26 september. Moscow

Moscow at last.

Incidentally, to anyone following this little blog, my apologies for any typos. This being written on an iPod, and filed through hotel internet connections. Tiny keyboard etc.

Been here three days now, tomorrow night we are on the train to Mongolia (the Trans Siberian).
We arrived on the Saturday morning and after 2 hours reached our hotel (we got a little lost).

Difficult to know how to describe Moscow.

Expensive, arrogant, potholed pavements everywhere, a lot of unhappy looking Russians (and at the prices etc.). Wedding parties in cheap suits drinking Russian champaign out of the back of stretch Humvies on the bridge over the Moscow river near Red Square.

A crippled double amputee getting around strapped to a skateboard on the Metro, and falling over.

A young woman in a tight blue dress and high heels being photographed on a freezing empty street, on a Saturday, against the wall of a smart office building. More "meat" for a bridal website?

GUM department store on Red Square is now a hyper expensive shopping mall with all the VERY expensive names, and there is a huge underground shopping mall with all the usual names, next to the Kremlin. Lenin, whose mausoleum is also on Red Square just outside the Kremlin walls, was absent during our stay, being "done up". Apparently every so often his embalming has to be checked, and bits re-applied. Probably all the spinning he does knowing what he is sleeping next to in the new Russia!

Central fountain in GUM

Moscow "chic" as it's known reminds one of Newcastle tart on a Saturday night. All fur coat and no knickers.

On the bright side, metro architecture gobsmacking, best 28 rubles you can spend.

Train arrives under chandeliers!

The driver smiles!

One more beautiful station - an Art Deco train hall.

If ever in Moscow, DON'T miss the Metro. 

Kremlin also very worth the trip. A city within a city. 

 The palaces and cathedral mirrored in the State Kremlin Palace.

Leaving the Kremlin we walked back to our hotel on the other side of the river, and having bought food for the next stage, dried stuff we can supplement at stations en route, and with meals in the Russian restaurant car. It was  - Next stop - Ulaanbataar, Mongolia. A bit like Moscow 20 years ago I suspect?!

23 September. Crossing Poland into Belarus

Our first morning on the train to Moscow was pretty uneventful. Grey and flat countryside with lots of small farms. No wonder the EU despaired at the cost of supporting Polish agriculture!

The bright spot on the greyish horizon was morning coffee. (top tip for travelling is to carry a nylon stocking - one of those foot only ones - fill with fresh coffee, put in a cup and pour on hot water, in our case from the samovar at the end of the carriage. Wait a few minutes, remove the stocking and enjoy the fresh coffee.

We arrived in Warsaw late morning, where after loosing several sections of the train during the night which headed off to Prague et al, we joined onto more Russia bound carriages and became the 12.07 bound for Moscow.

3pm we reached the limit of the EU at the Belarus border.

An extensive border check by Polish authorities, resulted in a family with 2 children being marched off the train from 3 compartments down from us. Then we entered Belarus through security cameras pointing in all directions. Another more extensive check by Belarus/Russian authorities, not sure which because our visas for both were checked and entry and exit card covered both.

Then came the fun bits!

First we were " attacked" by a swarm of women carrying shopping bags full of delectable Belarus stuff - although the berries looked ok, then we were shunted into a shed to have the wheels changed to Russian gauge, and the carriage hooks changed. A fascinating process involving jacking up each carriage.

A levitating train

New wheels are slid under the carriage as the previous wheels pushed out

We were now trapped, and the ladies with the bags followed us. Welcome to the third world!

In all 4 hours to enter the country.

Once we set off with new narrower wheels and on the Belarus tracks the ride was like being on a rollercoaster.

From the train the country looks poor and the houses little more than large sheds.

No food on the train, so another exciting meal of pot noodles to look forward to!

Tomorrow we are Moscow.

22 September. It Begins for Real!

Today it all began - the trip itself.

On a bright sunny Riviera morning, our TGV arrived in Menton having started its run to Paris from Ventimiglia in Italy. We wended our way gently along the coast, stopping at Nice and various places, then as we left the coast we slid through the warm vineyards of Provence until we hit Aix en Provence, when the train became a true TGV! Gone the gentle amble as we hit speeds which would see us in Paris three hours later.

