Arrived in Irkutsk tonight after the longest and most surreal train journey ever. It was lots of fun, but really weird. It feels as though you're in a little bubble with some other people, and you're in this train world which isn't quite real life. I think I've finally caught up on my sleep!

As I expected, once you get away from the main cities Russian people as a whole are really friendly. Well, some of them. There's less random chatting amongst strangers than there is in England, even when you share a train carriage with them for four days. But when they do choose to be friendly, they're really lovely. We shared a carriage part of the way with an old man named "Antoni Nickolai" who was very friendly and extremely patient with mine and Laura's limited Russian. The staff in the restaurant cart were also lovely, if a bit over zealous in their friendliness; refusing to let us try and decipher the menu in peace and insisting on plying us with food we didn't really want. However they meant well and seemed very amused by us. My last friend was a little girl in the carriage next to us who I practised my Russian with. She was quite useful to know if I'd got the pronunciation right or wrong as if it was the latter I just got a blank look. Anyway, we had a very intelligent conversation about dolls, trees, and how old she was. Laura and I also had quite a few "friends" consisting of groups of drunk Russian men, but we won't go into that....

One crazy thing about the trains, is they are swelteringly hot. It's been the same every place we go to, they really turn up the heating indoors in some way to compensate for the cold outside. On the train everyone walks around in shorts!

It was really good though, every morning I'd eagerly look out of the window and there'd be a whole new landscape. It gradually got snowier and colder the further we went, so even though the carriages were hot the toilet and especially the bits in between the carriages (very very dicey, especially when icy. Hey, I'm a poet, don't I know it :s ) got really cold and there was a gradual build up of snow and ice the further we went.

One thing I'm certain of, is I never want to eat a pot noodle again. And I would not like to go four days without having a shower again either.

Oh, and when they say Siberia is a "different kind of cold", it's true and I now understand. It was -18C when we left the train station but apart from some icicles in my nose (which was pretty cool) it didn't feel any colder than Moscow which was +5C!

Time difference is now 8 hours, so it's 1am and tired so off to bed, nanight.