The route from St. Petersburg isn’t the actual historic Transsib railway but it’s part of the Russian train network that connects Russia with Siberia. Some parts of the journey is spent on the original Transsib tracks. There are various trains that connect different cities and so far it was easy enough to book the tickets at the train stations even without speaking much russian. So far I got the tickets I wanted. In winter it is actually possible just to turn up 30mins before the train departs and buy the ticket there and then at the station.
So far all trains had a restaurant carriage and every carriage has a somovar, which is a hot water boiler. This is very handy to make your own tea and preparing an instant soup. You can also buy coffee from the carriage attendant (provodnitsa).
My trip to Yekaterinburg
I booked the platzkart tickets, which is Russian third-class where you share a compartment with up to six others. However the compartments are open and there are many of them next to each other. My train left St. Petersburg around 5pm. Nothing special happened only that I had spotted two weird looking guys you don’t want to mess with. Our carriage number 12 was not even half full and it was quiet. So I would have been able to sleep, had I not been 20cm too long for my bed. As you can guess it was rather uncomfortable. Anyway the scenery outside and the beatiful sunrise made up for it. Next day on the train and still another night more on the train I had left behind many small towns and train stations. Some train stations only had the kilometers to Moscow writen on them, they are so little and unimportant. Up to this point I haven’t really talked to anyone but this was soon to be changed. I got off the train at our 30min stop to take some pictures, and I made the mistake of taking a picture of a group buying and selling food and goods. Shortly after I realised that it was the two weird looking guys. I had all the attention… (Russian angry mummble…) …. delete.. delete. Ok I deleted the picture. They were totally bamboozled why I took a picture of them. Big discussion in Russian afterwards. Well to cut a long story short, 5mins later I was sitting in their compartment and we were drinking vodka together. Also the communication was difficult the lonelyplanet phrasebook made some exchange of thoughts possible. I was talking with Pavel (claimed to be 28 also he looked older) and Sergej. Pavel is a builder and lives with his wife and son. We spent almost all of the rest of the journey together taking about 20min per sentence to be translated and sometimes understood. Later that day the two guys also went to buy some beer, which they called rightfully Russian mud. Anyway we all had a good time and after a good nights sleep arrived in Yekaterinburg.
Read in my next blog post how Pavel helped me find my hostel.
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