Hey everyone, How's it going? Well, this is the second attempt at sending this message. The first one Technical Explanation: We lost because the internet connection timed out and while trying to reconnect with Russian prompts we lost it NonTechnical Explanation We lost. Anyways, since we last talked to you, we have been to Yekaterinburg and Novosibirsk, and now we're in Irkutsk. Yekaterinburg was formerly called Sverdlovsk (for those of you with politically incorrect maps). Yekaterinburg was, well, formerly called Sverdlovsk. That's about all we have to say about the city. However, the people we met there were amongst the friendliest people ever. A lady on the train told us which bus to take, and we must have taken it in the wrong direction, cause nyet less than six people on the bus helped us figure ... read more

Hi Everyone! How's it going? Well, we have just come down from Murmansk, a 35 hour, 2 night train ride to Moscow. It was pretty comfortable though, we bribed our carriage lady with a Canadian flag pin and she took good care of us. We even got breakfast in the first morning. Plus there was this Russian guy in our compartment who didn't speak a lick of English, but we managed to figure out he was a officer in he army or something, anyways, he pulled out this huge bag of food, bread, sausages, tomatoes, cucumbers, boiled eggs, home brew beer. Man, we haven't eaten that much since I don't even know when. Apparently it's traditional on the trains though for Russians to share their food. We gave him a nectarine. (And some cheese) So Murmansk ... read more