Hurrah! We have internet!

Sorry for being a bit remiss on the blog front - internet access has been a little hard to come by. For a start, there wasn't ANY internet cafe on the 4-day train journey, and then Listvyanka's internet cafe was basically the guys in the tourist information centre letting you use one of their two computers for a bit, but it was so painfully slow we gave up! But in Irkutsk (yes, the place on the Risk board) now, so we're taking full advantage of civilization!

Anyhoo, a bit about what we've been up to. The train journey from Moscow to Irkutsk was really great (see above for the train we were on). Nothing to do but look out the window, read books, play chess and drink beer. By the time to get off, we were a bit brain-dead but very relaxed!

We got to break the journey with brief stops at the platforms, where people would try and sell us food. We generally looked on suspiciously.... Until we found this:

Sausage and bread. The lunch of Kings - and us on the train. Made a difference to the meat and potatoes that they sold on the dining car, and the bread stuffed with luke-warm cabbage that we bought on the platform one morning.

Those views from the window? They were beautiful - mostly

So when we got to Irkutsk we headed straight off to a little village called Listvyanka, on the edge of lake Baikal. We really loved it there. The Russians so far, but in Listvyanka in particular, were really friendly and helpful - especially the students who offered vodka at 10.30 in the morning and wanted to practice their English.

This is Listvyanka. Very rustic. And wet, but that didn't spoil our fun!

Here's one of the (many) bars we drank in:

And here's an example of a traditional wooden house, along with a more modern development that has been carefully architected to fit in well with the traditional style. See if you can work out which one is which

We really loved Russia - way more than we were expecting. It's a crazy country and lives up to so many of the cliches, but somehow the whole place works. We're heading off to Mongolia tomorrow morning.