Unfortunately I drank far too much Baltika and some local hooch in my cabin last night, so I completely missed the stop at Yekaterinburg this morning. Didn't get up lunchtime, which when you have nothing to do all day, even that seems a bit on the early side.
Enjoying catching up on my reading (on the home straight with Hemmingway), listening to my backlog of podcasts (Colin Montgomerie on Desert Islands Discs was particularly good, surprisingly came across as a thoroughly likeable guy) and watching movies (last night was Invictus, excellent).
The temperature has dropped to -5C according to my trusty iPhone app, so I had better wrap up warm at the next stop. The Siberian view remains fairly constant with lots of ...
... interspersed with the occasional ...
Have also been paying particular attention to how the samovar works. When you have nothing to do, little things like that become especially fascinating.
The samovar is the hot water dispenser-thingy that lives in the corridor is every carriage next to Chinese guard's cabin
It dispenses unlimited boiling (and I mean scaldingly hot) water for use in making your coffee, cup-a-soups, pasta etc. I had wondered how it worked and why it was always boiling, so I did some snooping behind it and it turns out that its good old fashioned coal-powered, and the wee Chinese guard just lumps some more coal into the back of it every now and again.
My suspicions were confirmed at a recent stop when a wee coal lorry came along to top up the supply in every carriage
... all carefully watched and monitored by the Chinese guards ...
Fascinating, eh ? Told you I had nothing to do !
Location:Ilanskaya
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