First Train and Yekaterinburg

Thanks to the race for the train we had not bought food or withdrawn cash for the journey. Luckily it worked out we had just enough money for the cheapest item on the menu, Goulash all round! We sat with a Lebanese man working in Russia on his way to a film festival and learnt how to drink vodka the Russian way. After a while we met our first Russian “character”, a man who it transpired had recently been released from jail after 15 years and was returning home. He seemed nice enough and we had a good laugh drinking vodka until the early hours (afforded thanks to a dash to a cash point at a station). The nights sleep was hindered due to the large Russian in our carriage (who turned out to be the premier tenor opera singer of the Perm opera) who snored constantly through the night. 


We woke late and met our previous nights friends in the carriage and went for a drink in the restaurant car. At this point we discovered the reason for our Russian friends imprisonment... murder. Of course after dropping this bombshell our translator arrived at his stop and left us! An awkward few hours were spent trying to (read: failing to) converse with the murderer. Eventually we realised he was hammered, not immediately obvious when he is speaking Russian, and decided we should part company with him. This was not so easy when he was constantly trying to close the cabin door and was making gun gestures at our faces. In the end Pete lured him out of the cabin with the promise of a smoke and we managed to lock the door with him outside. Cue the remaining 4 and a half hours of the train journey spent cautiously looking at the door at every sound! We left the train at Yekaterinberg but whilst packing up realised that Pete had either lost or had his mp3 player stolen at some point during the trip.

We finally managed to find the hostel hidden on the 3rd floor of a small apartment block with no sign. The inside looked a lot like the owners grandparents had died and she had just stuck 6 beds in it and called it a hostel! One of the guests we were sharing with turned out to be a blind Polish guy which was quite intriguing. He was a very nice guy but had a habit of wandering round in the night and then just standing in the middle of the room for extended periods... quite disconcerting.There wasn't too much to do in the city, we had a little walk around to see the sights, including a small dam and a large Beatles memorial! On the second day we visited a zoo (apparently the most successful zoo per meter squared in the world). We weren't expecting much but they had literally anything that you could have thought of; Elephant, Hippo, Lions, White Tigers, Bears, Monkeys and all kinds of rare big cats. As we packed to leave Yekaterinburg it turned out Pete had lost yet another possession; his woolly hat.


For Mum: