Day 2/SUNDAY 13th DECEMBER 2009

The picture shows the water-heater at the end of the wagon used to boil water or to cook dried noodles.
On our way to Yekaterinburg, I awoke at 8h30 and realized to my surprise that my compartment was empty. The compartments have four relatively comfortable bunks and my “trainmates” had already left. I had only talked to one of them, Aleksei, a young Russian man living in England who was used to traveling on the Trans-sib to see his family. He explained to me that tea was a traditional Trans-Siberian beverage. There is a special cup, specific for the train: a glass slipped inside a metallic holder with a hand. One can ask a teacup to the provodnik (person responsible of the wagon), who will fill up this special cup with hot water and drop inside a tea bag. The nice thing, he said, is to ask for the tea once and then to keep the cup and drink your own tea inside it. The hot water provided in the train is free. I had cheap breakfast on the train: muesli and milk. I started reading “La prose du transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France” of Blaise Cendrars; A long poem describing his trip on the rails in 1912. Later on, I had a conversation with my other “train mates”, a Swedish couple who were spending their honeymoon on an Island called Insel Olchon on Lake Balkai (one of the locations I will visit). My great appetite was diminished when I saw the price of the food aboard the train. The couple, Ingrid and Torkel, had brought food before hand and bought food during the stop at Nizhniy Novgorod and proposed me to join them. I ate boiled potatoes, boiled eggs, salted cucumber and a cake called Suckaris. At 3h35 at our stop at Yekaterinburg, I loaded up on food (wonderful home-made traditional Russian dishes) always at a very reasonable price. I then took a shower on the train for 30 Rubles about 70 cents of euros (an interesting experience, luckily I brought my own soap and towel which are not provided). Outside my window, were mostly flat steppes (grassland plains than can be semi-desetic). I fell asleep with the view of the snowy peaked Ural Mountains far ahead.
A picture of the Tundra I took from my window;