i love the railway

i had just crossed over from siberia into the ural mountains on train #9, the 'baikal'. it was a 3 day 2 night affair that brought me from irkutsk, to yekaterinburg, travelling more than 3700km. i have now only 1800+km more to cover before i finish the trans siberian railway proper - the one that starts at moscow and end in vladivostok 9288km away.

the service on the 'baikal' is really very good. it's much better than the 'rossiya', the only non stop service from moscow to vladivostok. the 'baikal' only travels btwn irkutsk and moscow though, so it's a shorter service, a service of exceptional quality nonetheless.

i had really gotten accustomed to life on the train - the relaxed and idyllic lifestyle of doing nothing really productive and lazing around almost for the entire day. it's really a luxury. and i don't think i'll ever get tired of the expansive landscape, of endless forests of trees, rolling over hills for as far as the eye can see, or of steppes littered with pretty colourful flowers. i'm missing the agreeable lifestyle and the scenery already :(

anyway, yekaterinburg's a city right next to the asia-europe border, so i'm technically still in asia now. it's also the city where the last czar and his family got assasinated. and where boris yeltsin is born and raised.

we hadn't arranged for any transport from the train station to the hotel here, as the agency insists that it's really too short a distance for them to arranged for something. interestingly, when we enquired the rates from the taxi drivers loitering outside the station, one of them demanded 500rub (sgd30) - for a approx 2+km drive. crazy.

we then went around asking for directions and abt public transport, and got quite a bit of helpful responses. unfortunately, eventhough we had gotten onto the right bus, we had boarded it in the wrong direction. and it seemed that no on in the bus or on the streets spoke any english at all. you'd b surprise how friendly and how helpful people can be, even at this part of the world. i'm really touched and impressed at how good the russian people are, esp when u don't speak any russian at all (nothing intelligible anyway). we finally found our hotel after quite an adventure.

our hotel's quite charming really- shaped like a sickle if u can see it from the top.

bleh. i really ought to start planning my finnish trip instead of blogging.