Irkutsk to Yekaterinburg

I got to the train station with plenty of time but not without some confusion. In Russia all trains run on Moscow time, regardless of where they start and what time it is at the starting point. I had us scheduled to leave Irkutsk at 18.30 but then I thought it was 23.30 as Irkutsk is five hours ahead of Moscow. Luckily I checked the ticket and it said we left at 13.30, so it was 18.30 Irkutsk time. It all worked out but I was stressed by this. I don't understand why they do it this way. People still have to deal with the time difference. Even the station clocks are all set to Moscow time.
When I got onto the train and into the compartment I was a little disappointed to see that there were already two people in it. Once again I had been hoping that Anna and I would have a compartment to ourselves, especially as this was the longest leg of the whole trip at fifty-five hours. It wasn't to be. On this leg we had bought tickets that gave us meals so hopefully we didn't have to worry about that. Of course almost as soon as the train had left the station we started worrying about how we were going to get our food. Did we have to speak to the conductor, what would we do if we didn't get food? We needn't have worried, a guy came round,shoved a menu in our faces and dinner was served shortly. Awesome! And so to bed for our first night on the train.
I don't know what it was but I slept most of the next morning only properly waking up to eat my lunch. I am finding that I now look forward to my train rides. Anna and I are so busy running around when we are not on a train that it is actually nice not to be able to do anything, to have to sit and relax. It's not a bad way to travel. Every now and again the train will stop at some station for about thirty minutes, it's a good opportunity to get off, stretch your legs, buy beer etc. We always have to make sure how long the stop is, I am terrified at being left at some station in the middle of nowhere. The other people in our compartment and our conductor treat us like children and have been making sure that we get back on the train. It's great! And so the day passes. Lots of reading, sleeping,playing cards and taking random people photos.
The guy in our compartment got off in Novosibirsk at about 10pm so for the second night there was only the three of us in the compartment. I am not sure that I slept any better but I was glad that there was one less person to dodge. The next morning our lady friend had also gotten off and it was just Anna and I in the compartment. This proved to be dangerous. Anna decided that she had better eat some of the army rations that she had purchased from a Russian soldier on the train the previous day. The pack comes with enough for three meals including some heating candles to cook them. So Anna set about getting this thing alight and I stood at the entrance to our compartment hoping we wouldn't get caught. We daren't close the compartment door in case it set off the smoke alarm. Well the food was cooking and then we smelt burning, we had only burnt our compartment table.Anna ate her dinner and opened up everything else in the pack. I think most of it got thrown away. We replaced the table cloth and hoped no one would see it before we got off!
We arrived into Yekaterinburg on time, 10.30pm local time, luckily it was still daylight but we didn't want to hang around. We had been told that Yekaterinburg was a dangerous place to go and that we really needed to be careful there. We got a cab straight to the hostel and got checked in. I had a shower and jumped straight into bed. I was over half way through my trip to Russia.