We made it! The trip from Irkutsk to Moscow in platzkart was very interesting. Our car was full of schoolchildren going to Moscow for a dance competition. Most of the kids were around 10 and even the teachers didn't speak English almost at all. We didn't see any other westerns in the train during the whole trip, so communication with other passangers was challenging. But I had my phrasebook (thanks for the present!) and with some creative usage of english, lousy russian, german and chinese we managed just fine =) Kids were really interested about everything and wanted to play cards and everything. They were great, but too much can sometimes be really too much. The teachers of the students were very nice and after the kids went to sleep we always had couple of pivas and vodkas, but not too much, since the kids woke up at 7 o'clock... Have to say that during the 3,5 days we both were quite broke couple of times, but the restaurant car offered a relief from the kids for a moment. All and all it was a great experience.

Moscow what we have seen so far, is really nice city. Very clean, nice buildings (at least in the center...) and surprisingly western. Well actually we haven't seen so much yet, since we really didn't get enough of the kids yet. We thought it's a nice thing to go see one of their performances. And of course there were couple of dozens of other shows, so it took most of the day to go there =) But no regrets for going there, since it was nice, interesting and definetly different from usual tourist stuff. And afterwards McDonalds in Moscow with 20+ Irkutsk kids (most of them probably never been to one) was also not the usual bigmac in 5 minutes... Couple of the teachers (guess had enough of the kids also...) promised to go out with us tonight for couple of pivas and perhaps even a vodka or two... Will see what comes up...