September 16, 2016, 10:15 am local time

We are on the Transsibirian somewhere between Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk. It is 6:15 am Moscow time which means we have been on the train for about 65 hours now. And what can I say? I love it. It is just as great as I ever imagined it to be and the only thing that bothers me is that we don’t go all the way to Vladivostok. Well, plans for the next trip. 😉

No, honestly, I could ride on for days. The landscape passing is just beautiful beyond words. Especially yesterday, before and after Omsk, it really was the great Siberian plains, endless grasslands interspersed with light beech forests or little lakes. The light was magical. Sometimes, there are little villages, some houses colourful, others a greyish-brown. Overall, the cities and villages look very dull and depressing, and at first glance I would often think they are run-down and abandoned only to notice a person working a cabbage patch next to it on second glance.

The train stops about once every hour, and has about 2-3 longer stops of 20-40 minutes every day. During those stops, we may exit the train and walk around on the platform where we can also buy things, food mainly, but sometimes also toys or fur hats.

And inside the train it is so cozy. First of all, it is anything but cold. While the temperature outside may vary between 9 and 17°C, it is constantly around 26°C or warmer inside the train. People wear t-shirts, shorts and slippers.

Since we are going 3^rd class (platzkartny), it means 54 beds in one carriage. They are arranged two above each other in open compartments, four to one side of the aisle, and two in the direction of the train on the other side. Above the beds, in about 2m height, there is a storage board, but there is also a huge storage box under the bottom beds where we have left our backpacks.

As fate will have it, we have two beds in one of the four-bed “compartments” which we share with a young couple from France. Another young woman from France who travels alone has a bed two compartments down and spends most of the time with us. We talk English and French, and try to learn some Russian, share food and get along really well.

Our neighbours change; few seem to go to Irkutsk or further. At first, there was an old lady who chided us for being too loud but wished us a good journey when she left, and now there is a mother with her daughter on a family visit who shared a giant pirog (like a calzone filled with potatoes, cabbage and meat) with us the first night. We gave them some of our things in return and tried to communicate but it’s hard.

What amazes us all is how mindful the people are. Since 54 people basically share one open space with two toilets and a samowar (a hot-water dispenser; tea and cup noodles are right up there on everyone’s menu), we expected it to be noisy and dirty but the opposite is the case. Everyone is very quiet and respectful, and mostly stays in their own space. The car is cleaned everyday by the stewardess (there are two on each car who take shifts and seem to go all the way to the final destination).

I admit we are all a bit on the smelly side by now since no-one has changed their clothes ever since getting on the train (really, what’s the point?) but we have in the mean-time figured out how to shower or wash one’s hair in the cramped space of a train toilet and stay somewhat hygienic by using wet wipes. One has to make sacrifices, and it is totally worth it.

For the first time since we set out almost a week ago, I feel a bit like we are actually backpacking and travelling a long-distance. It is crazy to think that we are already 4000 km away from Moscow, having covered four time zones by now. With little to do except sleeping, reading, eating, talking, and figuring out the train, a lot of time remains for looking out of the window into the beautiful landscape and thinking about how happy and content we have started feeling ever since we boarded.

Apart from all that, I want to let you know how we eventually arrived in Moscow on Monday.

There was a super-thorough and slightly intimidating border control between Poland and Belarus, and after that the train changed tracks in Brest which was very exciting. The cars of the train were elevated by giant machines, the tracks pulled out underneath and the new ones pushed in and fixed. By tracks I mean the wheels of the train but I don’t know the proper English term for it. After that, night fell, and we expected to be woken up for the Russian border control in the early hours of the morning.

However, nothing happened. Monday came, the names of the towns that we passed didn’t give us any indication, and when the train stopped for a long period, we thought nothing of it except that we’d arrive in Moscow mighty late. Only when our French compartment neighbour (yes, another French, travelling the same route as us to Beijing) came knocking on our window with all his luggage, we realized that we had already arrived. No border control. No stewardess telling us that we are approaching our destination. Not a single sign on the platform indicating the place. Welcome to Moscow.

We found our hotel and tried to convey to the non-English speaking receptionist that we would like to leave our luggage since it was only noon. She was very unfriendly and signalled us that it was not possible. Great, that meant taking all our luggage with us for our tour of the city. While we were still trying to decide what to do, an Englishman came by who happened to also speak some Russian. He helped us and asked the receptionist again about our luggage, this time in Russian, and behold, all of a sudden there was a luggage room. We dumped our backpacks and hoped there would be another receptionist when we came back in the evening.

We went to pick up our train tickets at the Real Russia office where we had booked them and took a stroll around the Kremlin, St. Basil’s Cathedral, the Gum shopping centre and the surrounding streets in the afternoon, and had borschtsch and vareniki for dinner is a café.

Returning to the hotel in the evening, we found the same lady sitting at the reception, and our hearts sank. She checked our passports, our visa, and the documents that we had filled out at the Belorussian border, copied everything and then started to make a phone call. It was all a bit scary, especially since she kept talking to us in Russian and with a grim expression. In the end, we got our keys and she showed us the room as if nothing had happened.

The next morning, we visited a nearby church which was incredibly splendid since almost everything inside from the walls to the lamps to the picture frames was made from gold, and several priests and a small choir were singing beautiful chorals.

After a stop at the supermarket and checking out (with still the same lady), we went to Yaroslavsky station to wait for our train, being rather glad to leave Moscow since everyone we had met had been pretty unfriendly and no-one spoke English, or showed any effort to help us with anything. Our overall impression was that Moscow is a very unwelcoming city (probably like most capitals).

We have found that people on the train and in the countryside are a bit friendlier and more open but all in all we don’t really feel welcome yet in Russia.