Trans Siberian Railroad, Trans Siberian Express, Trans Siberian Trains & Trans Siberian Railway in Russia

Russia

Trans-Siberian Russia:

• Moscow
• St Petersburg
• The Golden Ring of Russia
• Yekaterinburg
• Novosibirsk
• Irkutsk
• Lake Baikal
• Khabarovsk
• Vladivostok

Russia is not your conventional holiday destination, but to travel by train across this vast and mysterious country really is the experience of a lifetime. The Trans-Siberian is an immense route: along more than 9000 kilometers of its length you will see different landscapes, meet many different people and cultures (especially, if you hop off the train at few points), experience magnificient Siberian Baikal lake, and just enjoy the trip in the train.

Russia is the world’s biggest country with an area exceeding 17 million sq. km (6.5 million sq. miles). It occupies the east of Europe and the north of Asia, neighboring 16 countries and having world’s longest land border about 60,000 km (over 37,000 miles). A quarter of world’s forests are concentrated in Russia, which is more than in any other country; their wide tracts stretch continuously from the western borders till the Pacific Ocean. Russia’s coasts are bathed by the waters of 12 seas; the country has dozens of thousands of rivers and about 2 million lakes, among which are the Caspian Sea, the biggest lake in the world, and Baikal, world’s deepest fresh-water lake.

Russia’s culture counts over a thousand years. Ancient churches and monasteries have been preserved in many cities and towns, and the new ones are being erected as well. The Russian nation granted to the world a series of genius writers, such as Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Lev Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Maxim Gorky and many others. Five Russian writers are Nobel prize-winners: they are Ivan Bunin, Mikhail Sholokhov, Boris Pasternak, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Joseph Brodsky. The music of Russian composers, such as Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Sergey Rakhmaninov, Igor Stravinsky, Sergey Prokofiev, Dmitry Shostakovich and Alfred Schnittke, is performed worldwide. Russian avantguardists Kazimir Malevich and Vassily Kandinsky became famous for their innovative painting. Russian scientists’ known achievements and discoveries in the fields of chemistry, nuclear physics, aviation and military art have glorified national science and history. In 1961, the first man in space was Yuri Gagarin, a Russian.

Russia is famous for its vernacular arts, such as nested dolls (matryoshkas), ceramics from Gzhel, shawls with printed ornaments from Pavlovsky Posad, paintings on metal from Zhostovo and varnished miniatures from Fedoskino (all in Moscow region), as well as articles of Ural stonecutters, iron-made articles from Kasli (Chelyabinsk region), miniatures from Palekh (Ivanovo region), paintings on wooden articles from Khokhloma and Gorodets (Nizhny Novgorod region), laces from Vologda and plumy shawls from Orenburg. All these pieces of folk art may be bought in major trade centers and art salons, as well as at fairs and folk workshops, which are often sites of excursions.