Preparations: Trains in Russia.

Buying tickets to make the Trans-Siberian (Trans-Mongolian or Trans-Manchurian) trip is not as easy as buying an Inter-Rail ticket.

Russian Railways do not have a "Trans-Siberian Pass", whereby you have a ticket from Moscow to Vladivostok and you can then use it as you prefer, breaking the journey wherever you see fit, maybe booking the sleeper ticket separately.*

When you want to buy a ticket for a Russian train, you have to be in Russia and you have to know exactly the date when you're travelling and the train you're taking. Tickets are nominal (you need to show your passport). Another interesting quirk is that all train timetables are displayed in Moscow time, through the whole Russian territory. Apparently, in some trains even restaurant carriages use Moscow times, thus offering breakfast in the afternoon or dinner in the middle of the night.

We have decided to travel platskartny (плацкартный: third class, a whole carriage filled with sleepers), and buy the tickets as we go, which is the only way to break our trip. Anyway, apparently Russians do not buy their tickets until they're at the station packed with their luggage ready to leave, so if we buy the follow-up tickets whenever we arrive in a city, we should be all set. Only trouble might be with the train leaving to Mongolia, but we'll see about that.

* Funnily enough, we've recently discovered (a little bit late though) that you can do exactly this if you buy the ticket through Slovakian Railways. You can buy a Citystar return ticket from Slovakia to any point in Russia (including Vladivostok, Irkutsk or what have you) for as little as 135 Euros (yes, you read it right - return ticket, any station). And if you're more than one person, there's even a discount. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen a "Bratislava-Vladivostok" return ticket with my own eyes. The only hitch to that wonderful plan is that you have to be in Slovakia to buy the ticket (which we are not, and now it's too late to organize everything through a third person. Ahh, next time).