50 Hours to The City Between Asia and Europe
There is nothing more romantic than long-distance train travel in a country as vast as Russia. As you might have known, train travel durations go from anything between an hour to a week. Russians all over the country take it. They take it for work, visitation, or travel. Hands full of luggage and food, Russians navigate these intimidating journeys in their country with a shrug, some cigarettes, and tea.
And on the 23rd of March 2019, I was joining them on my own journey.
I was headed to Yekaterinburg from Irkutsk, which is a 50-hour train ride. Yes, you heard that correctly. 50 hours. 2 days cooped up in a 3rd class train cabin surrounded by no other foreigners across the Russian countryside.
[I will go through, in detail, everything you need to know about local Russian train journeys in 3rd class in another post]
With a massive bag of instant noodles, instant mashed potato, biscuits, and drinks on one hand and my ticket on the other, I painfully navigated through the train station and platforms and found myself on a top bunk in a train carriage which is built to fit 54 people [to put things into perspective, 1st class bunks fit 18 people in a carriage the same size as mine].
I am a relatively mobile young man, which meant climbing up and down from my bunk continuously for every meal, toilet break, or body stretch session was not an issue for me. However, as the few Russian men directly adjacent to me can attest, being bulky and bigger sized will prove to be a major obstacle when all you want to do is to get to bed.
I am a really tanned Asian and I stood out like a sore thumb in a cabin filled exclusively with Russians, but that wasn’t bad in the slightest. Commuters around me were friendly to one another, including towards me even though we couldn’t understand each other’s language in the slightest. We helped one another get up to our bunks, made space at the lower bunks for all of us to eat during our meals, and shared food and laughs without any judgement whatsoever.
It was one of the most wholesome experiences I’ve been through, and one that reminded me of what it meant to be human. So often in our busy lives, we forget that we are not alone. We forget to slow down to just take a deep breath and take in the wonderful world we live in, especially when we’re busy rushing all over trying to get things done. All we need is a couple of people realizing that we should take a break and just bask in good food, wholesome conversations, and laughter to give ourselves a refreshing break.
Yekaterinburg [Ekaterinburg] lies on the border between Asia and Europe and has an industrial past. Similar to Irkutsk, this city has a red line painted on the ground leading people around most, if not all, of the major attractions of the city. I didn’t do much research prior to arriving to this city, which made the red line an excellent way for me to do some self-exploration around the city on foot.
It was painfully cold in Yekaterinburg for some reason, but nothing I couldn’t handle with some intense shivering and jumping jacks every 15 minutes. While not extremely high on tourist attractions, Yekaterinburg does have amazing food. Situated east of the Ural mountains, I found plenty of delicious Ural cuisine dotted around the city.
If you’re headed there, I cannot recommend Pelmini Club enough for amazing Ural cuisine. Also, if you’re in the mood for brunch or late-night eats, there is no other place better than Mamma’s Big House. Seriously, you can’t go wrong with these establishments and I was so glad I made a stopover in this city before moving on my journey.
I stayed in Yekaterinburg for 2 days before heading to Moscow, taking my time to re-calibrate myself after passing through a timezone on the journey here.
Accommodation I stayed in
Yekaterinburg: Hostel Nikolskiy
These were originally posted on my blog, which I found more tedious to manage than Medium. These are stories from a trip I embarked on in March to April 2019.
