leave Berlin Sunday afternoon, arrive Moscow Mon night
love the train and have amazing good luck to be in a compartment with the lovely Larisa, Russian granny and english speaker, delighted to be able to practice on me
she also proves indispensable at 2am when we go through the Belarussian border and have to fill out forms from our beds while the train is also hoisted carriage-by-carriage to change its bogeys to the wide russian gauge
we spend today in our carriage, russian lessons for me and english practice for her. at one of the stations she gets off to get us some hot potatoes with dill and salted cucumber and insists on trying some of my bovril, poor her
there is a little kitchen at the end of each carriage with unlimited hot water and a broken fridge that is put to use as a storage for a broken hob, obviously. drink lots of tea from fancy cups.
think I'm well practiced in train-etiquette now so not feeling daunted about the big one tomorrow. have a packed itinerary (drawn up for me by Larisa) so plan to stomp around Moscow and wear myself out as much as possible before departure 9pm
so far so good, lots of love
I was very anxious for you about that leg of the journey - clearly I needn't have been. Larisa sounds wonderful. Love Dave.
ReplyDeleteLove the tea cups and helpful granny and your train stories, its nearly as good as doing it with you. Miss you stinker x
ReplyDeleteMessage from Polly received today 2009-10-01 08:59 Day 3 on train, all going well.
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