Across Russia Leg 3 -- Yekaterinburg to Irkutsk

Leg 3 across Russia had us on the Minsk-Irkutsk.

This leg was 51 hours!  And moving from +2 Moscow time to +5 Moscow time

At our first long stop, D pulled out the frisbee and we quickly made friends with two kids who happened to be in our car.

Grisha, 6, and his sister Anya, 9, soon became regular visitors to our kupe.

The Trans-Siberian tracks are marked by kilometer markers.  Here the train is 2235 km from Moscow.

Every once in a while, a surprise.  Pulling into a station there were many flatbed rail cars with old military vehicles.

And tanks!

And looking west into a beautiful sunset

Crossing the Ob River just west of Novosibirsk (New Siberia).

Novosibirsk is the largest city and capital of Western Siberia

Lots of coal being moved in this part of the world.

The trees of European Russia gave way to the open expanses Siberia.

From left, Anya, Grisha, Oksana (14), D and Lova (8)

Lova with our two kupe partners.  In the dark shirt, Vladimir, was going home to Irkutsk.  He spoke no English, but by the time we ended our journey, he smiled with us and enjoyed our company.  In the white t-shirt was Andrei.  Probably in his mid-twenties, he joined us in Omsk and 24-hours later disembarked in Krasnoyarsk.  Andrei was on his way to the arctic to work in the oil fields.  We must thank them both for being good sports about having the kids invade our kupe.

More scenes from the train.

Siberia is very marshy, this is the beginning of the Siberian steppes.

The cabin attendant (one of two for our car as they took shifts) is in charge of keeping enough hot water in the samovar, selling coffee and tea, handing out linens to new train riders and keeping the train tidy. 

The cabin attendants also lock the doors of the toilet about 10 minutes before and after a stop.  For those of you who know my small bladder, it became an issue on occasion.  Here, I found the key!

Saying goodbye to Grisha!

Yekaterinburg

Yekaterinburg is on the Eastern Slope of the Ural Mountains and is most famous in history for being where the last Tsar and his family were murdered.

Tsar Nicholas II and his family

The Tsar and his only son, Alexei.

On this spot, the family was "imprisoned" in a house here from May 1918 until the families murder on July 17th, 1918.  This Church on Spilled Blood was built only in the last decade.  The basement has a Church of Repentance for the murders and the upper church is the Church of Hope.

We hear about Gazprom in the United States.  Yes, it is really a gas company here in Russia!

Just west of town there is a memorial to all the political and social victims during the communist times of the Soviet Union.

A mass grave was found outside of Yekaterinburg and this is the memorial.

The names included in this area are those that were in the records for Stalin's purges of 1937 and 1938.

But it is believed that there were many more than are undocumented.

The Ural Mountains (not very high at all) are the divide between Europe (all rivers flow south to the Black Sea) and Asia (rivers flow north to the Arctic)

Touching a rock brought here from the westernmost cape in Europe in Portugal.

Touching a rock brought here from the easternmost point in Asia up by the Bering Strait.

Yekaterinburg is a modern city and growing because of it is a center for mining and gas extraction.  It like many cities in the Urals and Siberia are mining and gas hubs.

Yekaterinburg was off limits to foreigners until the Soviet Union collapsed.  It's one reason why the United States probably flew spy missions over the area.  In 1960 a U-2 spy plane was shot down by a missile of this type just outside of Yekaterinburg.

The "Black Tulip" memoria.

It is a memorial to the men from Yekaterinburg who lost their lives in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

I found it incredibly moving.  It's probably one of the few memorials in Russia that do NOT glorify war.  The sight of this weary and tired, if not defeated, soldier was one that I couldn't take my eyes off of.

The last stop on our Yekaterinburg visit was to the Ganina Yama mine about 10km outside of town.  In this grass covered pit was the mine in which the murdered Tsar and his family were dumped and eventually found.  I think it's safe to say the Tsar Nicholas II was simply a victim of timing.  The Russian people and Empire were ripe for change and revolution and he simply was on the throne when change was being demanded by the people.

The Russian Orthodox Church has deemed the area a holy site and has built seven churches here, one for each member of the family that was murdered.

It's a peaceful walk from each church and each is different.

Ganina Yama also has a great display of family photos of the Tsar's family.  It really shows them as humans and that the Tsar was a family man who loved his wife and kids and probably found running the country of Russia something he really was burdened by.

Across Russia Leg 2 -- Moscow to Yekaterinburg

Leg 2 (of 4) had us aboard the Severobaikalsk -- Moscow train.  As it is not the official "Trans-Siberian" Railroad, it was filled with predominantly Russians.  This leg was 25 hours in total.

When we got to our "kupe" the top bunk was already made so we knew we had other travelers with us.  One was a young girl who didn't say a word and got off at the town of Kirov, about 12 hours in.  The second, an older Russian Man, who was with us our entire 25 hour journey.  Both were quiet and kept to themselves.

Looking up in the "kupe", you'll see that everyone gets a mattress sheets and a blanket.  The top bunk gets their storage up in that top shelf.

On the train, you live by the published schedule.  One also lives for those stops that are more than 2 minutes.  The stops that last more than 10 minutes are times when you get off the train and stretch your legs.  A couple things of note.  First, the trains are punctual...arriving and departing within a few minutes of the published time.  Secondly, all times are Moscow Time.  So even if you are advancing time zones, you keep your watch to Moscow time.

At the longer stops, you can get off and buy food.  I was under the impression that there would be people selling hot food, such as soups and stews.  But it's all dried and packaged goods.

At Nizhny Novograd the train crosses the Volga River, which is Russia's Mississippi.

On this leg, the train had a nice communal dining car, where we could hang out.  While eating our ramen, D and I met Jan.

D got DIGITS!!!  Although we didn't get a picture with Kevin (our name for him since we couldn't figure out his real one), Kevin was another character we met.  We were out on the platform at a stop and he just started chatting us up.  He was on his way home from Moscow to a town in Eastern Siberia.

Jan spoke little English, but he did his best to work with us since our Russian at this point, non-existent.  And yes, he was drinking and offered us vodka.

We also met Marina, who was on her way to her hometown of Tyumen in Western Siberia.  Five years ago, she moved to St. Petersburg and is now is a rower, professionally, meaning she gets paid to train as an athlete.

Scenes from the train.  The eastern portion of European Russia is quite flat and is forested.  We pretty much saw this scene the entire time.

Occasionally we would see small towns.

Kids are all over the train.  We made a friend with this little guy.  Russians generally do not smile.  However, kids are kids and run around like kids all over the world.  We found that we always could make friends with the little ones.