56 hours on a train

Russia is a stupidly big country. It's 17,075,400 square kilometres. That's 11.5 % of the earth's total surface. Australia is 7,692,024 square kilometres...and Australia's big. Obviously you can fly from one side to another, but what's the fun in that. The final leg of our Trans-Siberian journey was the longest, from Tomsk to Moscow. It was 2, 878 kms long, and took 56 hours. On a train.
So far in the journey we had only taken second class, because that's all that was available. Third class, platskart, is the way to go though. It is an open carriage, with four bunks on one side, and two on another. It cost about $120 each for two nights on the train. It was a brand new carriage, spick and span with lovely sheets...
For the first night, our train seemed to be full of old babushkas hiding under their blankets snoring. There was a young guy opposite us, and an older lady who kept fidgeting. It got annoying after eight or so hours. There was an awful lot of looking out the window, a fair amount of reading, and some serious rummy playing for good measure. I won my first (and only) game of cards at about 29 hours.
On our second night, a whole bunch of Russian guys got on. They were brothers, brothers in law...all sorts of complicated relationships even more complicated because they couldn't speak English and we had only our Russian phrasebook. As the only foreigners in the carriage, we got their attention, and especially when we brought out our bottle of vodka. We were given some smoked pig's lard to snack on - surprisingly delicious after a shot of vodka. With our phrasebook, we concluded that we were all friends, Siberia is extreme, Alexi's mother is German and his wife is Victor's sister, and Australian vodka is no good. Victor's younger brother Sasha was either drunk or had a hearing impediment as he would yell in our faces, very loud Russian, and we would just have to nod away. The men would pack into the space between carriages to smoke while I would...wait...Phill succeeded in out drinking the Russians before having a decent train spew and passing out (on the lower bunk). The brothers got off in the morning, and we had the day to while away our hangovers.
We arrived in Moscow about 4.30pm and negotiated the metro system during peak hour. 9.5 million people ride the metro each day, but we were those annoying two people with the backpacks, cramming into the crowded carriages and leaning over everyone to see the tube map. After the luxury of a sleeping berth in a brand new carriage with everyone just relaxing to the motions of the choo-chooing, the metro was a chaotic welcome to Europe.