Trans-Siberian/Trans-Mongolian in a Nutshell

Sara's Top 4:

GerCamp

Listvyanka to Ekaterinburg leg
LakeBaikal

Moscow

David's Top 4:
Ger Camp

LakeBaikal

RedSqaure and the Kremlin

Watching the passing scenery from the train

Impressions:  We both loved our journey on the Trans-Mongolian and Trans-Siberian!  I had been a bit worried about the tight quarters, bathrooms, etc., but it was really comfortable (especially compared to the India trains)!  The time flew by on the train.  Between watching the scenery, reading, meeting new friends, eating, and sleeping, we were always surprised by how quickly the legs went by.  We met a few people who weren’t making very many stop.  They told us that the train got very tiring after more than two nights, which is easy to imagine!  The key for us was stopping every one to two days.  After just a few days off the train we were usually excited to get back aboard.

People: 

Mongolia – There was a huge change from the Chinese people to the Mongolians.  Although similar in stature, the Mongolians' complexions were much darker and they had the rosiest cheeks!  They reminded us very much of the Nepalese people we met while hiking to Everest Base Camp.  The Mongolians we met were soft-spoken and friendly.  They seemed to be very happy.  For such a huge country we were really surprised to learn that Mongolia only has about 3 million people (that's less than half as many as Hong Kong).

Russia – There was another huge change from Mongolia to Russia.  For the first time on our trip we were stopped multiple times and asked for directions as if we were locals.  Finally we had found ‘our people’ -- very tall and very light complexions.  We had heard about the Russians' steely eyes (e.g., Vladimir Putin), and it turns out that was the truth.  Steely eyes and few smiles masked the generosity and kindness of many of the Russians we met, especially in Siberia.    

Food: 

On the train – There was a dining car on all but one of the trains we took.  In China and Mongolia it was fairly inexpensive, so we visited quite often.  Once we got into Russia the prices went up, so we tended to find food elsewhere.  The train made stops fairly frequently, often for 15 minutes or more.  This gave us time to stretch our legs and grab some food.  There was usually fresh fruit and pierogi on the platforms.  Luckily our tickets for the longest leg of our journey -- from Lake Baikal to Ekaterinburg -- came with one hot meal each day, either lunch or dinner, which was delivered to our cabin. 

Mongolia – While we loved the people and the landscape in Mongolia, the food wasn’t our favorite.  Mutton is the staple meat, and we ate it at almost every meal while in the country.  There wasn’t much variety in the side dishes either.  We ate a combination of root vegetables with almost every meal.  Mongolian salt tea is also very distinct – a milk tea with a very salty taste.  It is an acquired taste.  

Russia – The food was excellent in Russia!  Our favorites were borsch, Beef Stroganoff, dumplings, and pierogi.  We did try some excellent Russian vodka, but it turns out that beer, especially among the younger generation, is the drink of choice.  Sparkling mineral water is the non-alcoholic drink of choice.  Everywhere we went fizzy water was served rather than still water.  We even went into several grocery stores that didn't even have still water.  Fizzy water grew on us by the end of our journey, but we sure did miss still water.      

The Best Borsch

Borsch from Pectopah C.C.C.P., a restaurant in Ekaterinburg, Russia

We tried quite a few borsch (beets, potatoes, onions, and beef) soups in Russia.  We voted, and this one from a small Soviet-style restaurant in Ekaterinburg was our favorite!

St. Petersburg

St. Petersburg is in Russia, but it's not Russian.  At least it doesn't seem Russian.  It feels like a European city, complete with amazing art museums, huge cathedrals, and beautiful palaces.  We really enjoyed touring the Hermitage, visiting the Peter and Paul Fortress, and just walking along the streets and canals.  It was a great way to cap off our journey across Russia!

At the Hermitage in St. Petersburg

St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg

Crossing a canal on Nevsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg

Tsarskoe Selo

We're back to the Russian royals -- the Romanovs!

Tsarskoe Selo is about ten miles outside of St. Petersburg and is the location of two amazing palaces.  The Catherine Palace was the summer home of many royal families, and the Alexander Palace (only a half mile from the Catherine Palace) is known for being the home of the last Romanovs.

The back of the Catherine Palace in St. Petersburg

The Alexander Palace in St. Petersburg

It was easy to spend a full day wandering around the palaces and surrounding gardens.  The Catherine Palace is much more famous than the Alexander Palace, which meant that we had to battle with hundreds of other tourists and tour groups to view of some of the rooms.  But when we could finally get a peek, it was well worth the effort!

