Your Hatters Hostel

Day 6 and 7

Day 6 is a bit of a blur buuuuuttt day 7 has a bit more clarity (and the train sound does not bounce around my head as much today) Hint of the day:- Bring plenty of drinking water. There is actually unlimited hot water on the train so if you have chilled out enough you wont mind waiting for it to cool down too.

There is a few things to do on the train, Talk with people and look at the great scenery whilst we pass by, drink Russian vodka and learn about old Russian customs. One such custom is child wrestling….hmmm… Mostly done by old women but we did not let that stop us. We won!

Around 1am we got off the train, stretched our legs for 2 mins and hopped into a van for 6 hours to arrive at the beautiful island of Olchon. I couldn’t resist practicing my catalogue poses just to help you appreciate the view…

We stayed in a great hostel called “Sunny Hostel” (but not as great as our own Hatters hostel of course!!!)

Day Two:
Arrived in Lviv @ 6am after nearly falling into a crater-sized hole in the middle of the street. Luckily there are 18 of us so we can afford to lose a couple… like in old Star Trek where they go on an expedition with enough crew that are expendable….. but we survived so onwards and upwards to infinity and beyond…The Iron Curtain.

We had not time to explore it properly but expect that crater to appear in the next tourist maps for Lviv. From there we had to rush to catch the train to Moscow which took 24 happy hours ..and a few more drinks.

The customs was a bit of a pain in the many bottoms as first you had the Ukrainian control followed 2 hours later with the Russian control so it must be one hell of a no-mans -land between the two… and about 1and a half hour stalled at each border with a lot of paperwork but hey it’s all part of it.

We finally arrived in Moscow at around 8am after passing through the extensive and impressive megatropolis that is Kiev.

We checked into a lovely hostel, 10 mins walk from Red square called Godzilla Hostel…. RRRRAgggghhhHHH.