With a long dreary three day weekend on the weather charts for Minsk and the only hope for some sunshine being a little cloud seeding by the government for the May 9^th celebrations I thought I might pop over to Warsaw in Poland for a looksee.  The 8.40pm train looked great getting me in at about 6am.  As usual I cut things a bit fine before travelling and attempting to purchase my ticket 15mins before the train didn’t pan out so well.  Negotiating my way to the front of the line with 5mins to spare the cashier said “you have to buy that ticket from the international cashier” pointing towards other windows with zillions of people waiting.  Weighing up pushing my luck any further I decided I’ll settle for a dreary weekend and headed home.

While pottering around feeding on the last of the pelimeni and sour cream, surfing the internet and chatting on Skype with home (who btw thought it was hilarious that I missed my train) I noticed that there was one more train to Warsaw.  This time it was just after midnight arriving at 8ish in the morning.   With the trip back on again, bag still packed and family taking even more piss out of me I flew out the door with yet again time pressure to not miss my second train for the day.

My experience from earlier in the evening I managed to go directly to the correct cashier in the adjacent building to the main terminal (important information for catching a train from Minsk to Warsaw) where this time there was no line at all.  Just one single cashier dimly lit in her booth alone in the huge building.  Great I thought as I approached her again with only about 15mins to spare.  Of course nothing is that simple in Russia or even Belorussia.  It was her break!!!  The dreaded ‘technichki perireef’ sign clearly noted on her window that from 1155pm to 0010 she was on technical break and not going to serve me.  She did manage to tell me that there would still be plenty of time after her break and before the train to purchase the tickets and indeed there was, I finally made it.

Train wasn’t the newest but it was nice enough. Strange design almost European in design with three seats facing a wall with a small sink in the corner.  The bottom row of seats turns into a bed as to be expected and the top bunk was permanently out.  I didn’t mind the configuration as I didn’t have any surprise travel buddies to accommodate for my third train ride in a row.  The one unusual, obviously soviet inclusion that I did get a kick out of was the apparent vanity cabinet above the sink. Upon opening it I found as to be expected in such a cabinet a mirror and a shaving outlet which came in handy for charging the notebook.  The kicker was the neatly arranged and snugly clipped in vodka decanter and three shot glasses obviously carefully thought through to match the number of seats in the compartment.

The ride was pretty uneventful just the border crossing was a bit of a pain.  It takes a good two hours with customs and immigration on both sides pretty intense as you could fairly expect crossing from the Russia to Europe.  The worst is the 45mins of jolting and banging as they do some pretty serious work to get the wheels the right gauge for the tracks on the other side.  I managed to get about three hours sleep after doing some urgent work as is usually the case as I head anywhere for days off or vacations.

More photos from a ‘Weekend in Warsaw’ can be found here.

Arriving at 8am Warsaw time I headed out of the terminal to the nearest 5* hotel.  Not to stay of course, just to

I’m off to Tallinn today in Estonia.  Actually I wrote this after I got home to Moscow but anway…

The overnight train from Moscow to Tallinn leaves Moscow in the early evening and arrives in Tallinn the next morning at around 8am.  Paying for ‘Coupe’ compartment is what you want to do especially if you are travelling in pairs.  It is two to a cabin and pretty comphy compared to the ‘plax card’ which is six people to a sort of a nook in a carrige with seven other nooks in it.  In summer these nooks can be a bit overwhelming!  I managed to share my cabin with a nice guy going for a day trip for business, I was going just to get a stamp in my passport as a requirement for not breaking my visa restrictions.

Arriving at 8am in Tallinn is fantastic if you manage to snag a balmy warm July day as I did.  I wouldn’t much like it in winter I don’t suppose.  I spent the first couple of hours with my cabin mate from the train showing me around the old city and pointing out where to have lunch and the main attractions.  This was a valuable insight but the old city not being huge and having 10 hours before the return train I think I would have found everthing just fine. It was a very nice welcome anyway.

The day was spent mostly strolling around wherever the paths took me in the old city.  I ventured out to one side for a little way but the city became remarkably like any other Eastern Block city, not very exciting if you happen to live in Moscow.  The old city is the best place if you like the architecture of the era(s) when the city was built.  I took plenty of photos some of which you can find here.  I didn’t put them all there as I got a bit carried away, there is enough there to give you a taste and perhaps even the urge to go.

Lunch was great.  Chicken breast, salad, some yummy fries and a litre and a half of the finest local beer.  This took me a good few hours to digest and I could hardly stand up to get moving on to find parts of the city that I missed before lunch.

The afternoon was spent much the same as the morning just wandering around taking photos.  This of course got a bit tedious so I lashed out and shopped for a few souvenirs.  Vana a famous liqeuer from Tallinn was high on the list. Half a dozen bottle of this in varying strenghts oughta do it for the guys back in the office, ohh and don’t forget the red wine for the train trip home.  Now I was in need of coffee, plenty of choice here.  The main square is the place to do coffee though marveling at the cobbled square wondering about the poor souls who were chained to the walls for punishment so many years ago – or so the stories go anyway.

Whoops time to go.  Its 5pm and I need to find cold beer and something to eat for dinner on the train.  It is a BYO everthing affair and for 16 hours beer, wine, chips, bread, salami and something for breakfast is needed.  Finding the beer and chips was no problem of course but it was musli bars pre packed in Moscow for breakfast.  I made it back to the train in plenty of time to chat with my new cabin mate, a government employee going to Moscow to work in the Embassy.

Funny thing happened on the train.  As I said I especially went on the trip to get the stamp and on crossing back into Russia (at some crazy time of the morning after 3 beers and 3/4 of a bottle of wine) the border guard found that my passport hadn’t been stamped on the way out.  OMG now I thought I was going to get kicked off the train!  It turned out afte I described the border guard that checked us on the way out that she was a dizzy blonde and that she regularly forgets to stamp documents.  So as it goes they gave me an entry and exit stamp and let me back to sleep.

A lazy rocking trip for the remaining 5 hours drenched in the morning sun (which rose at just after 3am) back to Moscow was soothing.  I arrived in the big smoke feeling fresh and ready for work which is where I ended up directly from the train.

If you get the chance go on this trip!