Blogs from Yekaterinburg, Urals, Russia, Europe - page 6

...for 26 hours. Well, that's what it felt like. But first Moscow. We did the big sites, well, most of them - Red Square was shut both times we went due to some event that had been going on. Luckily we could get round the side and see most of it from a distance but it also meant that Lenin's Tomb was closed (though I have a feeling I'd read somewhere that he was away being rewaxed anyway!). Not a big deal as we've both seen Mao and one waxwork is pretty much like another.... Still, we did get into the Kremlin and St Basil's, neither of which I really remember going into last time. St Basil's is rather beautiful inside, with much more muted colours than the psychedelic swirls on its onion domes outside. We ... read more

Being just the 2 of us lasts, oh, about a minute. We find the platform, watch as our filthy dirty wagon is attached to the otherwise pristine train and pile into our 4 berth cabin to meet our travelling companions for the 24 hour journey to Novosibirsk. Rodzal is a tartarski soldier in his early twenties from Kazan, travelling alone back to work in Ulan Ude after holidays back home. He is blonde, tanned, shaven-headed, speaks a very few words of English and has undertaken the 4 day train journey without anything to read, any music, games, cards, drink or any distraction of any description. He sits on his bottom bunk and watches us or stares at the bunk above and that's him for the trip. I like him, he is very relaxed and polite and ... read more

Yaroslavsky station is crazy - seems like millions of people streaming on trains, off trains, across platforms with every type of baggage and boxes piled everywhere. Children running around under drunk mens feet, much singing, shouting, fighting, running. Chaos. I love it. We sit ourselves down opposite the departure timetable and in an attempt to blend in (allegedly) Nico buys some bottles of beer and cracks them open while we wait. Time flies and a general scrambling and baggage-heaving around us announces the arrival of the Rossiya, aka Train 2, aka the 20:25 to Vladivostock. We have treated ourselves with 1st class tickets from Moscow to Ekaterinburg so after quick photoshoot on the platform we pile in to our fab cabin complete with tv, plush furnishings and a lockable door. Bliss. Very exciting times - after ... read more

Ye better all read this as we are rewriting it for the second time after "Technical difficulties". We arrived in Yekaterinburg late in the evening. After a getting some dinner we took an early night to catch up on the sleep we had been denied on the train. The next day we had a city tour with a local guide Kirill. Yekaterinburg is best known as the place of murder of the last Czarist family, the Romanov's. On the site of their murder a beautiful Commemorative church has been built and we got to visit it. During World War 2 production of the T-34 tanks and "Stalins Organs" rocket launchers was moved here as Yekaterinburg was too far east to be threathened by bombers. We missed out on seeing the piece of the U2 spy plane ... read more

Once I had woken up, I cleaned up a bit and then started to walk around the town. I had my trusty map and my sixth sense on high, so I was not getting lost today. And what a journey I had, a marvelous little city, some nice parks, a great city lake with a path that took you all around. And the heat, beautiful. This lasted most of the day, then the clouds came in. I thought to myself, good time to find the museums, and I thought this, and then I kept walking, and it was about that time the hail came, and then the buckets of rain. I found a cafe and drank fanta orange for an hour or so and planned my next few days. The next few days were great fun, ... read more