoenix and Colorado where the Aussie accent is an asset to London, where no one looks twice at you. Its hard for me to really sum up the journey so far, to pick a place I have favoured the most, a place I have disliked the most, I cant do it. There have been parts of each destination that I have enjoyed and others not so fun. There have definitely places I could consider myself living in, and others
that I wouldn’t if you paid me.
Traveling again has made me realize that this is what I want to be doing. Im nowhere near ready to go home, and even though there is a week left of this journey, I cant see those feelings changing. Already Chris and I have in our heads, enough travel plans to take us to about 2013. All epic journeys, from a month spent traveling the trains in Germany, to the Trans-Siberian, the real one that takes you to the very eastern coast of Russia, drinking along route 69 in the States, hiring a car and driving through England up to Scotland. The possibilities are endless.. And why not?
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