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Aslan passed away this morning. I’m sad. He was such a great cat.

I can’t find a good photo right now but here he is:

Goodbye fluffy dude.

It’s been a busy and surprisingly stressful 2 weeks of preparation, but I’m finally ready to drive to Burning Man.

Robin and I are driving as far as Toronto then I’ll continue via the I80 to San Francisco then back to Black Rock City. I’ll take a longer and more interesting route on the way home!

I’m driving a cargo van packed with all our gear. It’s a pretty funny vehicle, and you’ll see why when I finally get my photo taken with it! It’s a GMC Savana 3500 cargo van, which I like to think of as the Xtracycle of cars. It’s old and a bit beaten up, so I’m allowing a couple days for repairs on the way. Wish me luck!

This morning, on a random street a few blocks from where I’m staying in Montréal, I found a window that produces tabby cats!

While walking along, I spotted a tabby lounging by the sidewalk in front of the window. I stopped to pet him and he started purring. After about 15 seconds, another tabby came out of the window and came up to be petted. I was already quite happy with this window, but then a third one appeared! Unfortunately this kitty was skittish and didn’t want to join in the fun.

Much as I was enjoying the company of the two friendly cats, I figured I should leave lest more tabbies appear. I didn’t want to cause a tabby overload or disrupt the forces of the universe too much.

I spent 3 days in Amsterdam visiting D&A, coffeeshops, and just wandering around. Amsterdam is a great city and every time I visit I appreciate it a bit more. It seems that every street in "the pie" (official name: Centrum) has something interesting to see.

Then, an evening Thalys train to Brussels where I spent the night because of mismatched train schedules. This gave me a couple of hours to wander around so I visited the Grand Place, which is indeed grand in both the English and French meanings of the word.

This morning, I boarded my last train: a Eurostar to London St. Pancreas Pancras. Britain is a weird country – they’re proud of the strangest things. There’s a plaque in the station commemorating its first high speed rail line, opened in 2007! Really, aren’t they ashamed it took them so long? Oh well, still better than Canada.

I suppose technically my last train was actually a London Underground train to the airport. As I entered the tube station, I heard an announcement that "Apart from planned engineering works, the London Underground is operating normally." This is rare enough that you need to announce it?

OK, enough of that. 1908 km to home, and we’re moving faster than any passenger train ever has

Greetings from almost home: last time the train stopped, I was 1171 km from London!

I took a normal night train to St. Petersberg to make the most of my time. It wasn’t a great night of sleep because the train only took 7 hours or so, but it was enough. Upon arriving, I saw a few "Sapsan" trains on the platform. These are used on the new high speed service between Moscow and St. Petersberg, and they look a lot like the CRH3 "Hexie" trains I took in China! This led me to do a bit of research.. it turns out both trains are made by Siemens and are basically a commercialisation of the German ICE trains. This leaves me even less impressed with Chinese high speed rail. So you buy a few dozen German trains, paint them to look like Japanese trains, and run them short distances from Beijing. OK, you win the sound of one hand clapping. Well, it’s better than Canada, where we have NO intercity electric trains, let alone high speed ones!

St. Petersberg was great – it’s a beautiful city, full of nifty buildings. I also took an afternoon trip to Petrovordets, which is full of… fountains, over 100 of them!

On my last full night in Russia, I discovered a chain of fast food restaurants called Tepemok (pronounced Teremok) that serves meal-sized crêpes! Awesome! I tried to go on my last night.. they had a stand across from the train station, but it closed 10 minutes before I got there One of the guys at the hostel wants to introduce it to America but under the name Crazy Ivan’s. So watch for it!

The train to Berlin was weird. I couldn’t figure out who made the carriages but they weren’t Russian. Russian carriages are too wide to be used on German railways, and these were a much different design: narrow compartments with 3 beds in each, stacked above each other. They changed the bogies in Brest (Belarus) and also the couplings! Russian trains have bad couplings that jerk the carriages when the train starts and stops.

So then Berlin… it’s a great city, and one I’ve visited several times. The main thing I did was a bike tour of nearby Potsdam. It’s 50km away, and the tour normally takes the train out and back, but I persuaded them to give me the bike the night before and got up early enough to meet the tour at the station in Potsdam. This made for a long day and I was too tired to head to the hostel bar in the evening, where I was hoping to drink a boot of beer. This is probably a good thing because the boots are 2 litre glasses!

And now onto Amsterdam, my last big stop before home!

I made it to Berlin after 36h on a train. I don’t remember how far that is from London… under 3000km for sure. More to follow

2 nights ago, I boarded my train to St-Petersburg when they opened the doors… strange, my carriage was almost empty. Then about 15 minutes before departure, the circus started.

About 20 French people showed up and started boarding. They all had rolling luggage, most of which was too wide to roll down the hallway, but that didn’t stop them from trying! I heard "you’re taking the carpet with you!" more than once!

