Trans Siberian - Part 1 - Introduction

Part 1 - Introduction
Part 2 - St Petersburg - Moscow - Vladimir
Part 3 - Vladimir - Ekateringburg
Part 4 - Ekateringburg - Irkutsk - Ulan Ude
Part 5 - Ulan Ude - Ulaanbaatar
Part 6 - The Final Leg - Ulaanbaatar - Beijing

The journey on the train warrants an entire story of its own and I have decided devote a series of posts for this part of our trip alone for anyone who has a particular interest in the train journey, or who might be thinking to take the trip themselves.   It also deals with our experiences along the way on the train. 

Warning:  May Contain Alcohol

St Petersburg and the Russian Adventure Begins

Church of Spilt Blood

Our first stop in Russia was probably not an introduction to the real Russia.  There is no denying that St Petersburg is an incredibly beautiful city, built along the banks of rivers and canals, full of exquisite cathedrals and palaces designed primarily by Catherine the Great who was in fact a German!  

I should mention at this early stage that no reliance should be placed on the historical accuracy of anything I say – there has been a lot to take in and I have dozed off and/or glazed over on more than one occasion.

St Petersburg to Beijing is the only part of our trip which was pre-organised through an Australian travel agent and each stop includes a half day city tour with a guide.  Neither of us are particularly fond of such rigid planning but as we only have limited time in each place we thought it would be quite useful.

Sleeper Trains and Russian Border Guards

We glossed over our first experience on a sleeper train for no other reason than it’s taken us almost a week to get over the whole experience.  And frankly this did not bode well for a trip of several months which has been planned around travelling by train.

When booking our tickets from Cologne to Warsaw back in the UK we had settled for a couchette which is effectively 3^rd class – up to 6 berths to a cabin – mainly because we couldn’t really understand the booking system.