We shared a compartment with Dee and Derek for 2 nights: we didn't know until we compared tickets that we were together on the train, they continued onto Moscow while we got off in Yekaterinburg.
Yekaterinburg was founded in 1723 by Peter the Great as a fort and factory to exploit the mineral wealth of the Urals and named it after his wife. There are 1.5 million people there now and the city became wealthy through the manufacture of mining equipment and the discovery of gold as well as emeralds. Many important Russian buildings have columns or large stone items made from Yekaterinburg stone.
Peter brought in a Dutch administrator and used Swedish prisoners of war to build factories.
The city was closed to foreigners until 1991, because of the USSR's defence industry. When the metro was being built gold was found and there was enough to pay for two of the stations and the line between.
Olga, the guide met us at the station with Sergei the driver and took us to our hotel. After settling in, we started a walking tour with Olga. The city has many sculptures of famous Russians. Boris Yeltsin was the mayor of the city before he became the Russian leader (didn't see a statue of him though).
The city has a dam in the middle of it and lots of young people hang out in that area practising their skateboard skills. Many places in the street were covered in graffiti. Around the dam were many outdoor restaurants and bars but as the weather was changeable there were not many people eating.
Yekaterinburg is where Europe ends and Asia begins-officially.
These markers from 1766 marked the distance from Moscow to Yekaterinburg.
This is the Cathedral of the Spilled Blood which is still being completed. It is situated on the site where the Romanov family was murdered in 1918:Tsar Nicholas 11, his wife and children. The Bolshevik leader was said to murder them and the town was renamed Sverdlovsk after him.
