From Vladivostok we took train number 5 to Khabarovsk. This was an overnight journey still within Russia's Far East.
I should give some stats about the Trans-siberian - firstly, it is not a single train journey (although you can do it back to back if you like - Vladivostok to Moscow would take about 6 days). The classic trip is the Trans-mongolian where people start from Moscow, perhaps with a stop or two in Russia (the area around Lake Baikal being one of the most stops, as well as places like Vladimir close to Moscow which are famed for their beautiful churches) before heading through Mongolia and ending up in Beijing.
Our decision to cross Russia from the Far East to St Petersburg in the North-West was governed particularly by my desire to avoid tourists and go the opposite way; as well as an aspiration to cross the whole of the largest country in the world by train. This journey is around 9,300km! A huge distance and we probably amassed over 10,000km by the time we eventually go to St Petersburg.
There is a vast number of train companies which travel across Russia (ranging from train nos 1 - 900+). The highest train number we took was 55 (the higher the train no. the slower the train!). So, we travelled with different train companies along the way. There are, however, a few common features:
- samovar - the samovar or 'hot water urn' is the life-blood of the train. It provides you with constant hot water no matter how long each trip lasts. There are no cooking facilities, so this becomes the focal point of every carriage enabling you to have hot drinks as well as pot noodles, pasta, cup-a-soups etc!
- provodnitsas - or train attendants - most train carriages are managed by two attendants. They check your tickets, keep the samovar topped up, keep the carriage clean and let you know when it's time to get off. They are in control of the carriage and can be really pleasant or complete bastards as we discovered, but you definitely don't want to piss them off!!
- Train times - all train times are advertised in Moscow time. Vladivostok is 7 hours ahead of Moscow time and you gradually get closer to Moscow time as you travel further west. However, we had to make sure that we knew the time of all our trains in Moscow and local time.
- Carriages - there are 1st, 2nd and third class seats - we opted for 2nd class for all our journeys. In 2nd class carriages there are 4-berth cabins. Each cabin has four beds (odd nos are bottoms and even no seats are on the top). Each cabin has storage space beneath the down beds and above the top bunks. There is also a small table for eating from. The down bunks are coveted and consequently more expensive. Luckily we had down bunks for all our trips.
We left Vladivostok at 2.30pm Moscow time (9.30pm local time). We shared our berth with Irina, a young mother of one, living and working in Vladivostok who was travelling to Khabarovsk for a presentation (she is a business consultant). Irina spoke very little English so we communicated for about an hour using pictures and through mime. From this I gleaned that she was born in Khabarovsk but much prefers Vladivostok because it is busier with more prospects than sleepy Khabarovsk, has less bugs than Khabarovsk in the summer and is warmer in winter (it really is all relative - in Vladivostok it can get as cold as -25oc in winter and the sea freezes over, but that's nothing compared to Khabarovsk which gets down to -35oc!!).
Our overnight hop to Khabarovsk was short but sweet and we arrived at 8am on a Saturday morning. We immediately warmed to the place; the sun was shining, it was leafy and relaxed and the streets were in the European-boulevard style.
After checking into a French-style hotel we walked down to the banks of the River Amur. Families were strolling in the early morning sunshine and terrace cafes were beginning to open up. Just 1.5 hours south down the River Amur is China and the vast Manchurian plains.
We wandered all around the pretty city enjoying the sunshine and feeling charmed after the damp, Soviet austerity in Vladivostok. It grew hotter and we sought shade in the city park catching sight of three weddings in the main square (a formidable statue of Lenin watched over the square; a sight that became all too familiar to us by the end of the trip); today was Saturday and Friday and Saturdays are the most popular days for weddings. Frighteningly young newly wed couples drive through the streets in brash cavalcades, music blasting from car stereos. It is traditional for couples to enscribe their names on locks and attach these on bridges before throwing away the key into the river; two names forever entwined with one another.
