The carpark of the station was total bedlam, with everyone trying to avoid the young Tajik lads who “find” parking spots and then demand tribute for having found or blocked off a spot. Â I saddled up with our two backpacks and we headed off to board the train.
We were able to have a good look around the Yekaterinburg train station, which is built in Stalinist style and has great examples of Socialist Realist art in it’s large waiting room. Â Â There is the usual “Defence of Stalingrad” painting, the ubiquitous burly blonde haired men and comely women pulling in a bumper harvest and perhaps the most interesting a painting that depicts the shooting down of Francis Gary Powers, a U2 spy-plane pilot, shot down over Yekaterinburg in May 1960.
We also managed to finally get the classic “Front of the Train” shot, after numerous failed attempts
We boarded our train, which we would only spend 29 hours on. Â Again, our carriage was pretty much brand new, and totally empty. Â So this will be a short post..
There are hardly any stops on the way to Moscow, so we were relegated to eating in the dining car, where the cost of food is an indirect relationship to the tastiness, portion size and quality. Â We had one meal here and then stuck to eating nuts, dried fruits and more bloody noodles in a bowl.
Like I said, it was a pretty uneventful journey, eating, sleeping, reading and then repeat. Â We did watch most of the dining car staff sitting around watching Daniel Steele movies, dubbed into Russian. Â We also saw beautiful forest, villages with quaint wooden houses, and some fire affected areas.
The train is a great way to travel, very relaxing, but as we head further north, it gets exponentially more civilised. Â Other passengers even know how to use a toilet correctly and everything.
We got into Moscow, on time and unmolested at 9:30am, the following day.
