We heart Kazan

After lazing in Irkutsk and on Olkhon Island for quite a few days, and with our flight out of St Petersburg pre-booked, we realised that we had better get motoring across Siberia if we wanted to spend any time in the big cities of St P and Moscow. We had to do couple of massive train journeys in order to cover some major distances - hours and hours traversing a wintery Siberian landscape covered in birch forest (the Taiga). The terrain is so endless and so much the same - at times it was hypnotic and beautiful - at other times you could understand why they say people can go mad in the Taiga - with no landmarks and no end in sight, it can play tricks on the brain.

We were ok though. We entertained ourselves by practising our (still awful) Russian and eating awesome fried pie donut things. We found out some of these tasty calorific treats were filled with a delicious fried cabbage concoction and learnt how to say that pretty quickly. It helped that it was a fun thing to say - kapoosta peroshki please. Basically we've been living on those and beer. Yum.

We stopped at the former capital of the Tatars - Kazan. It was claimed for Russia by Ivan the Terrible who razed the town and built a massive kremlin there. Now there is an amazing mosque in the middle of the kremlin. It's all very beautiful and the most European city so far. We're not entirely sure why we like this place so much but we really did. Maybe it had something to do with the public speakers lining a street with pop/dance music? Maybe it was the many cat and winged lion sculptures? Maybe it was the thrilling excitement of being shadowed all the way from the railway station to our hotel by a small man with a sinister scar on his face?

We really really indulged in the fun of a Russian supermarket in Kazan too. We got everything we thought appropriate for our subsequent 1st class train journey to Moskow. We got:

• Goat Beer
• Foxberry Taiga Vodka
• Moloko Printed Biscuits
• Date Fudge
• Smoked Fibrous Cheese Sausages (so great!!)
• And Unknown Tatar Pastries

1st class was cool too. No more putting up with other people in our compartment. It was the newest Trans Siberian train we travelled on. It was as if we had graduated to 7th form. Things were easier and more fun.