Sleeper Train

The excitement was definitely building as we stood on the station platform at Cologne waiting for the train to take us to Moscow.  This was our first sleeper train of the journey and was going to be our first foray out of Western Europe, it has to said that while we had a great time we were definitely waiting for the adventure to begin properly and take us out of known terrains.

So we climbed about the train and into the pistachio green cabin that was to be our home for the next 36 hours . . . we were greeted by our carriage attendant, who was a far cry from the stony faced provodnitsa (carriage attendant) Russians the books had said we should expect.

He magically turned our seats into a three bed berth, loaded our luggage onto the high shelf in our pistachio cabin and insisted on demonstrating his (admittedly impressive) arm muscles to us. Through the wonders of Rusglish we worked out that we also had someone else sleeping in our cabin between Dortmund and Minsk so I’m not ashamed to say we set about making sure that we fit all of our luggage into the convenient spaces.  We were then settled in with cups of black tea in some properly Russian mugs (glass beakers with a typically ornate metal holder).  It definitely felt as if our Russia experience had begun . . .

Sunday was our first full day of train action and kicked off with Alice successfully trying to say 9 o’clock to the Lady from Minsk (as our fellow companion on this stretch shall henceforth be known as) in Russian.  As we woke up in Poland we then made our way to way to what we later discovered was the Polish buffet car for some pleasantly surprisingly edible breakfast.  We discovered later in the day that the buffet car changes as every border and that the Belorussian buffet car lived up to the guide book standards – now we’re glad we brought so many noodles!

The highlight of the day was most definitely at the border between Poland and Belorussia where we had to stop for a couple of hours to change the wheels on the train.  The train gauge (gap between the wheels to you and me) in Russia and Mongolia is a different size to the rest of world.  Apparently one of the reasons for this originally was for national security as it was thought to make Russia more difficult to invade, although I think that it’s been robustly proved that the harsh winter climate is much more of a deterrent!

Appreciating that we are both train geeks, the process to change the wheels was fascinating.  We basically rolled into a shed where the carriages were spilt up, the wheels were disconnected and the carriages then lifted a few meters off the ground with everyone still in them and the doors open.  Was impressive health and safety!  The wheels were then wheeled away down the track (geddit) and then replacement wheels rolled under each carriage for the carriage to be lower back down onto.  Whilst this was happening a lady came onto the train selling bottles of beer from a carrier bag which all made for a unique experience.

Roll on Moscow . . .