I didn't set off to a good start. I misjudged the time needed to get back to the hostel and pick up my pack, was busy taking pictures of the mamoth statue of Peter the Great and another one of Lenin. So I had to run, with packs on front and back, to get to the station in time. Not fun!
Murphy's Law of Train Travel - my carriage is always the one furthest away from my starting point on the platform!

Still I got there, and with 5 minutes to spare, enough to dash back down the platform and grab some snacks and water. I have been on a crisp free diet since I got to the Baltics. This corner of the world doesnt seem to believe in plain salted crisps. Beef flavoured, cheese and bacon etc but not plain! I dont even hope for S&V. Oh well I'd say it's good for my figure but unfortuantely I've taken to snacking on chocolate instead - Ali and Jasmine you're to blame!!!

My first leg on the "Tran-Sib" was only 6 hours. Not very momentous. Destination was Nizhny Novgorod, Russia's third largest city, although it didnt seem that huge. Perched high on the confluence of the Ob and Volga Rivers, it was a nice city for strolling around, as everyone else was doing as dusk fell. I was staying in a huge old hotel, furnishings from the 1960's including a black and white tv and dial telephone!!! There were supposedly some museums etc worth seeing in town but my main aim was to take a boat up the Volga to a small village called Makarevo, where there's an impressive monastery, and a nice quiet atmosphere. Unfortunately the journey required dragging myself out of bed early to make the one hydrofoil per day, a cool 1960's metal dome shaped thing. We whizzed upriver at quite a speed, past little villages with their gleaming gold and silver church domes. No matter how dilapidated a lot of Russian towns are I have noticed that the churches all have nice shiny new domes. I cant quite place the fascination I have with the Volga river. I dont know if it was in some song we used to sing as kids or some famous painting I've seen, but it was a nice sense of accomplishment to be on that broad, smooth river.
The ladies I was sitting next to were very curious about me. We didnt get far in Russian so they called over a girl my age from their group who is an English teacher in the Ukraine, near the Slovak border.
So far I've met an Aussie girl who's teaching in Zvollen (small town in central SK), a Dutch guy who studied in Kosice, a German couple who went to a wedding in B'lava and several other people who've spent a day there. So it's not a completely unknown fantasy land!!!

The questions were soon flying thick and fast, by the end of the trip I'll know them all in Russian too! How old are you? How much do you earn/does your father earn? Are you alone? Arent you scared? Why Russia? How do you like Russia? How much is rent in Australia? What do you do? What are your hobbies? It's an interview every time, although I try to askthe questions back of them so it's not too one sided, but they're good at blocking that. it's all very friendly and they do seem to be genuinely curious, not judging. Nearly everyone I've chatted to has been immensely proud of their home town, and everyone hates Moscow!

The monastery was truly impressive, perched on the rivers' edge, gleaming clusters of three different churches peeping over the high defensive walls. I was already wearing a skirt but the other ladies had to wrap floral cotton skirts over their trousers and we all had to don headscarves. A lot of the place is falling apart. Under communism it had ofcourse been closed down, and was used as an asylum and a hospital for a while, and only in the last 10 years have some nuns come back to get it running again. The gardens were overflowing with flowers and veggies, it was a peaceful little jungle to wander through.
The village of 600 or so people was a scattered collection of wooden houses with ornate window frames, in various states of disrepair. Cows, goats and sheep wandered freely along the lanes to the river bank.
I was incredibly lazy and had a picnic and a nap on the river bank, managing to obtain a shocking sunburn on my white little back. My arms and calves are tanned from all the walking I've been doing but the rest of me ain't seen sun in a while. You'd think I would have learnt by now!