Moscow-Beijing - Day 3 to 10

On Friday evening we stepped onboard train nr 20 on Yaroslavsky train station, Moscow, and on Friday morning one week later we exited the train on Beijing Train Station. So, what exactly kept us occupied those six and a half days?

Well, we read (a lot), we ate (a lot) and we sat (a whole lot). In between these time consuming activities we had time to socialize with our fellow passengers: two flashpack-y Swedes, one loony Brit, one deranged Finn and three cocky Dutchmen. (As you can understand, we grew very quite fond of our train companions.) Not to forget the only other girl our age, the multi-linguistic Belgian, and the 90-year-old Frenchman travelling around Asia, whilst writing a book about his love life. Beijing without them feels somehow wrong... We miss you guys!

In our compartment we actually kept a pet. I don't think you were allowed but our Friendly Neighborhood Fly wouldn't leave us alone!

I'll give you an example of a day on the train:
(Note that the time is estimated. Our minds were set on Finnish time, the train's time table on Moscow time, the restaurant wagon on local time and when you add the changing time zones to the equation you've got yourself a difficult answer to the simple question 'what time is it?')

early morning - Hanna wakes up
mid-day - Ruut&Sophia start to show signs of life
breakfast(or should it be lunch...?)
whenever the train makes a stop, we jump off and run up and down the station and all the stairs we can find before being shooed back into the train ('two minutes, two minutes!')
to pass the time we read, eat snacks, play with our magnetic cube(well, that's what it's supposed to be) and watch the changing scenery outside our window.
in the evenings we meet up with the people mentioned above (minus the 90-year-old) until our provodnik harshly tells our guests 'you, you, you - Go home!' and us 'you, you, you - Go to sleep!'. A tiny bit embaressed everyone does as he says, only to repeat the same thing the next night...

We'll try to put up pictures later, doing that on our Hostel's computer would take forever... I'll let the pictures describe the beautidul views we saw.

-Sophia