One of the joys of Russian trains is meeting people, which you can still do if you don't speak the language. A lot of younger Russians know English, and on our journey we shared a compartment with a musician also going to Irkutsk. She spoke good English after studying in Munich for a few years. She was entering a fanfare competition as part of a saxophone quartet and as it was free to watch, we got to see her perform a few numbers, but sadly couldn't stay to find...

Previously on turners-on-a-train; waiter in Saint Petersburg claims Krasnoyarsk dirtiest City in Russia. 8 inches of snow forecast for November. And now: The Turner's go to Krasnoyarsk. We arrived to no snow whatsoever and stunning sunshine. Our second day here felt practically tropical at a nice 6 degrees. The smog we'd been warned about was nowhere to be seen. Everyone told us this was extremely abnormal so we felt truly blessed. The main draw for us of Krasn...

Our journey here was our longest yet; 26 hours on a train. Sleeping in the train is ok, but when you wake up and have a whole day to spend before you can get out, then cabin fever starts to set in. On the plus side, I have read far more books while travelling than I did before. We can strongly recommend A journey into Russia by Jens Muhling, which has helped fill the hours. We had low expectations for Novosibirsk. We had picked it as a stopover, to avoid spendin...

As opposed to the light dusting in Yaroslavl, in Perm we encountered snow which had settled. The temperature had also started to drop considerably and it was now below 0 degrees. We were so ill prepared on our first trip out that we had to resort to going in and out of shops just to keep the feeling in our fingers. We therefore didn't do too much outdoors in Perm, despite there being easy to follow green and red routes painted on the pavement of all the major to...

Four hours north of Moscow lies the small tourist city of Yaroslavl. This is a historical site that attracts many tourists, even in October. It also lies on the confluence of the Volga and Kostrol rivers. We arrived to snow, slightly anxious that our accommodation, having been removed from Booking dot com, may not be the best. We got to the address and found a locked gate. We asked around if anyone had heard of this hostel but to no avail. When we same a man com...