We jumped on the train at 14:30. We were due to arrive in Moscow early the next morning. There are typically three types of class you can travel on through Russia: 1st class 2-berth cabins (spalny vagon ), 2nd class 4-berth cabins (kupé), and 3rd class (platskartny) open-plan bunks. We decided we'd travel kupe class (our budget was £500 for travelling and kupe fell round about into this price range). Unfortunately we booked the wrong class first off and ended up in platskartny. This actually turned out to be quite fun as we got exposed to a lot more people. The cabins are quite spacious although we were booked on the upper bunks, which are quite a pain to reach and when you are 6ft2" your size 12 feet tend to stick out into the aisle and threaten people as they attempt to go to the toilet.
The immediate, and only lasting problem we found with travelling this way was storing your luggage. Fellow travellers seem to ignore any luggage restrictions and bring with them everything from pets, tents, to suitcase upon suitcase of personal belongings. We weren't travelling to lightly ourselves.
M and I are sitting playing cards. We are drinking some vodka I bought in a supermarket in Riga. I thought I was buying something similar to Dubrovnik (bison reed) vodka. It turned out to be some weird lemon flavoured stuff. It tastes ok but it smells like regurgitated rats urine. Well according to M it does, as she has just told me for the fifth time how rancid it tastes. She is still drinking it though. We've tried to offer it to the two ladies sharing a berth with us. The looks of horror on their faces superceded any need for lingusitical translation. They did eat some of our nuts though. Outside the window roll endless wet woodlands splashed with the occassional farm or mining town. It's a long way to Moscow...
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