Hi all

Just wanted to give you a glimpse of life on board our Gold Train as we travel across a vast land of some 7,000 plus kms, Sydney to Perth and back, over 15 days of travel.
As we have no laundry facilities on board the train, we need to give our dirty
clothes to our guide assistant for washing in cities as we stop for some sightseeing. A great bargain at $10 a bag. What a price!

Then of course there is always the opportunity to catch up on some work or emails to those that matter. We can sit on our beds and have all our items surrounding us. Not a four class hotel room, but serves the purpose of getting from A to B. From time to time when we arrive at a Hotel for one of the 3 overnights we do usually have a very warm welcome. So on our arrival in Irkutsk, it was nice to have such a warm welcome from Misha the Siberian Bear. She is the customer relations bear for the Marriott Hotel in Irkutsk. In fact she is the only Russian bear we saw on the whole trip.

And Cheers again ……

While travelling for a few days on the train a number of on board activities are arranged to improve our cultural experiences. What can you expect but a Russian Vodka tasting session. In Russia vodka must be accompanied with food. And what better way than to sample sweets, chocolates, berry juice along with the varieties of vodka.

All enjoy the tasting and clean the plate as well as the glass – especially the chilli vodka.

From time to time the train stops for a “strategic stop”. This means it takes on water, food and can drop off or take on new staff. Sometimes we take the opportunity to stretch our legs, by walking the length of the train. Here we have the head train guard and the Tour Director assisting passengers to
alight from the train for their walk. This is the front end of the train, with the electric engine at the front and then….

…..down the end of the platform at carriage 16 + 4 restaurant cars + 1 storage car, makes this train nearly 1/2 km long. The longest allowed by Russian rail. So you can get quite good exercise doing a few trips back and forth along the platform.

When we pull into a town to make a stop and enjoy some cultural experiences these can range from trying our Russian shopping skills to trying some fresh produce, that comes from all across the Siberian landscape. There is plenty of variety for the shopper and certainly no shortage even if there are restrictions in trade with Russia, there are plenty of crops that Siberia can provide.

When we go out for our day trips, we must all be together and our tour guide, Marina lets us know that we need to wear our “speaker boxes” and follow her white flag. We are the White group and only English speaking group. The rest are German, so we do get special treatment as we are a small band of 22 tourists with a very excellent guide in Marina.

Of course while out in the city we all have our cameras, iPhones, iPads and all wanting to get the great shot. There are some magnificent buildings and life stories across this vast land that taking a photo does not do justice to the size of some of these buildings, statues and scenes.

One massive structure is in Kazan a day out from Moscow. This is the symbol of the city a massive bowl held aloft. However the building underneath has now been turned into a Wedding Palace. Russian couples like to have their wedding meal in a wedding palace specially fitted out for such occasions. With 1.5 billion people and a growing percentage of younger people, a shorter summer session than we have, we see multiple married couples every day of the week out with their
wedding parties. So the need for such locations is very popular.

Many stops give us experiences of the Russian peoples love of music. At one School for talented musicians, school children even came back during their summer break to give us a concert of piano, violin and percussion. There were certainly budding achievers, with a past fellow who has now moved to study and work in Paris delivering a piano piece that would be a possibility in the Sydney Opera House.

It is of course the summer time and festivals of all kinds are around the market squares as we stop to take in the sounds and sights of the cities. One such photo opportunity was to catch these transformers doing dances with young children as they came up to them. From time to time an assistant needed to readjust the weapons on the transformers.

At the end of many marvellous days it was an experience to see the setting sun so late in the evening as we made our way to our beds around 10:00 pm. But not before we had some singing from the wait staff and passengers.

Regards

Wendy