On the rails..

Sochi ahoi. Being nearly intoxicated with benzin on our ferry we happily exited onto the port in Russia. With the help of Anastasia, our new friend and fellow couchsurfer, we popped up in the spare room of a cosy soviet style flat from which we explored the sub-tropical resort town. With its parks of eucalyptus and palm trees, its hard to imagine it as the home of the next winter olympics.

With one kilogram cake hidden in my backpack for Ava's birthday we start the journey. Due to communication problems our invitations for coffee found rejection and the delicious cake luckily needed sharing between ourselves. Barely philosphical talks were shared with our random passenger-companions as we tried to use the international language. "Bayern Munch" or "Gitler" (the russians have no H) are the essential letters, replacing all other unnecessary words such as verbs, adjectives and anything else required to form a sentence. Not much communication found place even between Russians and in general these folks are quite similar to something I would describe as a hard nut. Instead of wodka-evenings we had a suprisingly calm train journey drinking tea and enjoying the medititative and absolutely boring constancy of Russia's birch covered landscape out of our bed-seat.
Stocked with enough food for a Siberian winter we at least didn't need to worry about starvation.

For the next days I improved my minimalistic drawing skills while getting thrown random dates about wars with Gitler and Napoleon on me from the old lady next to us. After being reassured the fifth time she hates Germans I wonder if she really knows I am one of them. After clarification and some laughing i hope to have spread the word that we have not the same plans as before.

We follow our usual city routine and hop off in Kazan with no clue of where to stay or what to do. Luckily we stumble into Diana who takes us by the hand. After visiting the local world heritage Kremlin we head for a cheap hotel to fullfill our registering duty. A hotel glamoriously exhibiting itself by a little A4 paper taped on a random black door saying "Gastinitsa".

After our nice city break, we head on for three more days of sweating our soul out in a cramped 3rd class wagon... Trans-Siberia. We are happy to arrive in Irkutsk, thousands of kilometers further into Russia with the great Baikal lake awaiting us..