Day 212: Back on tracks, part 2

Igor arrived at the apartment this morning just before 10am to take us to the station. Once there, we staked out a spot in the waiting room and then attempted to purchase a few last-minute items for the train. Unfortunately, however, we had given Igor all of our small-denomination notes to pay for the apartment and everyone we approached with our 5,000 rouble note just shook their heads and turned away. 

Soon enough, we were on the train, where we were pleasantly surprised to discover that although our train number was quite high – 56 – the train was a new one, like our first, so the seats were comfier, the bathrooms cleaner and there was a power outlet in the compartment. We had read stories about how important it was to ingratiate yourself with the carriage attendants, prompting Kate to attempt to learn the Russian for 'Hello' (a horrible word so fiendishly difficult to pronounce that we gave up on the idea long before we boarded our first trans-Siberian train), but once again, we had a really sweet middle-aged woman in charge of our carriage, so no ingratiating was really necessary. It's interesting how many middle-aged women are employed by the Russian railways – not just as carriage attendants, but also in other support roles, such as refilling the water tanks at the stations.

Once again, we had a meal included in our ticket and once again, it was the same dish of beef and buckwheat (not barley, as I had previously assumed). This time, however, it arrived as lunch, not dinner. The scenery passing our windows today was quite different. More open areas of grass and no conifers – just silver birch. The small settlements, however, were much the same – cute little buildings of dark wood in varying states of disrepair. We've solved the mystery of the mini settlements now. The buildings we're seeing are dachas – seasonal second homes typically used by urban dwellers as summer retreats and for growing crops.

For dinner, we ate our pot noodles, all comparing notes on the relative merits of our relatively uninformed choices. Kate was horrified to discover that what she had assumed was chicken-based was in fact turkey-based (the clue was in the picture of a turkey on the lid), and that it came with a sachet of actual turkey meat that bore a more than passing resemblance to cat food; and we were all slightly envious of Zoe's choice – a grilled-meat version that actually tasted of grilled meat, along with a flavour that we decided was fresh basil.

After dinner it was time to make our beds, a process made considerably more trying by the fact that we were doing it as the train went around some tight corners, tilting over alarmingly and throwing us around the compartment.

Day 211: Here we are in sunny Siberia

Last night, we set the alarm for 5.30am Moscow time (an hour before the train was due to arrive at our destination), but Kate was awoken just before it went off by a tap on the arm from our carriage attendant. We climbed down from our bunks and began packing up and stripping off all of the bed linen and were calmly sitting on our seats as the train pulled in to Omsk.

We were met on the platform by Igor, the mostly Russian-only-speaking representative from the company that lets out the apartment in which we're staying tonight. He led us to his car and then drove us to the apartment, along Omsk's very wide streets – which lack lane markings, giving it the slightly Wild West feel of a developing world metropolis. Omsk is a sprawling city of about 1.1 million people situated on the confluence of the Irtysh and Om rivers, both of which we crossed on the way to our apartment.

Once there, we dropped off our bags and Kate chatted on Igor's phone to someone else from the letting agent who spoke English. Through him, she arranged for Igor to drive us to a nearby supermarket, where he dropped us off. We then indulged in one of our favourite pastimes – wandering around a foreign supermarket admiring the unusual foodstuffs (in this, case mostly the bizarre dried and smoked fish) and putting together a menu for the next few days (in this case, a roast chicken for lunch and dinner and lots and lots of pot noodles for tomorrow's train journey). 

After lunch back at the apartment (and several loads of washing – we've pretty much been wearing the same clothes since leaving the UK) we headed out to explore Omsk, revelling in the glorious weather – paradoxically, our arrival in Siberia has offered us our first chance to ditch our coats. We passed a typical Russian church, complete with shiny gold domes, and a big theatre (you're never far from a theatre in Russia), and when we reached the main shopping street, we came across a series of interesting metal statues. 

We then crossed the Om River and then turned off the main road and walked down to the Irtysh river. I walked back to buy some coffees from a guy with a machine in the back of a van, who introduced himself as Rashid and refused payment, saying that the coffees were a present to me. The stories about the levels of crime and general lawlessness in Russia that we had read in the media in the months and years preceding our journey had made both Kate and I a bit nervous about visiting the country, but this was just one of numerous random acts of kindness that we've experienced since arriving here. As a general rule, the anonymous Russians we've met have been a pretty dour, unsmiling, uncommunicative lot, but on an individual level, we've met numerous very friendly, helpful and warm people, who've bent over backwards for us, even when they couldn't communicate with us.

Back at the river, we sat on the grass and drank our coffees then walked back towards the apartment on a path along the bank. Stopping for photos at another sculpture, we fell into conversation with a Russian woman who had visited Sydney and the Blue Mountains – her ex-boyfriend was Australia and she had travelled there about a decade ago.

