With a 51 hour train journey ahead of us we tried our best to get comfortable. It turned out the both Trish and I and Sean and Mel had a cabin to ourselves which was brilliant. The first night on the train, myself and Sean met a Russian couple (who turned out to be rather strange) in the dining carriage who asked us to join them for a bit of vodka. Feeling that it would be rude to refuse we happily joined them and after many shots the conversation was flowing even though we couldn't speak any Russian and they knew very little English. Thankfully Sean had a phrase book at hand which helped. Trish and Mel joined us later and all ended up back in our cabin for a few beers. It was all a bit surreal and finally ended sometime around 3am, good craic though.

Awoke the next morning slightly hungover and spent the day lying about reading our books, nothing else to do really. Few beers that night and it was to bed we went. With the train constantly passing time zones none of us knew the local time exactly (all time on Russian trains is in Moscow time, even the train tickets!) and so when we finally got into Yekateringburg at 4pm (local time) we diembarked along with Sean. Mel was going onto Moscow (another 25 hours further up the line).

That night we had a very cold walking tour of the city which was very interesting. Yekateringburg is famous for a number of reasons including being the location of the murder of Tsar Nicholas II and his family in 1918 (the last Russian Royal Family), providing the setting for the 1960's U2 affair when the Soviets shot down an American spy plane and giving the country Boris Yeltsin. All in all it is a really interesting city. The tour that night took in the Romanov Cathedral which was recently completed (it's built on the site where the royal family were killed), it's a beautiful cathedral. After the tour it was back to the hotel for a good nights sleep.

Next day was a tour to the site where the Romanov families bodies were dumped (now a religious Orthodox site) complete with a church for each of the family. After that er drove some bit and came to the Europe/Asia border. There we stepped back into Europe for the first time in over 14 months. Then it was back to a memorial to the victims of Stalin (a mass grave recently discovered containing thousands of bodies of people who were on route to the Gulags in Siberia, sent by Stalin). A few beers that night and an early rise for our 9am train to Moscow, a journey which would take us 25 hours and back into Europe for good.