At one point we had to stop to allow the Pompiers (firemen) to check for something (possibly the smoking exhaust - we must have been hitting close to 200kph). Then came an apology "we will be now 5 minutes late in Paris due the action of the Pompiers". 5 mins on a 700k run! As it turned we were on time. I love the TGV.

Across Paris on the Metro from Gare de Lyon to Gare du Nord and the train to Cologne. Another high speed, this tome a Thalys from Belgium. Not as comfortable as the TGV (did I say I love the TGV?), and crowded with young Germans, still full of their time in Paris. Although older than the TGV we still arrived on time, which gave us time to rush from platform 5 to platform 7 allowing us to relax for an hour and a half on a freezing Cologne night as we waited for the 22.28 train from Amsterdam to several places East including Moscow, our next destination.

Unfortunately the dirty rattling assemblage of carriages from various nations that made up train 477, reminding the now frozen writer of the rag-tag fleet of refugee spaceships headed by the Battlestar Galactica, was not as fast as a TGV (did I mention the TGV?), arriving half an hour late, and among the fleet passing slowly in front of us was a whitish wagon with Russian Railways blazoned on the side. Our home for the next 2 days!

Clean and servicable in a nice shade of institutional green, I was glad we had we had chosen to book first class. I'm sure the carriage had been state of the art when new, probably running Kruschev around the country! Orient Express this was not. Will the Trans Siberian have seen service with Lenin? We shall see.
And so to bed on day one after a nice Bordeaux with cheese and olives.

Tomorrow brings Poland.

18 September

We have just four days before the adventure begins.


So today it is deciding on the clothes, and other bits and bobs. What food do we take for the first link to Moscow, apparently there is no buffet car in Belorus or Russia, only during the transit across Poland, so it looks like Corsican sausage, wine, and because "man does not live by sausage and wine only", water (of course) and some dried soup ... and maybe a few olives, some cheese, etc. etc.


It's pouring rain today, so we can spend the day also getting routes to hotels from train stations, via metro rather than relying on no-doubt expensive taxis and overcrowded buses. We tried to get hotels near metro stations.


Planning a trip like this would be almost impossible these days without the internet. Apart from train timetables, we can book ferries, choose a hotel, book and pay, decide on transport to and from, and study the map to ensure we know were we will be. All without leaving the lounge!

12 September - We have Visas

Well, despite comments about fleecing the west for the cost of these things, it all went very efficiently, and we are now the proud possessors of posh looking visas for Belarus/Russia/Mongolia/China.

We bought our tickets for the Trans Siberian/Trans Mongolian,  and arranged visas through a London based company called Real Russia Travel. I can highly recommend them. Your country of nationality may be a problem with visas, they offered very sound advice, but tickets are easy and mailed anywhere.  www.realrussia.co.uk/

With a week to go, "things" are being bought, like power adapters and high capacity cards for cameras. iPods etc. need power, and as we both have Kindle (with lots of books) on iPhone and iPod, power goes quite quickly.

We also need plastic plates and knife/fork/spoon sets for the train, so we aren't totally reliant on the restaurant cars (especially the Russian which is apparently not the best, unless you want to live on bootleg vodka and potatoes). They also only take rubles. All the restaurant cars on Russian trains are privatised, so it all depends on what they can buy along the way, and then what they do with it. Mongolian are apparently much  better, and they take US$, the Chinese is the best. However as we have to put up with Russian for 5 days, a little independance will go a long way. So we stock up on sausage, bread, dried noodles etc. for the leg from German to Moscow. WE assume (hope) we can replenish stocks before we leave Moscow. There is also a samovar at the end of each carriage kept full of boiling water.

Other important tools include of course a corkscrew.

Then of course there are guide books, so we know where we are going, AND how to get there.

International mobile phone sims have been bought, so we don't end up paying a fortune in roaming charges. A company called Go-Sim provides numbers based in Estonia, which work on a call back system. Seems to work, and the charges are TINY. To call from Russia to Australia is just 59 US cents a minute (37 pence) and to receive is just 15 US cents a minute (9 pence). All calls within Russia are the same cost. If I used my French number in Russia (or anywhere along the way) it would cost 2,90€ a minute - which is a wopping $4,15 US! www.gosim.com

So the shopping goes on!

In the days not so long past, all you needed was a camera (with film), a notebook and a copy of Baedeker. Plus of course a letter from His/Her Majesty, AND the trusty revolver to protect against Johnny Foreigner!