Europe Irkutsk

... we have come. We have blue skies in Irkutsk but by the time we leave Listvyanka we have snow. We spend
three nights in this small village on the shores of Lake Baikal. The owners of our accommodation here have gone much further along the private enterprise road. They clearly started with a basic hostel, then added a floor to their own accommodation to provide private
apartments. The latest ...

... Vodka and start consuming that.

Dutch guys from a few compartments up come over and bring more vodka.

Russian guys from another compartment join with more vodka too


Depart Mongolian Border 1am-ish
Can't remember any specific details about the Mongolian border.Was just happy I was on the train.

Dont think we left until around 1am...


Stopped some time shortly after the border ...

... a drift through a loose sequence of snooze- read - eat- chat - snooze more... Passengers leave and other board, some dour and dismissive, but most of them slowly relaxing into curiosity as to why I am here. One baffled fella, with excellent sign language wonders why I'm on a train when I could have flown?


The majority of passengers are male and half a carriage of young, tatooed, shaven-headed lads in combat gear ...

... russian and in our carriage many swiss but not many british. Everyone is very friendly

We were expecting to see varied scenery but we were slightly disappointed as all we saw were pine and silver birch trees.

The journey had not ben too bad and a very interesting experience but at the end of 4 days we were not too sorry to leave it and we are still talking to each other.

**Lake Baikal and Irkutsk***

We are now in Irkutsk for 1 night after spending 2 ...

... actually speaks a little english. A girl from Malta was on the same private bus as me on the way to Listvyanka (Lake Baikal) so it was good to have a conversation again as they are few and far between at the moment.



Anyway I think that is it for ...

... the sort of respect that you would expect in Russia when Brezhnev was sitting in the Kremlin. Our final day in Russia was spent in Petrodvorets- Russia's 'Hampton Court Palace' and just as impressive..Peter the Great, it's chief constuctor, seems like a bit of a lad- he is well known to have liked enforcing vin rouge on his guests at his lavish parties and, disliking servants, had a lift constrcuted to raise his fully laid table from the ...

... housed in the grand Winter Palace, the former royalty's residence. The collection is unparalleled anywhere in the world, but we still couldn't help being a little bit disappointed! Not by the building and its rooms themselves, which are magnificent, but by the rather shoddy displays of what are surely very important historical artifacts. The lighting was horrible, making huge glares on the paintings so you had to stand off to the side or look at it from far away ...

... site of the world-famous Hermitage Museum. We toured the museum which was pretty spectacular. The museum began with art collections of Catherine the Great whom I have read was a pretty shrewd art dealer. We saw several rooms of interest including the Peacock Clock (with mushrooms that tell time), the throne of Peter the Great (by himself), the ...

... embassy. The front door was locked, so we pushed the buzzer. The person on the other end spoke no English and wasn't going to buzz us in. Luckily, a Russian man had joined us by then and sorted things out for us. We got into the embassy, showed our train tickets and eventually communicated that we needed transit visas. Then the woman who spoke English came to talk to us (yeah, I don't know if she was hiding in the back or what). She glued our passport ...

... leapt on it. So that was one thing. Today, we went to a tourist information centre to ask about our tickets for the Trans-Siberian Railway. The girl there did speak English, but didn't know anything about it. She was able to direct us to the central ticket office though. We got there, and queued at the information desk for an hour where the girl obviously didn't speak English, but after some gesticulating she pointed us down to a travel agency in the ...