Little Istanbul

I don't think that's how Kazan is nicknamed, but it probably should be. Certainly nothing is comparable for real to Constantinople, but Kazan has some touch of it: an impressive river (the Volga, again) and amazing views, a wonderful and warm weather (apparently not just in summer), a multicultural environment (a mosque and an Orthodox church live within the walls of its Kremlin), a Turkic language (although written in cyrillic, like those from the former Soviet Central Asian republics), a population which is mostly liberally Muslim (pork is shunned, but the occasional drink is not), and a vibrant nightlife (Baumana Ulitsa is Kazan's own Istiklal Caddesi). We spent only three days in Kazan, but we saw why people would want to spend more time there and enjoy the laid-back atmosphere.

Of course, not everything is rosy here either. While most of the “visible” city has been renovated in 2005 for the celebrations of the 1000 years of Kazan (a local told us that the number was actually taken out of thin air by officials, just to have some celebrations to do and impress the world with Kazan's beauties), several less-visible parts of the city are still a bit run-down and others are being restructured right now. But I suppose it is so in every major city.

The major interesting contradiction, for us, was the existence of a “gated community” right under the Kremlin: a series of pretty little new single-family houses with gardens, separated from the rest of the world by a 3-metre wall, with an actual helipad adjoining the entrance. We imagined that those were probably the residences of the notable and powerful, who somehow managed to have their little Suburbia built right in the centre, in front of a beautiful river panorama.

Reality check: Train booking.

Our idea of how the trip would develop, based on the material we read and the people we spoke to, was the following (quite ingenious in our mind).

1. We land in Moscow.
2. We buy our first leg.
3. As soon as we arrive in the next city, we buy the next leg.
4. And so on.

Supposedly, Russians buy their tickets at the last minute, so even buying it the previous day or two days before is good enough.

Well, there's no two ways of saying it: this is a lie. I'm not sure if this is the next generation of Russians or whatever, but they plan ahead, at least in July. It is extremely hard to find train tickets for the train you want, if you're only booking a few days earlier. In fact, after discovering this, we started to plan our whole journey, and we even had troubles finding some tickets for two weeks later.

So plan ahead, people. Russian Railways (RZD) have now an online ticketing system, where you can buy any ticket for Russian trains with a credit card. You can even do this from the sanctity of your own home in Reno, Nevada or Wollongong, New South Wales. As long as you pay, your ticket is in the system, and you can collect it in special booths at major Russian train stations (not necessarily the station where your trip starts). You just have to learn a little bit of Russian, create an account, find the train, choose the seats and pay. Remember that you cannot book more than 45 days in advance.

The only thing is that RZD has no advanced engine (like the one Deutsche Bahn has, for example) offering connections. You can find one at Marshruty, but you have to specify the place where you want to connect. So if you want to try different combinations (to see if there's a cheaper ticket, or if you can break your journey) the work is completely left to you.

The other myth to be busted is that there are always seats available in Platskart (the cheaper carriages). Someone even told us that the Platskartny carriage is the last to be filled up. It might be because of the crisis, but this couldn't be more wrong. Of all our journey, we only managed to get Platskart tickets for two relatively small legs; everything else was full. It is to be said that Platskart is much cheaper than Kupe (less than half the price), so it's quite understandable.

Again, lesson learned: if you want cheaper tickets, plan ahead. This will give you less flexibility, but only nominally. After all, you don't want to be flexibly stuck in some place because you don't find any ticket out of it.

Lastly, every guide says how cool it is to break your Trans-Mongolian journey in Ulan Bator; but nobody tells you that it is nearly impossible to buy tickets from Ulan Bator to Beijing in Russia (apart from Moscow). No Russian train station will sell you tickets that don't start or end in Russia, and most travel agencies don't bother.

We managed to find a travel agency (Baikal Complex) in Irkutsk who would do it. The agency was in the outskirts of the city; after a wonderful 20 minutes of bus ride across town, we found ourselves in the middle of a series of panel buildings, who constitute a neighbourhood on their own. There is only one street, and no street numbers. The numbers are on the buildings. In building 62, apartment 35 (no sign, of course) we found the agency. They offered us tea and proceeded to contact their partners in Ulan Bator, who managed to get us the two last tickets (phew!) of the UB-Beijing train on the day we needed.

So, have I mentioned it already? plan ahead.

Preparations: The Itinerary

So this is it. We're going. Nerd as I am, I had to go to Google Maps and trace my itinerary, including every intermediate station that I found on the trains that we are (supposedly - but that's another post) going to take. Result: a few hours spent painstakingly finding villages in the middle of Russia, and an awfully cluttered map, which you can see embedded here but you'd probably be happier to view in a separate window (the link is below).




View Trans-mongolian route in a larger map


Actually, double-nerd that I am, I had to go and do this thing also on a different maps service, Yandex. The great thing about Yandex Maps is that they have much better quality maps of Russia than Google (they must have access to maps that Russia won't give to Uncle Sam), so you can actually see the railway line all the way through the trip. The downside is that a) the map cannot be embedded in the blog as coolly as the GMap above and b) the whole interface is in Russian. But if you want to go do the Trans-Siberian, here's the first tip: you've got to start learning some local language.

So get on with it and check out the Yandex map of the itinerary.

Be West, Go East

This blog was born to document my future Trans-Siberian trip: the preparation, the travel, the pictures, the impressions. In the hope that it will be useful to some other traveller, and to myself as a memory.

To be precise, it is going to be a Trans-Mongolian trip: from Moscow to Beijing, via Ulaanbaatar (or Ulan Bator, it depends how well the "a" key works on your keyboard).

By the way, Vostok (Восток) means "East" in Russian. "Восточный экспресс" is the Orient Express, sadly out of commission by now. This blog has nothing to do with the old Orient Express, though; beside saying that maybe by now the Orient Express is really the Trans-Siberian: a train where you spend several days and nights and eventually reach a different world.

Let us tune our engines, we're getting started. Next post, the itinerary.