The Trans-Siberian by Daniele Somenzi

Giuseppe and I have the flight from Pisa via Paris to Moscow, where we arrive in the evening. A problem with Giuseppe's visa holds us up for 3 hours at customs; luckily the guide who was waiting for us was still there, otherwise how would we have known where to sleep that night, in a family home.

Mrs Olga, who speaks English, hosts us in her rough apartment on the tenth floor of one of the ten buildings in the area.

The guy who accompanied us takes our passports and goes to register them at a police district, standard practice that everyone does.

The next day we visit Red Square and the Kremlin, reaching it by metro, and towards evening the guy drives us to Yaroslavsky station, where a first-class compartment with 2 beds awaited us.

The train runs daily and carries us in 7 days across the time zones of great Russia.

It's November and the cold and snow are already at home.

A day or so earlier I phoned Giuseppe, who was finishing his watermelon season at Cappella di Casalmaggiore, and said to him: what do you say we go and do the Trans-Siberian this year? And he, without thinking, the only words in reply were: when do you want the deposit money?

We were on that famous train, in that Russia so talked about and full of history that we couldn't believe it ourselves; even booking the trip gave us no trouble — it's enough to go on the Transiberiana.com website and you do everything.

We were so happy we couldn't believe it. Our accommodation is nothing more than a compartment like those on our trains in Italy; the difference is that in every carriage there's a hostess or steward always present with 12-hour shifts each, who came if needed. A shame that neither Vassilli nor Irina spoke English. The TV in our compartment let us watch films on tape and see again our own footage shot with the camcorder. The restaurant car, very beautiful and cosy, was only 2 carriages forward, but sometimes we had the food brought to the compartment, and this only after we had some unwanted company in the restaurant car: plainclothes soldiers, always drunk, who wanted to talk to us. Another chance to get food was at the stations where the train stopped for no more than 20 minutes; we got off and bought from the vendors on the station platforms — warm eggs, warm chicken, salami etc.

— at very low prices, at the restaurant car 5 times more.

The days pass and so do the time zones; every day we woke with the sun arriving an hour earlier, and the kilometres passed too, 9288. The more the days pass, Giuseppe and I fall more and more in love with the train and everything it involves.

We saw that the rails are wider than the European ones, and that the trains run on the right rather than on the left as with us; moreover, roughly every 8 minutes, coming the other way, a very long freight train arrives.

Naturally powered by electricity and not diesel.

Walking between the carriages, we noticed the crowd in those where 4 people stay per compartment — just as well we were 2 — the very clean toilets have showers, and in every carriage there's hot water available for tea.

At the most important stations we got off for 10 minutes and walked as far as outside the station but no further; missing the train with all our stuff on board wouldn't have been pleasant in that cold.

To get around the confusion of the time zones of all the stations, they devised an original system: along the whole line they put Moscow time, to avoid misunderstandings.

Fortunately, after a few days we find a Russian who knows English and tells us the whole system of life and habits; he also explains that the Siberian tiger is found around Khabarovsk and to the north, right where they fish the sturgeon for its caviar in the Amur river.

Arriving in Vladivostok, we felt like doing another 2 days on the train. It gave us a lump in the throat to get off. Too beautiful. The travel companion is essential — that he's not a pain.

Korean Air flight and out of Russia to Seoul. bye bye