The Green Room at the Catherine Palace in St. Petersburg

The Alexander Palace is less impressive (and also much less crowded), but I was really excited to see it after reading two books about the Romanovs.  It lived up to my expectations!  Where some rooms in the Catherine Palace were empty and let the walls do the talking impressing, all of the rooms in Alexander Palace were fully furnished.  This made it easier to imagine what it might have been like to live there.

David was impressed by this tiger-skin rug in one of the state rooms of the Alexander Palace

This billiards room was our favorite in the Alexander Palace.  David was ready to move in!

We finished our day a nice long walk in the expansive gardens and a little goofing off!

Sara with a statue in the gardens of Catherine's Palace -- no statues were harmed in the making of this picture!

~Sara

Goooooo Dawgs!

Look what we found in Russia -- a Georgia Bulldogs matryoshka doll! 

David wouldn't put up this post without mentioning that we saw a Georgia Tech matryoshka at a different shop but weren't allowed to take a picture.  He also says, "Go Hoos!"

White Nights

The sun setting along the Neva River in St. Petersburg at 11:30 p.m.

St. Petersburg is celebrating the White Nights Festival, a festival of artistic performances at theaters around the city that celebrate the fact that St. Petersburg never really gets dark during the peak of the summer.

The Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg

We celebrated with an opera -- Khovanshchina -- at the historic Mariinsky Theatre.  We arrived early in anticipation of the show and to admire the beautiful theater.

Sara reading the program in our seats at the Mariinsky Theatre

 
To our surprise, we noticed in the program that the opera would last five hours!  We already had plans to return for dinner at Zoom Cafe, a favorite from the previous night.  But dinner at 11:30 p.m. wasn't going to happen, so we had to choose between the whole show and M&Ms for dinner or half of the show and a fun dinner out.  After the first two acts (over two hours) we made our decision and dashed out of the theater in time for dinner at Zoom.

At Zoom Cafe toasting a fun dinner and a good decision to bolt out of the opera a bit early!

While we enjoyed the performance and really enjoyed seeing the theater, our favorite part of the White Nights Festival was the actual white nights.  It was amazing to watch sunset at 11:30 p.m. and to walk in twilight after 1:00 a.m.  It is tough to get to sleep at a reasonable hour when it never gets dark!

Another wild animal sighting!

This might be our craziest roadside wild animal sighting yet!  Walking down down a street along the Neva River, we ran across this brown bear drinking from a baby bottle.  A guy next to him was doing the same with his beer.  Wow!

A brown bear along the Neva River in St. Petersburg

For other wild animal sightings, see here, here, and here.

6 Months on the Road!

Celebrating 6 months of traveling at Catherine's Palace in St. Petersburg!

The Final Leg

Leg 5: Moscow to St. Petersburg; 650 km/404 miles; 7 hours and 39 minutes

We have completed the final leg of our journey from the Pacific to the Baltic Sea -- over 7,000 kilometers (about 9,000 km including our bullet train from Shanghai to Beijing), 7 overnights on the train, and lots of memories.

The rail yard at Moscow's Leningradsky station -- it started raining soon after taking this photo

This final leg was the shortest of all.  We boarded the train at 11 p.m. on a rainy night in Moscow.  We had two cabinmates, both Russian women who spoke little English.  It didn't matter that we couldn't communicate much, because we all quickly went to sleep.  Our wake-up knock would come early!  We arrived in St. Petersburg bright and early at 6:39 a.m.  We were a little sad that our long journey was over, but excited to start exploring St. Petersburg!

Thumbs-up for arriving at the Moscovsky railway station in St. Petersburg!

The Kremlin

David inside the Kremlin - the Armoury is the yellow building to his left.

The Kremlin -- I remember seeing it in the news a lot when I was little, and since it rhymed with "gremlin," it seemed pretty scary.  There have been a lot of changes at the Kremlin since the fall of the Soviet Union, but it is still the center of power in Russia and the place that Vladimir Putin heads to work every morning.  It is a really interesting place.

The Armoury inside the Kremlin houses some of the treasures accumulated by the Russian Tsars, including ten Faberge eggs.  There are also lots of cathedrals (that survived Stalin), the world's largest bell (never rung), and a really big cannon (never fired).  We enjoyed walking around the beautiful parks and gardens, generally trying not to run afoul of any of the security guards all over the place.

Ivan the Great Bell Tower on Cathedral Square inside the Kremlin.  Notice the big bell below the tower and the big cannon on the far right

We even saw Putin in his limo!  Just kidding -- if Putin were really in this limo, you would see his steely eyes peering through the back window.  It will be really interesting to see how long he remains the Russian President this second time around.

