Mayak Hotel Omsk

... was mostly open fields with silver birch trees and the odd Russian village thrown in for good measure. We stopped in a number of these Russian towns on the way and were able to get off of the train to stretch our legs and see what the locals had to offer for sale on the platform (mainly pot noodles and the odd loaf of bread which may have been dropped on the floor once or twice). <br><br>This brings us on to the train food. We had every intention of ...

... sleep (or attempt to). Then got to Irkutsk. Mostly just packed and cleaned and go ready for the train ride tomorrow. It's at 6:39am so gotta be up hella early. The hostel is the usual bit of craziness with Oksana trying to weave her magic and make trains and other destination reservations magically happen. I just crashed early, or attempted to with people still moving about til midnight.

... distractions of life melt away and one can see things much clearer for what&#8217;s important. Part of the reason I&#8217;m going to take vacations more often and get away more often. Going to long without hitting the reset button isn&#8217;t good. Anyway, through all that I started coming to the realization that I couldn&#8217;t get Gary out of my head or heart, the man I had been with for 5 months before but split up with him back in May. It was a ...

... a really good evening with the other guests at the hostel, celebrating 23 years of Finola with a few glasses of dirt-cheap vodka, and a selection of strange cakes and mushroom-soup flavored crisps.<br><br>We then spent most of the 16th in bed, and apart from a long walk to a supermarket (where thankfully all the staff were at a normal grumpy level) we did very little. We did have a good three or four more incidences of Russians being rude to us ...

... on the train are always locked until you are good distance away again). There was one tiny Russian shop of the 'glass counter' variety at Naushki (border) station whereby you cannot be trusted to touch anything so you have to run around when it's your turn to be served with an assistant on the other side of the counter mirroring you whilst you try to explain that you are pointing at the beef pot noodle next to the crisps and not the packet of dried fish on the ...

... asked me why I looked so sad. I told her I was trying to be more Russian. The truth was I was tired of this not smiling or laughing rule the Russians were all in on. Three days on a train had gone by without me speaking two words of English. And although yesterday's excursion with Tatiana was great, my spirit was nyet, no, nada. The excitement of exploring was gone and all I could think about was meeting up with my brother Tom in ...

... train in Moscow were somewhat less than favorable. The carriage and compartment walls were a drab brown laminate that intended to look like wood and failed. The berths were an equally brown vinyl. The whole carriage was incredibly stuffy, and in the mad rush of mounting the train and sorting our baggage we quickly discovered ourselves drenched in sweat. It was hard to imagine that my group and I would spend four nights aboard this airless vessel. Harder still to imagine ...

... najvecji vtis naredili ljudje, ki tukaj zivijo. Se v nobenem mestu doslej nisva bila delezna toliko prijaznih besed ter kratkih razgovorov z ljudmi, ki jih je zanima od kje sva in kam potujeva. Ostale znamenitosti pa so bile podobne kot v ostalih mestih. Zbirke tezkega orozja ter vojaski muzeji, ki so ocitno v teh ruskih mestih kar stalnost in ...

'And I still haven't found what I'm looking for...' Our bad luck continues in Moscow..... In the hours before the train departed we just needed to find a supermarket to buy the supplies we'd need for the journey. Not such a challenge you'd think, this is a huge city and the locals must buy their stuff somewhere? So we got to the station, left our bags in the left luggage and set off up the (pretty major) road from the station. We ...

Il use this stop as an excuse to talk about the train.. Loved it. Mind you it wasnt exactly what i was expecting. Everything you read tells you the dining cart it the heart of the train but well it can be it you make it so and if you have nice provenistas. But typically your only allowed there if you are eating there food or there drink, your ...