Epic Train journey
After we finished running the summer camps- 4 days for the younger children and 5 days for the older ones – we embarked on our epic train journey to Moscow. It took us 29hours by train and we had second class with services tickets that I had bought from realrussia.com before we left. The cabin was slightly cramped but fine for us as the four of us shared one cabin. We boarded at 1.24am Friday night and after a few beers and celebratory vodkas we slept our first night on the train. 
As night trains go this was one of the most confortable I have ever slept on. The cabin had erratic air conditioning which did keep it quite cool and we all slept really well both nights, especially compared to sleeping two weeks on a sofa bed for me and Paul!
The day time was taken up with making copious cups of tea from the scalding hot urn that was kept boiling at the end of each carriage (bring a mug), reading, playing cards in the retro buffet car, making cheese and tomato wraps from the huge supplies of food we had bought with us. There was a certain amount of cabin fever which saw Paul offering the hawkers balloons he had blown up in order to get rid of them causing a few strange looks although I women seemed really grateful.
We travelled through the Ukraine which was fine on the way in (Paul even broke my no-one leaves the train at stops rule to put one foot in on the Ukraine) but slightly more complicated on the way out when they were reluctant to let us back into Russia on our single entry visa. We managed to persuade the typically Russianly un-friendly boarder guard that we hadn’t got off the train so hadn’t really been into the Ukraine at all. we did score four extra passport stamps though so bonus!
It did take us about 20 hours of detective work to figure out how to work the taps. We were convinced there was no running water until Paul solved the mystery of the taps. You have to put your hand under the tap and push up rather than down and completely ignore the two twisty tap looking things!
So Russian trains – good for a couple of days, excellent nights sleep, better if you know everyone in the cabin (although first class has only 2 per cabin if you could afford it) , take a mug and some food even though it tells you food is included and enjoy the trip appreciating the sheer size of the country!
Here we are at 6.48am Sunday on the platform. Finally we had made it to Moscow:
