Day 285 - I spy with my little eye, something beginning with 'S'

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If someone could come up with a good use for the zillion upon zillion silver birch trees we have passed, they would be awarded the Order of Siberia. The trees we saw today had less snow around them and were enjoying a beautiful spring day, but the view didn't change all that much. We are looking forward to getting off the train for longer than 15 minutes, although the early-morning departure tomorrow morning isn't that attractive in itself. To prepare ourselves we try to realign our body clocks to the latest timezone which doesn't really work when we're still thinking in Moscow time because that's what the timetables are written in. Anyway, the day was more of the same, without passing any towns of particular interest. Perhaps the most excitement came when Gemma threw a tantrum at missing something she'd read about in the guidebook and which she'd hoped to see. "I really wanted to see that graveyard surrounded by a blue fence" she stormed, nicely summing up the fact that today we really had just passed more of the same!

A further observation though is just how well used the train line is. The train we are on is popular with tourists but it couldn't be described as a 'tourist train'. And the number of other trains we came across, particularly freight trains, was amazing. And as everyone knows, freight is great. They did the sensible thing and built two tracks so that trains can go in either direction, rather than Canada for example where much of their coast to coast line is single track and therefore subject to long delays. To be fair to the Canadians though, it's probably easier to build 2 tracks when you've got Siberian labour camps to supply free labour.

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