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So having mastered the Russian underground so successfully. I conducted the rest of my St Petersburg sight seeing by foot, tram, bus and boat.
I liked St Petersburg the hostel was great and it was easy to explore all the sights avoiding the underground. The people were friendly not least the captain of the sight seeing night boat, who invited us (myself and 2 Irish girls from hostel) to stay on board and drink rum after the tour. The conversation was a little stilted being he had barely no English (though to be fair he had more English then we had Russian). We only stayed for a couple to be polite.
After 3 days of exploring myself it was time to meet my travelling companions for the next 17 days and start the tour.
One more day in St Petersburg was followed by the first train - an over nighter to Moscow.
I didn't particularly enjoy Moscow, though to be fair we only had one day there, a Sunday, it was raining and the Kremlin was closed. So we explored the open bits of Red Square and took a river cruise. Before heading back to the hotel and stocking up for the big stint on the Trans Siberian, 4 nights to Irkutsk.
Time on the train was wiled away getting to know the group, playing cards, drinking Vodka (beer when the vodka ran out) and enjoying random deep fried items from the sellers at the many stops along the way.
I'd reluctantly joined a group tour as I didn't trust myself to get on the right trains but actually the group and our guide, Nin, were fab and made the trip.
My notions of striking up conversations with random Russians at the samovar or indulging in a high stakes game of poker with locals whilst knocking back vodka shots were that of times gone past perhaps or reserved for novels.
The only interaction with Russians, aside from the grumpy attendants, were twice encountering some very drunk Russians smoking in the gap between carriages whilst I was looking for a vacant toilet. They insisted on speaking very loudly at me in Russian and repeating themselves when I didn't understand (to be fair a tactic I've often used myself when trying to converse with speakers of another language). However, that followed by laughing didn't make for a friendly environment so I opted to move through quickly to the next carriage emerging from the fog of smoke feeling like I'd had a packet of 20 myself.
My one remaining romantic notion of travelling the trans Siberian railway was indulged though. On the 4th morning I was awoken, by random Russian music, to the sight of snow. (The random music had not been part of my notion but I thought id mention it as I think it added to the experience). I was so ridiculously excited by the snow it made the scenery even more amazing.
And it was into a very snowy Irkutsk that we emerged from our longest stint on the train. We were picked up by a bus and taken to a very cold (-12 I may be exaggerating slightly but the wind chill was shocking and my google weather app definitely suggested it was below freezing) Lake Baikal and stayed at Nikolay's guesthouse.
It was at the guesthouse where, the afore mentioned Nikolay, donned a pair of budgie smugglers and a felt captains hat and beat a group of us with hot birch twigs in his sauna before rolling us in snow. I must point out at this juncture that we had all acquiesced to this bizarre activity so no need to fret. For this was a traditional Russian banya and we all loved it (I have subsequently looked up Russian Banya on the t'interweb to make sure we weren't hood winked and it would appear to be genuine, though perhaps not the budgie smugglers or felt hats or the glee in which he soaped down the ladies breasticles).
From Lake Baikal back to Irkutsk this time thankfully and more sensibly with snow chains on the bus (much less sliding) and on to our last stint of train in Russia before crossing into Mongolia.
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