Rough night on the train. Our polite cabin buddy turned out to be a champion sleeper and a world class snorer! I hardly slept. My head being 50cm from what sounded like an Orc with a head cold.

BTW my Russian is getting much better – now that we are on our way out! It’s probably better than my Italian ever was. Will have to try harder in China.

We officially crossed into Asia shortly before arriving in Yekaterinburg and were met by our tour agent, Constantine (what a cool name) at our carriage. Survived 24hrs on a train. Constantine gave us some info about the city and the ‘take and share’ recipe of the USSR as he drove us to our homestay in the ‘South West Residential Zone’. As per it’s geographical namesake it started to look like Soweto. Run down buildings, destroyed roads, blocks of ominous, graffiti ridden soviet flats. Yikes. What did V get us into?!

Actually, V had booked us into a flat in the centre of town but the tour agent switched on us at the last minute. Our host was a very sweet little old granny (Lydia) and her 1 bed apartment. I assume we booted her from her bed, she slept in the lounge, we both felt bad. No hot water meant a 1/2 wash and a bit of laundry with water warmed on the stove. When in Rome ey! Except… In Rome I’m sure you can get more for €80 (+ €30 transfer). I would love to know how much Lydia gets from that.

The train ticket prices from the operator were excellent but they ripped us on the rest. We should have been confident enough to arrange tickets and accomodation ourselves but reading online scared us off. We estimate we could have saved 30-40% on the entire Trans Siberian package had we done it all ourselves – hard to put a price on the stress that we would have had to endure though.

– Posted from my iPhone