First impressions of our spagny vagon or first class carriage were good.
As we settled ourselves into our first class carriage we knew we had made the right choice. Nice turquoise seats and a little table with a power point underneath and plenty of bedding. I though I would have trouble getting up onto the top bunk so we chose first class, expensive but we could both have a bottom bunk. Turns out the thought of spending our week in that close proximity to two unknown fellow passengers would have driven us crazy fairly fast!
Our very scary looking provodnista sold us cups of tea and we used the cups to fill up from the samovar at the end of the carriage using our own tea and coffee. You can make instant noodles (Russian supermarkets sell giant tubs) from the samovar which are surprisingly good if you are hungry enough!
Even in first class the washing facilities are a bit limited we had to resort to baby wipes but the toilet was clean most of the time. Our carriage was very rigorously hoovered and we had to move out of the way whether we liked it or not. There is a timetable in the corridor so you can see where the train stops despite all the time zones everything is on Moscow time. Sometimes you have twenty or thirty minutes but often only a minute or two then the provodnista doesn’t put the wooden steps out at the carriage door and you aren’t allowed out. Her word is law!
We had chosen to break the journey at Yekaterinburg first. We arrived early evening, a journey of twenty eight hours. Our guide met us on the platform he even knew where our carriage would be and he drove us to our central hotel with a SHOWER!
