The Trans-Siberian Railway

Well here I am, about to write about the Trans-Siberian railway - the journey defining what route we would take to Australia - and I'll start by saying we nearly missed the train!

Before I get into that, let me talk about the Moscow underground... From the map in our guide book, it looks like any other underground that you'd find in any other city. However, many of the stations are superbly decorated with chandeliers ...as if you're entering a huge concert hall or something. More people use the Moscow subway each day that those who use the London and New York subway systems combined. When we first went to use it, we bought our ticket and walked through the barrier. We followed the signs for our train line (quite difficult when you don't understand russian) and before we got to the track, we met another barrier which wouldn't accept our tickets. We showed them to the attendant who laughed and shrugged it off, as if to say: well of course that ticket isn't gonna work, you foreigner! We were then directed to another queue (the russians love to queue) where we would buy another ticket for THIS barrier. Don't ask me why! We have put this on a list which we call: 'That's something that only the russians know', and this list is getting longer each day!

Anyway, after buying our second ticket we made it on to our train. We had 4 stops to go... Strangely, the train skipped the 3 in between stations and stopped at our one! Were they expecting us? Is this the norm? (only the russians know), but we were very thankful that we didn't want to get off at one of the stations in between! We found our hostel and settled in well, happy to finish a long day of travelling.

The next morning, we had a quick run through the main areas of Moscow before our lunchtime train to Irkutsk. We were slightly behind time and after getting some supplies for the upcoming journey we were leaving it a little tight. Lets just get a taxi, we decided. The staff at the hostel told us that a reasonable price would be EUR 5 and that we should definately pay no more than EUR 6.

With our bags on our backs, we set out again at 12noon - hoping we'd be there long before the train left at 1pm, and before the looming grey clouds emptied water on us! We walked to the local underground & suburban train station where we had spotted a load of taxis the day before.

Today however, there was only one taxi. We walked up to the driver and asked him how much to Kazan station (in perfect russian, of course). He sat there for a few seconds, eyeing us up and down, no doubt wondering to himself "how much can I get away with here?". "Tirr-tee dollars" he replies! We decided we'd rather risk the underground than be shafted by this guy for a journey the equivalent of going from Drumcondra to O'Connell Bridge.

Thankfully, our underground experience second time around was a lot smoother (ie. the train didn't skip any of the in between stations!). Unfortunately, the time spent navigating the subways meant it was now 30 minutes before our train left. On top of this, it had started to lash rain and so the lobby of the subway station was jam packed with people trying to keep out of the rain.

We managed to push through and into the downpour. This was the one time we needed our waterproof coats and covers for our rucksacks - and the one time we didn't have time to put them on! I had read in the lonely planet guide book that the trains can sometimes leave early and after 15 more minutes of running around in the downpour and still no sign of our station I finally thought we were gonna miss our train. Other thoughts going through our heads was that the tickets in our bag will be wet and will not be accepted by the conductor!

Amazingly we met one of the few nice russians in Moscow who ran with us to the station, and then found our train for us too. As a bonus, the conductor even accepted our wet tickets! The train left 20 mins late :-)

I had planned on writing about the train journey itself but that will have to wait till my next post (at which point, I hope to have found another internet cafe which will allow me to upload photo's).