A limo passing inside the Kremlin

A park inside the Kremlin - Moscow is in full bloom

-David

Moscow Metro Tour

A Moscow Metro subway car pulling out of the station at Mayakovskaya

Believe it or not the Moscow Metro is worthy of a tour!  The Soviet government built it in order to amaze people with its magnificence.  The first line opened in 1935.  Each station is different, and they are all very impressive.  We stopped at about six different stations.  At each station we hopped off, wandered around, snapped some pictures, and then hopped back on a train to our next stop.  Several hours of entertainment for only 56 roubles (less than $2) was very cheap entertainment, especially in Moscow!  Below are some pictures of a few of our favorite stops.

Biblioteka Im. Lenina station on the Moscow metro - known for its mosaics

Komsomolskaya station on the Moscow Metro - known for its chandeliers

Novoslobodskaya station on the Moscow metro - known for its stained glass

Novokuznetskaya station on the Moscow Metro - known for its patriotic themes

We agreed that the stations are a bit unbelievably nicer than Atlanta's MARTA stations!

St. Basil's Then and Now

My parents visited Moscow in 1996 and came home with a great picture of St. Basil's Cathedral, which they blew up to a poster-size print.  So, I have grown up seeing St. Basil's on the wall and imagining what it would be like to visit.

Needless to say, seeing St. Basil's on our first morning in the city was really, really neat.  One of those places I have always had in my mind, and it lived up to my expectations -- the most colorful church I have ever seen!

My parents in front of St. Basil's Cathedral in 1996

Sara in front of St. Basil's Cathedral in 2012

The church doesn't seem to have changed, but we did quickly decide that there are a lot more tourists now.  Getting a picture like my parents' without tourists everywhere is virtually impossible.  Being here in the summer probably contributed to that, too.

~Sara

First night in Moscow!

Arriving in a new city is always exciting -- especially when we arrive knowing we have plans to see a friend!  We met Arman on the Emperors Wings in Australia and made plans to meet up in Moscow.  At the time it seemed that our arrival in Moscow was so far away.  It is hard to believe it's here!  Arman showed us a perfect first night in the city - a great dinner at a Georgian (the country, not the state) restaurant and a long walk around the city.

With Arman at a Georgian restaurant in Moscow

The Moscow River with the Kremlin in the background

Ekaterinburg to Moscow

Leg 4: Ekaterinburg to Moscow; 1,668 km/1,036 miles; 29 hours and 17 minutes

This leg seemed to fly by!  We boarded the train about 1 p.m. on Friday and settled into our train routine.  Our cabinmate this time around was an older Russian man wearing very short shorts (sorry, no pictures).  He was traveling for work, which we only figured out after he said “arbeit,” German for work, and made shoveling motions.  After only a few hours on the train, he got off in the nearby city of Perm.  There we were joined by an older Russian couple, who also spoke no English.  They were on their way to Mykonos with their family for vacation.  They gave us chocolate, so we got along very well!

Our train was almost exactly the same as our last train from Irkutsk to Ekaterinburg.  The only difference is that we had an electric locomotive for this leg of the journey – so no occasional whiffs of exhaust through open windows this time around!

Sara in front of the locomotive on our Ekaterinburg to Moscow train

We spent a lot of time watching the changing scenery from the window.  We passed towns and villages much more often than we did crossing Siberia, but there were still endless expanses of trees.  It’s a good thing birch trees look so nice, because we have seen a lot of them!

Siberia in bloom outside our train window

We also crossed the Europe-Asia border again and snapped a picture of a lady hanging out at the obelisk.

An obelisk marking the Europe-Asia border

It is incredible how the trains run precisely on time over such long distances.  Since learning to read the timetables posted in the train corridors, we have been able to get on and off at stops without worrying too much about missing our train. 

Timetable in our carriage from Ekaterinburg to Moscow

Precisely on time at 4:58 p.m. we pulled into Moscow with three days ahead to explore Russia’s capital!

The Romanovs

I knew that our train trip would give me plenty of time to read, so entering into Russia I delved into Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert Massie, a fabulous recommendation from my mom.  It couldn’t have been a better book -- it mentioned the building of the Trans-Siberian as well as several of the towns that we were passing through.  The book centers around Ekaterinburg, which is infamous for the killing of the last Russian Tsar, Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, and all of their children.    

