Tickets

“They’re here!”, shrieked Karen excitedly as she eagerly tore open the silver package that she had just signed for. Even before the postman had reached the end of our garden path we were thumbing through the contents – a complete set of train tickets that would enable us to travel from Moscow to Beijing on the Trans-Mongolian Express.

As we had come to expect from Real Russia, everything was in order – everything was as discussed. They had even enclosed a summary of our itinerary in English, which as all of the tickets were printed in either Cyrillic or Mandarin characters, was particularly useful to us! It read:

Moscow - Yekaterinburg, train no 44.
Leaving on 29.01 at 0035, arriving on 30.01 at 1135. Running time is 33 hours. 2nd class without services - £86.00 per ticket.

Yekaterinburg - Irkutsk, train no 64.
Leaving on 31.01 at 1434, arriving on 02.02 at 2237. Running time is 53 hours. 2nd class - £116.00 per ticket.

Irkutsk – Ulan Bator, train no 4.
Leaving on 07.02 at 0513, arriving on 08.02 at 0730. Running time is 13 hours. 1st class - £175.00 per ticket.

Ulan Bator –Beijing, train no 4.
Leaving on 15.02 at 0805, arriving on 16.02 at 1404. Running time 26 hours. 1st class - £210.00 per ticket.

Sorted. Now, with that taken care of we could turn our attention back to the event of the day. After all it was New Year’s Eve and we had a party at Steve and Clair’s to prepare for. Many of our friends from the village would be there and between us we were all contributing to the evening’s festivities. Amongst other things, Karen and I were preparing “Russian Salad” which seemed quite appropriate given our plans for 2009.

Now, where did I put that party wig and false beard?