I loved Yekaterinburg. I'm a city girl and this is the fourth biggest city in Russia. With that comes trappings of the Western World, our first sighting on McDonalds and Burger King since Beijing!

Not only is this the first city we have visited out of Siberia its also the capital of the Ural Region. The area is super rich thanks to all the mining and factories. Due to this it was closed to foreigners until 1991. Lots of fancy cars and the people even look different, very skinny and very fashionable.

That was all a bonus, the reason for our stop here was more historical. Yekaterinburg is where the royal Romonov family were executed by the Bolsheviks. We did a tour and took in the place where they were executed, now Church of the Spilt Blood, where their bodies were burnt, Ganin Yama and where their bones were exhumed in the 90's. Fascinating, bloody stuff. Of course the Church and the State stories vary, but in this case don't know who you would believe.

Other than the birth place of Boris Yeltsin the city is famous for another reason; the huge gang wars of the 90's. We didn't know about this until we arrived but essentially there were two gangs, the Centrals and Uralmash. They both wanted control over the cities many factories. The war stopped when the majority of them were all dead. We heard the cemeteries were pretty strange so headed to the UralMash cemetery. If you get a chance google it.

The gang members are obvious straight away. Their head stones are massive slabs of black marble with life size, full body portraits of them etched in. The muscle are dresses in slacks and leather jackets, the leaders leisure suits. Both feature gold chains. All died in the 90's and most in their 20's or 30's. Not only are security cameras watching the top bosses graves a group of men at the entrance watch the graves. They are their everyday and not to be messed with. Apparently those who survived now run businesses which accounts for many of the flashy cars and creepy looking men.

The city now feels perfectly safe and was great to walk around. They are currently experiencing a heat wave, which they hate, but we enjoyed. Everyone was out along the river; skateboarding, bmx'ing, rollerblading, drinking beer. The only problem we faced here was a 3 hour walk of the city trying to find a restaurant to please his highness, the vegetarian. But I won't go into that ;)

By now we are thoroughly sick of night trains, but another one will takes us to European Russia, Kazan to be exact.