Moscow and eastbound departure
Day 3
Ca. 50 km from Moscow
Just took off from Яросла́вский вокза́л / Yaroslavsky Railway Station in Moscow. Seated comfortably in our two bed salon, the size of a shoebox – but what do you need more, there’s a bed for each person, a small table with two tea cups for which we can get tea water from the самовар / samowar at the end of the wagon, storage space for the luggage and even a TV – and slowing down mentally while the train picks up speed. It’s not too fast, at least compared to the Shinkansen between Osaka and Tokyo, but we are here because the journey is the goal, not the destination. In three and a half day, we will arrive in Иркутск / Irkutsk, and probably stop at a few stations whose name plates I will try to decipher with the Cyrillic alphabet from the book “Russian for Dummies” that lies on our table. The vegetation outside is birch trees, smaller shrubs, dark soil, some patches of snow and sometimes, pine trees. Interspersed between are да́ча / dacha, the small Russian wooden lodges where people use(d) to spend their summers in. Now, at the end of March, few people are around, it is mostly people with dogs that can be seen on the rail side.
This morning, we have been picked up by our guide at the hotel, he brought us to the station, incl. stopping at a supermarket to buy normal water, firewater (водка / vodka, of course), bread, fruit and cheese. We originally wanted to do this between breakfast and departure, but couldn’t find a nearby supermarket. Instead, we went to the Café Pushkin that has been sung about in the chanson “Natalie” by Gilbert Bécaud. We wanted to “boire un chocolat” like in the song, but unfortunately, they didn’t have the ingredients. Or maybe the cook wasn’t awake yet. One highlight was the way to and the interior of the toilet though – a must if you visit the Café!
The day before, we landed at half past two in the morning in Moscow, and were picked up by the same driver that also brought us to the station today, and around the city during the guided tour during yesterday’s afternoon tour. Led by German speaking guide Natalia who had a vast knowledge about the city, its history, the politics and many other interests, we first visited the women’s monastery …, the Воробьёвы горы / Sparrow Hills from which you had an amazing view over the city, to the hotel Ukraine with its lighted-up model of Moscow in the 1960s and of course to the city center with the famous Собор Василия Блаженного / Saint Basil’s Cathedral and the Моско́вский Кремль / Moscow Kremlin. Planned for around 4,5 hours, the tour finally took over six hours as the guide was very enthusiastic. We ended the tour in the Armory Museum of the Kremlin, discovering the ornamented luxurious collection of artifacts from the collection of the country’s head of states, the Tsar families. To discover among those was a Fabergé egg that contained a miniature model of the Trans-Siberian railway we were going to take. Equipped with a tiny key, the metal train could be wound up so that it would drive around on the table. On our own we then also decided to take the subway to look at Moscow’s old metro stations. They are located very deeply below the surface of the city, and ornamented with images, mosaics, plastering and other decorative ornaments, mostly communist, as they have been built under Lenin.
Generally, I had the impression of Moskow being extremely rich in different cultures displayed sometimes in and layered over each other. Buildings, communist, imperial, and capitalist marks, the story of buildings that have been built by one generation, destroyed by the next and again rebuild by the third generation.
And now, we’re around km 90 – more about our journey later.
Between here and the horizon 
thanks for yor stories and inspiration 😉
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Thanks for following my blog! I will keep posting 😉 You’ve got some interesting articles, too!
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Thank you too 🙂
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