We left Yekaterinburg on "The Ural"- the Russian flagship and we had the whole carriage to our selves. The carriage attendant fussed over us and made our beds and showed us how to use the samovar at the end of the train even though she had no English. The train was nice and new and we even had a teapot with cups and saucers in the room. They were inscribed marking the 40th anniversary of the trains' service.
We took the southerly route rather than the Trans Siberian main route via Krasnoufinsk, Kazan and Vekovka. We passed through typical Siberian countryside and we crossed the rolling Ural mountains which are more like hills than mountains. They divide Russia north to south from the Arctic to Kazakhstan.
Near Kazan the houses were made of more permanent materials: cement and brick or stone, rather than wood. We could tell we were getting closer to Moscow as there were more expensive housing areas.
Kazan (pop 1.1 million) is one of Russia's oldest Tartar cities dating back to around 1005. We could see several large mosques and a kremlin from the train. It is the capital of Tartarstan and rich in oil and declared autonomy from Russia in 1990, but it is not fully independent.
I have remembered an incident that happened when we were on the last train. We wanted to know what station we were at so John looked out the window and wrote the station name down in Cyrillic. He came back into the carriage and we pronounced each letter out like beginners learning to read- P-R no L, -A-T... and then we all shouted 'platform' as we realised what he had copied... laughs all round and we are still laughing about it. We never did know what station we were at!
