So we got on the train last night at a station in Moscow. On Russian sleeper trains there are 4 different classes: 1st class or SV, which is the top and compartments of 2 beds; 2nd class , tourist or Kupe, which has compartments of 4; Plaskartny, which is essentially 3rd and is a wagon of open plan beds; and the bottom one which is just unreserved seating. All the guide books and internet basically say the same thing, go for SV if you can or Kupe should be good enough, don't do Plaskartny for anything longer than a day and if your a tourist then avoid it. We obviously went for the Plaskartny for our 3 night journey.The train wasn't actually that bad at all. It was open plan with bunks of two running across the train and then a corridor at the foot of the bed with bunks of two running down the length of the train. It was clean when we got on, quite cosy and I couldn't lie outstretched on the bed or my feet stuck out into the corridor. It was interesting as a lot of people seemed to have this problem and as the top bunk was at my head height, moving the carriage later in the evening meant dodging bare feet or getting them in the face.
We were stocked up on fruit, noodles, porridge, bread and enough food to last us to Novosibirsk and back. Usually having porridge for breakfast, bread and soup for lunch and maybe noodles for dinner or buckwheat porridge. I was also given some traditional Russian food to try by some older guys on the train.
We made friends with the people who slept opposite us, one getting off the night before us and one taking the train to its final destination. Pacha and Inya, they were really nice and gave us food to try and we ended up sharing all our food together mostly. They didn't speak any English, so found my Russian attempts amusing and also tried to help me out with my learning.Opposite us and spread throughout the carriage were around 6 old men who got together every meal time and made a communal salad or a dish called okroshka, which is a salad made of vegetables and dill, sour cream and then turned sort of a cold soup, by adding a brewed drink called kvas. They chatted away to Igor about a whole host of subjects, one of them an engineer and one was an academic and had lots of information to convey.
It was quite weird being on a train for so long and totally messed with the UK conception of a train journey, which if your going very far might last for 8 or 9 hours. This one on the other hand was about 55 hours, and people lived their lives and they daily routines. As Igor put it, it was a stationary microcosm of people living and eating, sleeping and doing their daily business, but on a platform that was hurtling at probably over 100km in the middle of no where. There were the family dramas and incidents in some cars with people arguing and so many stories. On the final night we were having a midnight cup of tea in the restaurant car with a girl who worked the car and she was explaining the situation's history, when right before our eyes it played out, the classic 'man loves a woman but she doesn't like him and goes off with someone else in front of his eyes'.It was definitely a train journey to remember, but I wasn't even half way to Vladivostok
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