Lunch was spartan to say the least. The menu was unintelligible but we managed to order potatoes, so we feasted on tiny baked potatoes and crisps. I was lucky enough to be given pork scratchings with my potatoes!
We came across a market in the afternoon and decided we must have mugs for future train journeys (as I mentioned each carriage has a hot water urn, however, it is not much use without your own mug). We were really chuffed with our reinforced plastic mug purchases. These mugs proved their worth as the kilometres accumulated.
We had an early morning train to Ulan-Ude, so we stocked up with food at one of the local supermarkets before bedding down early in Hotel Versailles.
Sunday, 4 September 2011
Moscow
As I mentioned, we arrived in Moscow after an overnight train from St Petersburg. It was 7.30am and already hot and dusty and there were a surprising number of people about for a Sunday.
We eventually found our hostel, aptly named the Trans-Siberian Hostel after trudging up and down the street. The temptation was to sleep, but we wanted to make the most of our first day.
We decided to take a walk down by the Moscow River stopping off to see interesting sights along the way. This involved our second trip on the metro and stop off for a Russian brunch of blini (pancakes) and sour cream.
We were impressed by the metro, not least because of it's stunning architecture - high ceilings and stunningly ornate cornices.
The stations are deep and accessed by long escalators. At platform level I was impressed by the space - long and wide platforms, a lot less claustrophobic than the London tube and with trains arriving every three minutes you could be sure of a seat on the trains.
It took us a while to find the river and we spent a good thirty minutes walking along a dusty freeway as the hot sun beat down. This was mainly due to our inability to read maps and to understand directions given in Russian.
Eventually we turned right and skirted around the edges of Gorky Park (a popular park in Moscow filled with amusements and interesting sculptures). We walked west along the riverfront, rather aimlessly but with a broad plan.
It was nice to see Russians out for Sunday recreation - biking, walking, roller-blading and even swimming (oddly in the space between two signs that said in no uncertain terms 'no swimming here'). The swimmers were women and men of a certain age and shape, unashamedly wandering around in speedos and with tight, nut-brown skin.
We stopped for a break from the relentless heat in the courtyard of a monastery before heading up towards the Moscow State University. We walked up the route of a ski jump to give ourselves a bird's eye view of the city. The ski jump seemed quite incongruous within the 'end of July' landscape, but offered a glimpse of the winter city that most people associate with Moscow.
We wandered for a few hours before heading back down to the riverfront intending to take a tourist boat back upriver.
There was quite a commotion at the riverside -huge crowds, interspersed with police and TV camera crews were looking out to the river. They seemed to be looking at a large barge and a few small men in a row-boat. This seemed quite odd to us and not at all interesting, but whatever was going on, there were no boats heading in either direction from that point. [Later on we discovered that in the early hours of the morning a party boat had crashed into the barge and sunk; the small row boat was winching up dead bodies (six in all). If this wasn't bad enough, only a week before a tourist boat had sunk due to overcrowding with even more deaths! I think this may have influenced our decision not to take any tourist boats during the remainder of the trip].
So, we trudged back in the oppressive heat to the nearest metro station and eventually ended up (quite by accident) in Red Square. Suddenly we were in Moscow! Or the Moscow we knew from films and news stories! What a beautiful square, with the entrancing St Basil's cathedral, a temple of swirling colour at it's gateway. The square was filled with tourists, cameras flashing and posing groups, whilst bored soldiers looked on.
We spent day 2 at the Kremlin, one of those tourist spots where you have to plan in time to queue for the tickets, to queue to put your bags in and to get in! The Kremlin comprises a whole suite of buildings (but largely government state buildings and Russian orthodox churches). The Kremlin in Moscow is the sight of the original walled city, well appointed, with views all around and close to the river. We had decided to just wander round ourselves, armed with a free leaflet and our travel guidebook and I think we managed to amass sufficient facts and information. A lot of the buildings are just beautiful in their own right as well as harbouring icons from as early as the 11th century, memoirs of the empire of the Tsars which was eventually destroyed. We finished with a tour of the bell tower of Ivan the Great, the tallest of all the buildings in the Kremlin complex at 81m, built in the 15th century. At 5pm we really just wanted to climb to the top and admire the view, but our ticket provided us with an hour long, descriptive tour of every floor!
