Beijing to Budapest

In two weeks – 11 days of which were on trains of varying speed and quality – we crossed the landmass of Asia and finally regained our own little continent of Europe. This feels like a real achievement, the distances are simply vast: 5,500 kilometres on the last train leg alone. As opposed to flying over, you get an amazing sense of changing landscapes and peoples, from booming Beijing to desert to steppe, through beautiful Siberia and finally to European Russia. Thanks to our Russian neighbours on the train we saw the small monument that marks the continental divide from Asia to Europe, and celebrated as it zoomed past our train window. 

We were now old hats at train life, we knew (as they say) where our samovar was and when to go to the toilet. The clocks in the carriages and on platforms all show Moscow time – five hours behind Irkutsk – and we crossed all five time zones in our 77 hour trip. The days were incredibly long with all the extra hours thrown in, but having the clock and 3 nights in which to do it, working one’s body clock down to Moscow time was pretty painless. We also learnt how to charm the provodnitsas, thanks to a British couple from Moscow (he SO was a spy) telling us to give a box of choccies the moment you get on. It works! We had lovely, friendly (gasp!!!) provodnitsas who actually smiled and didn’t shout at the kids. True, they still got tutty when it was time (about every ½ hour) for them to clean the carpets, walls, windows and toilets if you were in the way, but having them on side is a mighty bonus for such long journeys. You just relax into train life. We finally spent time doing more fundamental schoolwork with the kids: less world geography, anthropology, economics and history, and more times tables and spelling! The journey provides lots of context for maths quizzes, such as 

1. There are 30 stops at stations between Irkutsk and Moscow. Which one marks the halfway point of station stops? 

2. 12 carriages left Ulan Bataar. Each has six wheels. All needed the bogies changed at the border. How many wheels were changed altogether? 
And so on. 

We interspersed teaching with the occasional film (that portable DVD player was a great investment!) trips down the train to visit the dining car, where we watched portion sizes decrease the further we went, and to see our friends in other carriages. 77 hours on a train is never going to fly, but even Joe has decided it is a great way to travel. There remains something romantic about chugging along through the night on your bunk, watching the sunsets and simply seeing vast swathes of continents pass by your window.