Train, taps and apps...

On our last day in Moscow the rain came. So when we arrived at the station it was dark wet and quite confusing. We eventually found the departure board with our train number and starred at it for 45 mins until our platform number came up. I should confess here that despite working abroad for several years and being quite a regular traveller and all round fairly relaxed person, I get very anxious about this part of the journey. I am convinced we are in the wrong place/wrong time and that something will go wrong. So Mr L has to work very hard to keep this in check.

We had already been told that here the carriage guard must be obeyed, so we dutifully waited (in the rain) until she was ready to receive us. Carriage 12 of 13 was made up of 9 1st class cabins and not all full. Our cabin (no.2) with wooden panels, had two bench seats already made up as beds and a small table between by the window, wall lights, mirrors, hooks and hangers - all very functional. A lot more spacious than our 20hr train journey in Canada where G and I had to negotiate room for our feet in a foot square of space. Plenty of room for sleeping, resting and reading.

Our breakfast for the following morning was delivered shortly after we set off at 10.36pm - a croissant, pot of jam (no knife) 3 dark chocolate bars, small bottle of water, 4 tic-tacs and a napkin.  Tasty. We also had the opportunity to use our new discovery - a Google translate app that you download so you can use off line. The lady who delivered our breakfast was clearly trying to tell us something so using the app we were able to establish that she wanted us to order lunch for the following day. It's a very handy app to have and I would definitely recommend it. 

When we woke it was daylight and it was nice to just float along and watch the world go by. The landscape was mainly woodland and flat interspersed with small villages made up of wooden houses and what looked like closed down derelict industrial units. The colour of the trees very vibrant against the grey skies. We stopped no more than half a dozen times until our station 36 hours later. 

Lunch arrived at 12.05 a tasty (& hot) chicken schnitzel with potatoes and veg. No other food was provided and despite bringing nibbles we had definitely under catered.

The toilets on the train were akin to the Thameslink St.Pancras to St.Albans all stations train on a Saturday night, with a complicated tap system which resulted in you getting water over everywhere but your hands. Thankfully I packed hand gel. 

We arrived in Tyumen at 9.36am local time (4hrs + UK). Here I would recommend another app that we tested out in Canada called gps navigation. You download a country beforehand and it works offline just like a sat nav so you don't need wifi. it got us straight to our accommodation a 25 min walk away.

So why stop in Tyumen? Well when we made our plans,  we were sat in a park on a hot and sunny Sunday afternoon in central London, nursing Saturday night heads, reading through the Lonelyplanet Trans-Siberian Railway guide book and we picked Tyumen as a place of interest to spend two nights. Having arrived and reread the guidebook it is hard to understand why we thought that. It states "there's enough here to keep you mildly entertained for a day (or two)" . This hardly classifies it a 'must see' and having wandered around it yesterday we can confirm that there was not a great deal to hold our attention.