Arrived in Y’burg on Thursday, 8pm local time. We are 2 hours ahead of Moscow, however all train times stick to Moscow time – that will be interesting when we go to get our next train!
Yesterday we had a tour of the city; Yekatrinburg is fairly small in comparison to St P and Moscow and a lot more Russian. After a few hours we had pretty much seen the city centre. We found our third Tinkoff, a microbrewery which we originally found in St P, then in Moscow and now Y’burg! Its great – good beer and tasty snacks! We even had food in the Y’burg Tinkoff to round off the experience.
Second day in Y’ burg was a prearranged trip to a Romanov memorial and then to the Asia-Europe border. In very wet conditions we walked around the memorial, went in the chapels/churches and viewed the entire Romanov family photo album!
After the memorial we were driven, at speed, through stage 666 of the world rally, to the asia-europe border. On the way we saw a memorial to the those who died in the Gulag (18,000 around Y’burg) and a site newly wed’s visit to give their blessing to the border! crazy!
So its time to leave this rather small city (after visiting SP & Moscow) and board the TransSib for a 57 hour train! We may have first class, we may be sharing with Chris & Carol again – either way it will be an awesome experience! Hopefully time to reflect on where we are on the trip and begin to look forward to Asia with regards China & Japan – man those places will be totally different!
Laters!