The Church of Spilled Blood on the site of the Ipatiev House where the Tsar and his family were killed

We planned an excursion to the Ganina Yama Monastery, which was built on the site where the bodies of the imperial family were taken the night of the murder.  Out of fear that locals knew where the bodies had been taken, the Bolsheviks moved the bodies to another location four miles away on the day following the murders.  Only clothing, jewelry, and a few ashes were found at the first, and only known, burial site.  It wasn't until the late 1980's that an announcement was made that skeletons had been found at the second burial site.  The delay in finding the bodies led to many conspiracy theories, including several people claiming to be the royals.  Our guide at the monastery was a conspiracy theorist herself, believing that the site of the monastery was just a hoax from the government and that the family had escaped.  Her comment that “you must always question who is benefiting from something the government is telling you” didn’t make me question the death of the family, but it did give me insight into one young person’s distrust of the Russian government. 

The first burial site of the imperial family at the Ganina Yama Monastery

Hearing about the conspiracy theories prompted me to read a second book on our next leg of the train, The Romanovs: The Final Chapter, also written by Massie.  SPOILER ALERT!! This follow-up book was written after new evidence came out in the 80’s and 90’s – the bodies of five of the seven imperial family members had been found and positively identified in a second grave.  The other two bodies are thought to have been burned.  Massie also considers the claims of several of the people claiming to be members of the imperial family.  In the end, he refutes the claims of the most convincing of the claimants using DNA evidence and closes the chapter on doubts surrounding the deaths of the Romanov family.

A picture of the imperial family on a tree at the Ganina Yama Monastery

~Sara

On the Border

Ekaterinburg is just a few miles east of the Europe-Asia border, so we couldn’t pass up the chance the straddle the line!

The Europe-Asia border: Sara with a hand and foot in Asia and a hand and foot in Europe

The Europe-Asia border: David walking from Asia to Europe

Afterwards we celebrated the end of four and a half months in Asia with a champagne toast.  We will be back to the Europe-Asia border again in just over a week when we get to Istanbul!

A toast to the Europe-Asia Border

 -David

Ekaterinburg

A path along the Iset River in Ekaterinburg with old factories on the right

Ekaterinburg is the industrial capital of the mineral-rich Ural region.  The locals are proud of their city, which they call the third city of Russia (after Moscow and St. Petersburg, of course).  During the Cold War, Ekaterinburg (then renamed Sverdlovsk) was the center of the Russian defense industry.  It was only in 1991 that foreign tourists were even allowed to visit the city!

We can only imagine how much Ekaterinburg has changed since the early-90s.  The city recently painted a walking trail that passes many of the city’s historical sites.  We found ourselves following the red line for a nice afternoon stroll.  It is easy to see that this is a city clamoring for tourists and recognition, and deservedly so.  We only had two days here and wouldn’t have minded a little more time.

Ekaterinburg's City Administration building

Street performers dancing with fire at midnight on the dam of the City Pond in Ekaterinburg

The longest day of the year

Summer is here!  We celebrated the longest day of the year in Ekaterinburg, Russia.

The City Pond in Ekaterinburg -- still bustling (and still twilight) at midnight!

Making friends on the train

Meeting other travelers on the train certainly makes the trip go by faster!

We lucked out with some great Bulgarian neighbors.  Lots chatting and card playing, and they also spoke Russian, which was really helpful in a few circumstances.

Sara with Plam and Mariya

We also shared our cabin with some really friendly Russians on their way from Tyumen to Ekaterinburg for work.  We swapped lots of stories and were sure to find out how cold it really gets in Siberia.  The answer: really cold!  It sounds like they pass the time at dachas with banyas (i.e., country houses with saunas), running back and forth between the heat of the banya and the snow. 

David with Anna and Sergei

Crossing Siberia

Leg 3: Irkutsk to Ekaterinburg; 3,375 km/2,097 miles; 55 hours and 40 minutes

This leg, by far our longest of the journey, was much more fun than the last -- mostly because we spent our time riding across Siberia rather than stopped at border crossings.  We spent a lot of time looking out of our window at the never-ending birch and pine forests that cover Siberia.

We'd been told that as we move farther into Russia our trains would get older.  That has proven pretty accurate so far.  Our Irkutsk to Ekaterinburg train was decked out in 70s wood-grain style.

Sara's bed looking cozy on our first night. 

Our tickets for this train included one meal each day.  Figuring out which meal this would be and what we wanted to order was a feat, but we managed with some help from our Bulgarian neighbors, who spoke English and some Russian.  We were excited each time hot borsch and pasta arrived at our cabin, and we must have been too hungry as well, because we forgot to take a picture.  

For our first 36 hours on the train our cabinmate was an officer in the Russian army (unfortunately we forgot to take a picture of him too).  He was traveling as far as Omsk with a group of army officers, but we couldn't communicate much with the language barrier.

Our provodnitsa (train attendant) in blue and the waitress from the dining car in the red apron - at a stop in Siberia.

Siberian countryside from the train window.