Tran-Siberian Part 1 – St. Petersburg to Lake Baikal

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Written by Luke on day 3 of a 4 day train journey. I don’t think I have gone crazy yet but am getting close! Liz is sleeping. I have just seen a goat.

St Petersburg

After leaving Helsinki it was only a couple of hours to the Russian border. All the border formalities were carried out on the train by some very stern men with big guns. We smiled nicely at them and this combined with the correct visas in our passports made entering Russia surprisingly easy!

Unfortunately after having such good weather across Scandinavia the rain cloud caught up with us again in St Petersburg. I’m sure in some summer sunshine the city would have looked beautiful but for the two days we were there it looked and felt a bit like Manchester! The highlight was going into the Hermitage and Winter Palace. The two hour queue to get in did test the patience somewhat but once inside the palace and huge art collection were very impressive. As you know, Liz is a big appreciator of the finer arts so was in her element as she spotted rooms dedicated to Renoit, Da Vinci and Picasso. I followed around being attracted to things mostly if they were incredibly large and/or shiny and/or gold.

Other places we had a look at but didn’t actually go inside were the church of spilt blood and St Isaacs cathedral. The former we initially saw in the rain and the pictures just didn’t do the colours justice. When the sun finally came out on the last day we dashed back to take some better ones you can see one of these as the first picture here!

The Russian Pose

I feel this topic deserves a separate heading as it’s been amusing us so much since we’ve been in Russia. The Russian girls love to pose in their photographs. None of this British ‘just stand there and smile’, but full on working the camera as if you were a model at every opportunity. The men also seem to have there own protocol in photographs where they stand and look as uninterested as they possibly can. No-one smiles. Liz and I decided to adopt ‘the Russian way’ in some of our pictures and think they turned out very well! Ha ha.

Moscow

Getting to Moscow involved our first overnight train. We were in a 4 berth cabin and didn’t sleep much as one of our Russian room-mates snored louder than the train itself (vodka before bed?!). We arrived to our hotel at about 6am, both pretty tired and with a walking tour of Moscow booked for 10am - eek! We hoped to check-in and get a couple of hours sleep but no rooms were free that early so we sat in the lobby, a bit smelly and a lot tired!

Luckily our guide for the walking tour was superb. She had lived in Moscow all her life, spoke great English and not only enthused about Moscow but told us about her home life and the life of her parents over the past years. During the walking tour we saw Red Square, The Kremlin, St Basils Cathedral, Lenins’ tomb and the very posh GUM shopping centre. We also saw the changing of the guards outside the Kremlin, with the traditional ‘goose-step’ walk. Very amusing! For Monty Phython fans - think ministry of funny walks. The weather had also warmed up somewhat since St Petersburg - it was now 34 degrees and sunny!

On the Second day we went back to the Kremlin and actually went inside for a look around. As part of this we went into the Armory building where they keep all the jewels with the highlight being the Faberge eggs. The eggs were made as showpieces by Faberge and became popular with the Russian elite and the Tsar in particular. Again, there were lots of shiny things to keep us both amused and Liz even paid a bit extra to go into a separate (and highly secure / time locked / guarded) room full of incredibly large diamonds.

Whilst we were waiting in the hotel lobby on the first day Liz had also managed to book some opera tickets at the Bolshoi theatre for the following evening. We were going to see Tosca which is sung in Italian. Liz told me not to worry as there would be subtitles put up on big television screens…. in Russian of course! So whilst for most of the time we had no idea what was going on, it was a good performance and certainly a cultural highpoint! Liz advises me that although the Opera North production she saw last year was good, on balance this was a bit better!

After the opera had finished we walked back up to red square just as the sun was setting and mooched around there until it was dark. Red Square at night is really impressive as everything gets lit up and with lots of people out for an evening stroll it creates a good atmosphere. Of course we also spotted a lot of Russians posing for photographs so we were able to add some new poses to our now ever expanding repertoire.

