ITINERARY - PART II - BERLIN TO ST.PETERSBURG
Trip Start
Sep 08, 2010
1
4
228
Trip End
Ongoing
Minsk, Belarus
Saturday, September 11, 2010
. Further frantic running around in morning - post office visit to send things home that we already don't need
. Train to St.Petersburg via Belarus departs at 15.22 - Rick and I put in different cabins
. 15.25 I move into Rick's cabin - train is run down version of 70's deluxe model so we take time to get to grips with it
. Play first word wang game of the trip - Rick wins
. Stop at Warsaw and Minsk along the way
. Meet would-be Dominican monk from St.Petersburg - Yuri
. Woken up at 3am by Belarussian border guards checking our visas
11th Sept - Berlin to St. Petersburg day 2 - via Belarus
. Train stops for 3 hours in Belarus while we wait for another engine to come and pick us up - Rick goes sketching on the railway tracks while Yuri tells me how he fell in love with his Polish language teacher and thus decided not to become a monk
. Once train gets going we look out window at the views of birch woodlands in autumn colour, simple dwellings made of corrugated iron and women with head scarves collecting mushrooms
. Lots of freight trains with timber and coal pass us by
. Russians lounge around the carriage in tracksuits sleeping most of the time. Yuri sleeps for 16 out of the 24 hours
