We can’t believe we’re here already but don’t feel like we rushed through Europe too much. We’ve been able to gauge the feeling of each city (Brussels, Cologne and Warsaw) in which we’ve stayed. We think this has been mainly to do with our couch-surfing experiences: from a chaotic Belgian barmaid who recommended beer that tasted of HP sauce, to the marketing director of Poland’s largest delivery company, ‘Telepizza’. She made us feel welcome in an initially hostile Warsaw. Tonight we are staying with a very learned, very old, French, German, English and Russian-speaking language enthusiast with an orange dog called ‘Orange’ (in Russian).

The trains so far have been brilliant. The most impressive was surprisingly last night’s from Warsaw to Moscow. The decor of our couchette included lacy curtains and Persian-style rugs and seat covers, and we were provided with our own sink and clean sheets. The female carriage attendant was dressed as we had been told to expect of Russian women – in a miniskirt and knee high boots – so we felt rather silly when we left the train in our layers of thermals. Ironically we found ourselves waking up sweating in a train we thought would be the coldest so far. Too hot to sleep, we admired the snow covered tracks outside.

We really feel like we are moving further into the unknown. It’s not just the language barriers – the people seem to be different too. We can’t imagine getting the treatment here that we got from the restaurant touts in Brussels (one of whom proposed to Emily with his “special cocktail” and refused to take no for an answer).

We hope to send you a podcast soon, perhaps including sounds of the Trans-Siberian railway.

PICS

• Top: Festive chocolate sculpture in AMMMMMAZING chocolate cafe. Belgium, of course.
• Middle: Lake Baikal
  
• Bottom: From Russia with love: The door in the bathroom of the nice old man whose house we stayed at in Moscow

Post thumbnail: Neiljs