Today was Sarah's birthday and we had intended to have a slap-up meal to celebrate. We had spotted a cute, mezze-esque restaurant near where we were staying and decided to go there. This was start of the Russian scorn at vegetarianism... the menu was pretty much unintelligible and using our pidgin Russian Sarah ended up with a plate of salad dishes (essentially tomatoes, cucumber, a bunch of fennel, and some radishes) and bread! There was no dressing in sight.
On our final day in Moscow the weather had taken a turn for the worse - it was 12oc and rainy (bear in mind that the previous two days at been 29oc and humid), so we were freezing. We returned to the red square to queue up and see Lenin's embalmed body. Lenin (of course, one of the original Russian revolutionaries who established the Bolshevik party and through his death in 1924 paved the way for Stalinist communism) is still revered in Russia and Moscow is no exception. The Lenin mausoleum is on the west side of Red Square and the entrance takes you past statues of former leaders, down a series of dark, gloomy steps into the tomb. Decorum is everything (I was reprimanded for having my hands in my pockets and I've heard that loud heels are a no-no on the marble floors). On entering the tomb, you shuffle round a badly lit perspex box that houses the immortal Lenin. He is dressed in a dark suit, with eyes closed and hair and beard immaculately trimmed. He looks tiny and it feels very weird in this small, oppressive space, gazing at a man who was partly responsible for the most tragic period in Russia's history. Of course his body has long since decomposed and you are really looking at a waxwork dummy of the real man but it is still unsettling. What surprised me was the sober, respectful behaviour of the Russian visitors. They really seem to worship this man.
In the afternoon we visited the Gulag museum, which gave us a cursory taste of gulag life. It struck me how horrific this piece of cultural history really was - so many people were sent to Siberian gulags for pitiful crimes, sometimes for nothing more than hold a certain political view. In these freezing, barren places the 'criminals' were put to work, surviving on meagre rations for an average period of 2 years or less.
We left Moscow on an overnight flight to Vladivostok in Russia's Far East, the end point of the trans-siberian railway and the start of our journey proper.
We eventually found our hostel, aptly named the Trans-Siberian Hostel after trudging up and down the street. The temptation was to sleep, but we wanted to make the most of our first day.
We decided to take a walk down by the Moscow River stopping off to see interesting sights along the way. This involved our second trip on the metro and stop off for a Russian brunch of blini (pancakes) and sour cream.
We were impressed by the metro, not least because of it's stunning architecture - high ceilings and stunningly ornate cornices.
The stations are deep and accessed by long escalators. At platform level I was impressed by the space - long and wide platforms, a lot less claustrophobic than the London tube and with trains arriving every three minutes you could be sure of a seat on the trains.
It took us a while to find the river and we spent a good thirty minutes walking along a dusty freeway as the hot sun beat down. This was mainly due to our inability to read maps and to understand directions given in Russian.
Eventually we turned right and skirted around the edges of Gorky Park (a popular park in Moscow filled with amusements and interesting sculptures). We walked west along the riverfront, rather aimlessly but with a broad plan.
It was nice to see Russians out for Sunday recreation - biking, walking, roller-blading and even swimming (oddly in the space between two signs that said in no uncertain terms 'no swimming here'). The swimmers were women and men of a certain age and shape, unashamedly wandering around in speedos and with tight, nut-brown skin.
We stopped for a break from the relentless heat in the courtyard of a monastery before heading up towards the Moscow State University. We walked up the route of a ski jump to give ourselves a bird's eye view of the city. The ski jump seemed quite incongruous within the 'end of July' landscape, but offered a glimpse of the winter city that most people associate with Moscow.