Back at the apartment, the girls spent a little while playing in the decidedly idiosyncratic playground adjacent to the block's car park, but even they found it a bit too hazardous for their tastes and it wasn't long before they had retreated upstairs to the apartment.

Day 210: Back on tracks

We were up fairly late this morning, and while I finished packing up, Kate and the girls went back to yesterday's restaurant to get some breakfast. By the time I was ready to join them, however, they had returned as the restaurant didn't open until 11am, so we all headed out to a supermarket we had passed earlier to see what we could find - some pastries for breakfast, and some fruit and veg and pot noodles for the train. Then it was back to the hotel, where a taxi came to pick us up to take us back to the station (a bit less than £1 for the bus or £2 for a taxi – an absolute no-brainer). On the way there, we passed several large parks that were alive with large groups of people of all ages participating in some sort of working bee - tidying up, raking, digging, bagging and so forth. 

Once at the station, we found the waiting room and dumped our stuff. I then went off to determine how to actually get onto the platforms – which turned out to be a good thing as it was far from obvious, with very little in the way of signage. Suitably prepared, we made it onto the train with the minimum of fuss and were soon on our way again. This was train number 92, so it was correspondingly older and more basic than our previous train, with harder seats, less-effective air-conditioning, no power outlet in the compartment and a very grubby bathroom. We did have a very sweet plump, middle-aged female carriage attendant, however, who passed by every now and then, vacuuming and mopping and so forth. 

With the novelty of train travel having diminished a little, we filled the time with some School of Mum and Dad. Later, the girls returned from exploring the carriage with news that an old woman in one of the nearby compartments was travelling with her cat. 

After a pot noodle dinner, the girls played in the corridor with Katya, a rather excitable and apparently unexhaustible Russian toddler from another nearby compartment. 

Day 209: A night of the ninth

The rocking and rolling that put me to sleep last night woke me up this morning at about 5.30am Moscow time. The trans-Siberian operates under a slightly odd system – the trains don't run on local time, they run on Moscow time. The difference between these two times increases by roughly an hour a day, and when you keep getting off the train, this can make things confusing, both for your conscious mind and for your unconscious body clock. Our travel agent has helpfully converted everything to local time on our itinerary, making it less likely that we'll miss our train when leaving a city, but unhelpfully haven't included the Moscow times, making it a bit trickier to figure out when to get up in the morning to make sure we're ready to get off at our stop. Luckily today's train arrived in the city of Perm at about 9.30am Moscow time (11.30am local time), so we had plenty of to get ready to get off. 

Kate woke up a bit later, and when the girls awoke – quite a bit later - we started to organise breakfast. The trains on the trans-Siberian helpfully come with an urn at the end of each carriage, where you can help yourself to hot water. We had come prepared with packets of cup-a-soup and cup-a-porridge (back in Winchester we had a taste-testing lunch, where we tried about six different types of soup, each giving them a rating so we knew who liked what), and this morning we broke them out for the first time – (lumpy) porridge for Kate and Zoe, and soup and rye crackers for Zoe and I.

A light rain was falling when we got off the train in Perm. It was on the cold side – about 6C – and we could see our breath as we trudged down to the bus stop, wandered from shelter to shelter trying to figure out where the number 68 left from and then settled in to wait the 15 or so minutes until it arrived. When it finally pulled up, we joined the rush to jump on, Kate and I making a pile of bags near the middle door and the girls heading up to the back seats. When the conductor came around, we showed her our map and managed to get her to understand that we needed her to tell us when to get off. At each stop, the bus got more and more packed, to the point where Kate and I were eventually crushed against the windows. The girls got up and joined us and then finally, the conductor indicated that it was time for us to get off. This was easier said than done and we had to force our way through the crush, the conductor loudly exhorting people to let us off.

Out on the pavement, we caught our breath and gathered our thoughts and then headed off in the direction that our rudimentary map suggested would lead to our hotel. After a few wrong turns, we duly found it and checked in, the receptionist sitting Kate in front of her computer and using Google Translate to explain the ins and outs. We then headed out into what was now a rather heavier rain. We were looking for the Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre, where we needed to pick up our tickets for tonight's performance of Beethoven's 9^th, but spied an outlet of a local fast food chain and decided to stop for some lunch. It was a cafeteria-style place, a popular type of restaurant in Russia, and a handy one for us as it means that you can just point at what you want rather than having to actually ask for something off a menu that you can't read anyway. The prices were extremely reasonable and our trays of dumplings, pancakes and potatoes came to a grand total of about £5. The food was tasty and filling, but not quite filling enough, so we went back for seconds. 

