In The Netherlands, we had access to an English-library that had a fantastic travel book section. Every time I'd go there, I'd walk through that aisle, either picking out specific books for upcoming travels or looking at all the possibilities of places to go. Browsing the travel book aisle is my version of window shopping, really.
During one visit, I took the South Africa travel book off the shelf. Originally we thought we'd might start our travels in that region of the world, so I took a moment to flip through it. Putting it back, I happened to see the next alphabetically-available book....the Trans-Siberian Handbook. It was at that moment that I remembered my fascination with this rail route, realized this was a chance to make it happen, and pretty quickly the Trans-Siberian Railroad made its way into my personal "bucket list" for the year.
There are several different considerations for traveling on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. There are multiple routes to consider, so picking one is the first step. If you truly follow the Trans-Siberian route then you go from Moscow to Vladivostok (on Russia's Pacific Coast). Because we will eventually leave Russia to travel into Mongolia and then on to China, we are technically following the "Trans-Mongolian" route.
The second step is deciding if you are traveling straight through or stopping along the way. If you travel without stops, any route you choose takes 6-7 days and covers over 9,000 kilometers. Since we have younger children, we knew we'd want to stop along the route. (**By the way, when I just googled "going crazy on a train" the biggest match was "We're going off the rails on a crazy train", from the Ozzy Osbourne song. I'm pretty sure I'd have looked like him after 6-7 days in a tiny train compartment with my family.**)
It's possible to book train tickets 1. On your own and 2. Not in advance. However, we decided against both of these and decided to book all of our tickets, back in April, through Real Russia, a super friendly and helpful travel agency. We knew that we'd be traveling in the busiest period of the year, and we also needed to show a complete itinerary in order to apply for our Russian visas. While booking in advance did limit our flexibility to extend or shorten a stay somewhere along the route, it has also eliminated the possibility of getting "stuck" somewhere while waiting for an available train (which, research led us to believe, is apparently a good possibility this time of year along this route). So far it seems to have been the right decision for our family and for this trip.
The final step is to choose which class of train car you want to book. After a lot of reading and researching, we decided to book kupé, or second class tickets. This gave us a 4-bed, private compartment, which was perfect for us. First class didn't seem to be much different than second class, except being more expensive and the compartments typically only had 2 beds (neither of these details was attractive to us). Platzkart, or third class, train cars have doorless compartments with 54 beds total. While this is apparently the "most Russian" way to travel, it did not seem like a particularly comfortable way to travel. So choosing second class tickets was a fairly easy decision for us.
After our time in Moscow, it was time to board the first leg of our Trans-Siberian Railroad travels. Walking up to that train was definitely a "I can't believe we're actually doing this!" kind of moment. I was super excited to get this photo in front of a train route I'd wanted to travel for a long, long time.
We boarded the train on Saturday, July 16th, just after 1 PM in Moscow, which is Kilometer 0 on the Trans-Siberian route. Our destination on this train was Yekaterinburg, at Kilometer 1816. We were scheduled to arrive there on Sunday, July 17th, at about 6:30 (18:30) PM local time. After boarding, we took this family selfie in our compartment.
This picture gives you a better idea of what our compartment looked like. Just add a mirror image to the photo below and you can envision the whole compartment.
And this is what the train car looked like. Basically, it was a narrow passageway with the compartments all on the one side. Along the corridor, there were some electric outlets, a couple of fold-down chairs (that lady is sitting on one), and plenty of windows. At the far end in this photo is the samovar, a super-hot water dispenser. Directly across from that is the provodnitsa's compartment (he/she is the train attendant who checks tickets, hands out linens, and cleans the car, etc). Behind me in this photo is the bathroom (toilet and sink only), a trash receptacle, and the doors to the connecting car.
Helen, Benny, and Alex were traveling along with us to Yekaterinburg. While we were not able to have our compartments booked next to each other, we were able to move easily between train cars and compartments to spend time together. The boys were happy to play and hang out with each other throughout the ride.
While they did that, we also hung out and watched Russia go by. This was leaving Moscow....
And these were some of the sights as we got further out of Moscow....
We also ate in the train's dining car.....the food was not super great, but it at least kept us from going to bed hungry. And we had plenty of snacks in our compartment to supplement.
The afternoon and evening passed fairly quickly, and then it was time for our first night's sleep on the train...and with that, our first day on the Trans-Siberian Railroad came to an end!
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