DAY 45 - Barabinsk (i think), Russia

Last day in Moscow we went to the Kremlin to have a look around. Most of it seems quite modern except for the churches, of which there are at least five, right next to each other. One clearly wasn’t enough for the Tsars - that’s almost a different church for each day of the week. I got whistled at again by a soldier for sitting on the step of some faceless soviet era carbuncle.

 

After that we headed for Sculpture Park where all the old soviet statues of Lenin, Stalin, etc were dumped when the USSR fell apart. Since then they’ve added some more recent works including a barbed wire cage containing hundreds of stone heads to represent the hundreds of thousands of victims of Stalin’s purges. It been appropriately placed right behind a statue of the man himself.

 

After tea in a rather weird canteen-style restaurant called “moo-moo” we headed back to the hotel for the pick up to the train station. The taxi was late, of course. Finding the train was relatively straight forward though and we were greeted at the entrance to our car by a surly looking provodnitsa. She’s the lady who keeps the passengers in line while they’re on the train, makes sure the toilets are kept clean and (if your lucky) keeps the samovar (large hot water dispenser at the end of each car) topped up. The guide book advises to “butter up she-who-must-be-obeyed at every opportunity”. Quite. I finally got her to smile when I tried out my Russian (straight out of the guide book) to buy a bottle of water. I’m sure she was laughing at me…

 

There’s four to a cabin in second class but Dan and I only have one companion, an oldish lady whose name escapes me. She doesn’t speak any English but that hasn’t stopped all communication. So far I’ve managed to work out she’s descended from Genghis Khan and has been to Bulgaria. I’ll keep at it…

 

The trip we’re on involves three trips on the train. We’re currently on the first leg to Irkutsk on day 2 of 3. It’s really hot on board but fortunately there’s air conditioning which does a wonderful job of keeping the temperature at a barmy 30-odd degrees Celsius. And don’t forget there are no showers on board. It’s a bit cooler today though.

 

As for the scenery, well, that’s mainly trees with the odd burnt out shell of an old factory. We’ve passed into Asia now, going through the Urals last night. None of the stations we’ve been through have had any signs up saying where they are, so I’ve been using the GPS on my phone to work it out. Unfortunately Nokia seems to have forgotten about Asian Russia when drawing their maps so I’ve now abandoned that method and an relying on the timetable to work out which station to get off at. Wish us luck…