Moscow to Lake Baikal - 4 days on a train

This train trip is epic, no other way to describe it. We got on the train on Saturday afternoon and it’s now Tuesday afternoon with still 1 more day to go! The journey is about 4000 miles and crosses 5 time zones (we’ll now be +8 hours from the UK). The scenery is a combination of woodland and Siberian grass plains that go on for hundreds of miles at a time. Most of the villages we pass through are all wooden built and any larger towns have a very Soviet look about them - grey concrete.

As before, we are in a 4 berth cabin so for most of the journey we have had some Russian room-mates with us. So far we’ve had…

1) An elderly lady that didn’t speak a word of English but we got by with some sign language and a lot of pointing! At one stage we managed to find a lady who was able to do some translating for us. Turns out the elderly lady was a into fossils either as a job or hobby not sure which, and was travelling home after a fossil related trip to Moscow. She enthused about our onwards travel to China but thought we were mad (not sure if that was just the China bit, or more in general!). Our translator was a Geologist, travelling home with her Geophysicist husband- seems rocks and fossils are popular!

2) Dima, a 19 year sergeant in the Russian army. Spoke some English and he was very friendly. Seemed disappointed we weren’t drinking vodka on the train. Ha ha. He was returning home to see his family whilst on leave from the army.

3) Anton, an 18 year old lad who is studying welding and returning home to visit family. He will eventually take over his fathers welding business. He spoke very good English already but is going to London in July to study an English course. On the one hand he hopes his English will be good for his future job prospects but more importantly he plans to put these skills to good use to translate the songs of Eminem- who he described as ‘God’. He also taught us how to play a very popular Russian card game called ‘Durak’. It took us about 24 hours to actually learn the rules, partly some things lost in translation and party us being a bit dumb. We think we’ve just about mastered it now.

4) Irena - a middle aged Russian lady who was only on the train for about 6 hours but spotted that Liz and I were playing Durak (clearly she was horrified by our lack of skill!) and immediately started to give us some help and tips as best she could in Russian. Once she started playing a few games with us we realized she was a bit of Durak master and easily beat us in most of the games. The tips were very helpful though and it seems that this card game is a national sport. As she didn’t speak any English, she got her son to send a text to her phone saying “really nice to meet you both have a lovely trip”. She also gave us her phone number in case we had any problems in Russia. What a lovely lady!

As well as our own cabin room-mates we’ve also made friends with an American/Austrian family in the cabin next to ours. Andy (an American lady) met Lois (an Austrian man) whilst they were both travelling in New Zealand back in the 80’s. They now live together in Germany and teach at an American military school. They have two teenagers Eric and Nina who are both looking to go to university to study music composition and music therapy respectively. Hi to all you guys if you’re reading this - hope the rest of your holiday was good?

At the end of the carriage there is always a supply of boiling water so we’re able to make our own hot drinks and also easily make ourselves Michelin star delights such as noodles or instant porridge (nice on day 1, getting a bit boring now!). A few times each day the train will stop at a station for about 30 minutes so we all have the chance to get off and stretch our legs. At these stops the locals also come down to sell their produce. With the language barrier it’s been a bit of a gamble what we’ve been buying but at only about 40p an item it’s good fun and worth a few chances! So far we’ve had potato pies, egg pies (very strange!) and some sweet bread a bit like doughnuts.

Tomorrow we get off the train at the shores of Lake Baikal and hopefully if there’s an internet connection I’ll be able to post this blog. More importantly we hope there’s a shower as washing from a train carriage sink basin for several days in a row isn’t fantastic! We stay at the lake for 3 days and it’s supposed to be very scenic. For all the stat lovers out there I’ll tease you with just a few but there’s sure to be some more in the next blog - Lake Baikal this is the largest fresh water lake in the world, holding one fifth of all the worlds fresh water. It is 500 miles long and has 2000 different species of plant or animal (including a freshwater seal) of which 75% are found nowhere else in the world.

I have just seen a Lada stuck in a ditch.

L

Ps - there was no internet connection when we got to Lake Baikal so I’ve had to wait a few days to be able to post this. There was however a shower so at least I didn’t smell anymore!

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