We wandered for a few hours before heading back down to the riverfront intending to take a tourist boat back upriver.
There was quite a commotion at the riverside -huge crowds, interspersed with police and TV camera crews were looking out to the river. They seemed to be looking at a large barge and a few small men in a row-boat. This seemed quite odd to us and not at all interesting, but whatever was going on, there were no boats heading in either direction from that point. [Later on we discovered that in the early hours of the morning a party boat had crashed into the barge and sunk; the small row boat was winching up dead bodies (six in all). If this wasn't bad enough, only a week before a tourist boat had sunk due to overcrowding with even more deaths! I think this may have influenced our decision not to take any tourist boats during the remainder of the trip].
So, we trudged back in the oppressive heat to the nearest metro station and eventually ended up (quite by accident) in Red Square. Suddenly we were in Moscow! Or the Moscow we knew from films and news stories! What a beautiful square, with the entrancing St Basil's cathedral, a temple of swirling colour at it's gateway. The square was filled with tourists, cameras flashing and posing groups, whilst bored soldiers looked on.
We spent day 2 at the Kremlin, one of those tourist spots where you have to plan in time to queue for the tickets, to queue to put your bags in and to get in! The Kremlin comprises a whole suite of buildings (but largely government state buildings and Russian orthodox churches). The Kremlin in Moscow is the sight of the original walled city, well appointed, with views all around and close to the river. We had decided to just wander round ourselves, armed with a free leaflet and our travel guidebook and I think we managed to amass sufficient facts and information. A lot of the buildings are just beautiful in their own right as well as harbouring icons from as early as the 11th century, memoirs of the empire of the Tsars which was eventually destroyed. We finished with a tour of the bell tower of Ivan the Great, the tallest of all the buildings in the Kremlin complex at 81m, built in the 15th century. At 5pm we really just wanted to climb to the top and admire the view, but our ticket provided us with an hour long, descriptive tour of every floor!
Today was Sarah's birthday and we had intended to have a slap-up meal to celebrate. We had spotted a cute, mezze-esque restaurant near where we were staying and decided to go there. This was start of the Russian scorn at vegetarianism... the menu was pretty much unintelligible and using our pidgin Russian Sarah ended up with a plate of salad dishes (essentially tomatoes, cucumber, a bunch of fennel, and some radishes) and bread! There was no dressing in sight.
On our final day in Moscow the weather had taken a turn for the worse - it was 12oc and rainy (bear in mind that the previous two days at been 29oc and humid), so we were freezing. We returned to the red square to queue up and see Lenin's embalmed body. Lenin (of course, one of the original Russian revolutionaries who established the Bolshevik party and through his death in 1924 paved the way for Stalinist communism) is still revered in Russia and Moscow is no exception. The Lenin mausoleum is on the west side of Red Square and the entrance takes you past statues of former leaders, down a series of dark, gloomy steps into the tomb. Decorum is everything (I was reprimanded for having my hands in my pockets and I've heard that loud heels are a no-no on the marble floors). On entering the tomb, you shuffle round a badly lit perspex box that houses the immortal Lenin. He is dressed in a dark suit, with eyes closed and hair and beard immaculately trimmed. He looks tiny and it feels very weird in this small, oppressive space, gazing at a man who was partly responsible for the most tragic period in Russia's history. Of course his body has long since decomposed and you are really looking at a waxwork dummy of the real man but it is still unsettling. What surprised me was the sober, respectful behaviour of the Russian visitors. They really seem to worship this man.
In the afternoon we visited the Gulag museum, which gave us a cursory taste of gulag life. It struck me how horrific this piece of cultural history really was - so many people were sent to Siberian gulags for pitiful crimes, sometimes for nothing more than hold a certain political view. In these freezing, barren places the 'criminals' were put to work, surviving on meagre rations for an average period of 2 years or less.
We left Moscow on an overnight flight to Vladivostok in Russia's Far East, the end point of the trans-siberian railway and the start of our journey proper.
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