And stretch...

Day 9 (Tran-Siberian day 1): Kirov station
Distance: Blip taken 957km or 598 miles from Moscow and 3823km or 2390 miles from London. Now (assuming I get phone signal near Perm 2), approximately 1436km and two time zones from Moscow.

I got to the station in Moscow just after 11pm last night. The platform for the train was announced shortly after. My carriage was furthest away so I got a bit more weightlifting training by carrying my backpack the whole length of the train (and it’s a long train). By the time the train left (on time at 11.45pm) I’d stored my stuff in the secure storage under my bunk, and made up my bed. There are four bunks but only two of us in the compartment when we left Moscow and no one else has joined us yet. This is great because we have more storage space! It’s probably because whichever of us booked first, booked it as a women only compartment and maybe there aren’t so many women travelling solo.

My blip is of an impromptu exercise class at the first station we stopped at this morning. (And they did the same again this afternoon. The stops vary in length and at the longer ones passengers can get out, wander around and buy supplies.)

I’ve found a few English speakers in my carriage  – there are two or three people from Germany, an Italian couple and a young woman from Taiwan. My compartment buddy is Russian and doesn’t speak any English but we’ve had some good chats both speaking different languages and using sign language! She’s spent most of the day working on what look like extremely complicated equations and I’m very impressed. We bonded some more over the difficulties of taking pictures of the sunset when there are too many trees, and goods trains in the way.