3 days on a train!

So, after all the hassles in the last hours in Moscow, we boarded the "Baikal" Trans-Siberian train to Irkutsk. It's a 3 day, 4 night journey covering 5185 kilometers and crossing 5 time zones!

We were quite amazed how quickly the time passed by. I guess after 5 days of pretty heavy sightseeing and vodka-drinking we were quite ready for a few peaceful days of not-doing-very-much. We sat and watched the scenery go by, we chatted to other passengers, we read books and planned the journey ahead, and of course, slept a lot!

We shared our cabin with a very quiet but polite Russian man. Also in our carriage was an English bloke (in the next cabin down), a really cute little girl who kept coming by to chat with us (...I'm not really sure whether she was old enough to understand that we didn't understand a single word she said!). Oh, and a very tanned, very muscular body-builder type who like to wander around with nothing on except a very tiny pair of shorts :-)

Sometimes we wandered down to the restaurant car but the food wasn't really anything to write home about. There was much better food to be had from the old babushkas selling their homemade food from the platforms whenever the train stopped. I was particularly impressed with the cabbage and potato piroshki, which is hard to describe, but similar to a savoury doughnut. Other than that, we ate a lot of dried pot noodles that we bought in the supermarket beforehand. I can say without any doubt that I don't ever want to eat those again!

So now we are in Irkutsk. We haven't really had time to explore the place yet. But tomorrow morning we are taking the bus to Olkhon Island, on lake Baikal. It looks really beautiful there. We're hoping to do a bit of trekking, if only the weather improves a bit!

Finally, I am getting used to the idea that we are travelling. It never really sunk in until now. In Saint Petersburg and even in Moscow it just felt as if we were on a weekend break. But the further away from home we get, the more I'm starting to realise the enormity of the trip we've embarked on. And it's a great feeling!!

In the next blog I will try to add some pics of Mikko. In the last week he's grown an amazing technicolour beard!!