Back outside, we quickly found the concert hall but it was all locked up. Thankfully, a helpful woman sheltering from the rain pointed us to the ticket office around the corner, where we met up with the lovely Olga, with whom Kate had been corresponding from Winchester and who sorted us out with our tickets (which cost 600 roubles each – about £8). We then had a bit of wander around Perm – down to the Kama River, which runs through the city and to a lovely wine shop, where we bought a cheap bottle of Italian wine for tomorrow night's dinner on the train. We then began what turned out to be a rather long and frustrating search for a coffee, eventually ending up in a very trendy bar located across the road from our lunch restaurant. 

After a bit of a rest at the hotel, we got dressed up in what passes as our best outfits and headed back to the concert hall, which was now buzzing with patrons. We found our seats – high up on a balcony with a passable view of the orchestra and settled in to wait for the concert. The hall was fairly small, but quite ornate – all red velvet, grand staircases and big chandeliers – and the orchestra was correspondingly compact, but the acoustics were good and when the chorus got going it made quite a racket. The Japanese conductor, who was making his first visit to Russia, was wonderfully expressive and both the orchestra and the chorus were extremely good. All in all, the performance was absolutely sublime. The girls loved it – Kate and I were a bit worried at first as it looked as though they might fall asleep, but the last movement woke them up and they couldn't help but be impressed by the singing. We left the hall buzzing and after stopping for photos with a big statue of Lenin, we made our way back to the bar that we had visited earlier, where Kate and I had an absolutely dire glass of white wine each. 

 

Day 208: All aboard!

We've been talking about this trip for so long that the details trip off the tongue with ease – Eurostar to Brussels, more trains across Germany and Denmark to Sweden, the ferry to St Petersburg, Moscow, the trans-Siberian to Mongolia, then China, South-East Asia and home. But all along, the big unknown for us, the leg that both fascinated and slightly scared us, was always the trans-Siberian. And now, we've finally begun the first leg.

The day started, once more, with pancakes at the hostel. Kate then took the girls back to the playground that they had so enjoyed yesterday while I packed up and sorted out the final part of the China leg – booking train tickets and rearranging some accommodation. We were blessed with a late check-out time at the hostel and we pushed it to the limit – dumping our bags at reception bang on 12pm. We then retraced our route back to and through the metro to Yaroslavsky Station, where we bought some KFC for lunch and sat in the waiting room waiting for our platform to come up on the board.

After some confusion as to where the trains actually left from, we duly found our platform and... boarded our train! Our nice, new train with a tiny cabin just for us. We had read stories about the stifling temperature of the trains so had come prepared with shorts and flip-flops (thongs) - and as we bumped and shuffled around in the compartment, stowing our bags under the seats, we all quickly acquired a thin sheen of sweat. Thankfully, however, when the train pulled out of Moscow, the air conditioning kicked in, bringing the temperature down to a much more comfortable level.

In fact, little about his train resembled the stories we had read – with good reason. Apparently, the trains that ply the trans-Siberian route can be ranked, in terms of quality, based on their identifying numbers – the higher the number, the lower, the quality. The number of our train was 2 – hence this was a new, state-of-the-art train with comfy seats, air conditioning, a television (!) and cleanish toilets. 

At first, I just sat and read a copy of the New Yorker (I have a large collection of physical copies that had accumulated while we were away on the European leg of the trip and I'm doing my best to get through them as quickly as possible in order to lighten my pack). But after a while, I swapped seats with one of the girls so that I could look out the window and I was instantly hooked on the view outside – a mesmerising parade of conifers and bright, white birch trees, broken by small, rough settlements of tumbledown wooden shacks and crumbling breeze-block edifices, and, rarely, incongruous cities where grey apartment blocks rise from the countryside in dense clusters. There's quite a lot of standing water around, whether snowmelt or permanent bogs I'm not sure. Here and there you can see small patches of snow; I'm a bit sad that we're not making the journey in winter, as we had originally planned, but we're also both rather glad that we aren't, as it certainly makes life a lot easier not having to contend with the snow, ice and frigid temperatures that we would have encountered then. Part of the reason I couldn't take my eyes off the passing scenery was the possibility of seeing some sort of wild animal outside, and after some time I was finally rewarded with a sighting – a lone elk standing beside the fence that follows the tracks impassively watching the train go by.

Kate and I are both fascinated by the settlements we're passing. While some areas look just as you would expect – quaint houses made from dark-stained wood with fenced-off gardens - there are strange areas that have the look of allotments, with much smaller buildings and worked ground in which vegetables will obviously be grown when the weather warms. What's strange is that these areas are extremely extensive, forming what appear to be large villages in miniature. The buildings are larger than sheds but look too small to be houses. 

For this leg, our ticket included a meal, and after some confusion – English is not widely spoken among the otherwise friendly and attentive train staff - we managed to order it. A steward brought to our compartment four plastic containers containing a tasty beef and barley stew and a small, dry, airline-style bread roll. 

And then it was time to make up our bunks and go to bed, the rhythmic clatter of the wheels and the somewhat violent rocking of the train sending as all off to sleep pretty quickly.