I was wondering when one of them would intrude in my compartment, since we had an empty berth. After a few minutes, one did: the group leader, accompanied by the provodnitsa. The leader was angrily stating in English that they were a GROUP, and they wanted to sit TOGETHER. The provodnitsa was trying to explain that my compartment already had 3 Russians in it, and one berth was left for a French person. I considered pointing out that I was not, in fact, Russian, but thought the better of it.

Finally the leader realised that maybe blaming the provodnitsa for her mistake wasn’t the correct strategy, and asked me if I would move to another berth so one of the French couples could sleep in the same compartment. (This matters on a 7.5h overnight train journey, most of which you’ll spend asleep?) Whatever, I told her I would (in French of course.)

Then followed the confusing process of figuring out which bed she wanted me to move to. Eventually I gave up and asked the provodnitsa, who shook her head at the French lady and showed me to an empty bed.

After that, the breakfasts had to be redistributed – on this fare, you could pay about $15 extra for a cold boxed breakfast. The French all had, but I hadn’t.

At the end of all this, I was in a compartment with 1 Russian and 1 breakfast. Then the provodnitsa came in with another breakfast, put it on the table right next to my berth, winked at me, and left. I guess it pays to be polite

It’s pronounced Moskva but it’s spelled Mockba. Crazy cyrillic.

I arrived in Nizhny Novgorod early on Saturday afternoon, intending to spend the night here before taking a Sunday night train to Moscow. The city has a strange layout: most things are on the west side of the Oka and Volga rivers, including the train station, most housing and industry, and all of the metro system. The historical and touristy stuff (and some housing and shops) is on the east side. So I had to cross. Lonely Planet advised taking tram 1 or any bus signposted for (somewhere) to get to the central area. Well, tram 1 no longer follows the route specified in LP, and it took me somewhere that wasn’t even on the Lonely Planet map. I went back to the train station and tried to find the bus to (somewhere). I tried to figure out the transit map, which has 3 of most route numbers: tram, bus, and trolleybus. I tried asking people, but nobody knew how to get to (somewhere) or even to the Kremlin. I tried waiting at 3 different bus stops for a bus labeled (somewhere). Nothing.

Then I decided I had no real need to spend another day dealing with this place, and changed my ticket to Moscow to leave Saturday night. I did eventually make it to the Kremlin by staing on tram route 1 until it got to some streets that were on the map, but it wasn’t mind blowing or anything. So back to the train station then onto the train!

I’m now in Moscow, starting my 5th day. I’ve pretty much done everything I wanted but I’m sure I’ll find something fun to do. Then tonight, a night train to St-Petersberg.

Highlights of Moscow have been:

• St. Basil’s Cathedral is awesome. Photos can’t really do it justice (not that I didn’t try.)
• The Kremlin is decent too.
• Red Square, which isn’t actually red.
• Cat Theatre!!! I wore my Ceiling Cat shirt and made sure He got a good view.
• An art museum with a really long name that had a Monet room.
• Just wandering around in general. There are lots of little parks everywhere, neat buildings, and good restaurants. I’ve been using the hostel’s kitchen too though.. this city is expensive if you eat out all the time!

There are no hostels between Irkutsk and Moscow, so the cheapest place to stay is usually a Soviet-era hotel.

The price is anywhere from 600 to 2000 roubles per night ($20 – $70.) For this, you get a small concrete room with a single bed and a sink. There’s a shared toilet on the floor, and a shared shower somewhere in the building. Sometimes you have to pay to use the shower.

When you check in, you’re given a card instead of a key. Each floor has an attendant who will exchange your card for a key. I guess this allows them to keep track of people coming and going.

The best part of the hotel I used in Yekaterinburg was this –>

It’s a radio that only gets one station! There’s a volume control on the side and that’s it. I guess the station used to be State Propaganda Radio or something, but these days it mostly plays English-language pop and dance music… Russians love dance music.

Oh yeah, there are photos – my Russia photos so far are here.

I counted yesterday. I had to tell 5 people that I didn’t speak Russian. That’s a typical day for me.

It seems that "point and grunt" communication is a skill, and one that many Russians lack. I guess I’m used to Southeast Asia and China where most people you interact with are part of the tourist industry and therefore know how it’s done. Most of the problems I remember are the times I needed to head to a market "off the beaten track" that usually only saw locals.

Yesterday, I went to the Gulag Museum in Perm, which is the only surviving Soviet-era labour camp (currently being restored as funds allow.) The woman at the ticket window couldn’t manage to sell me a ticket, and had to summon an English-speaking tour guide. Wow, your main job is interacting with tourists, and you can’t point and grunt? At least she figured out on her own that I didn’t gavaryu.

(Currently 746 km from Moscow, 4862 km from London!)