"Irkutsk: 5185 km / 3221 miles east of Moscow, by train" There is no doubt that Irkutsk is the most beautiful of the Russian cities I have visited. The city is bigger than Oslo, but even in the city center there are small wooden houses, from long before Soviet times. They have great wooden carvings all over, and they are painted in many different colors. A huge majority are falling apart, which provides many opportunities to take interesting photos...

"An international conglomerate" The train ride from Omsk to Irkutsk turned out to be a really funny one. Different nationalities were represented; among a couple others there were Russians, a Norwegian, Swedish, Australian and Italian. This train ride was about two and a half day, so I had lots of time to get to know all kinds of people in the train. The only ones I did not get to know were the Soviet Army Soldiers who stayed in my train car. The...