Hello all. Here in Moscow after 5 days on the train. Great ride, wonderful international community on our car: a French bicyclist/ Nuclear contamination scientist, an Italian lady and her husband(Swiss) and their year old baby girl, the steward was Chinese and an American man from Hood River, Oregon. The sleeper cars are Chinese. The dining car changed at each border crossing. The dining car from Mongolia looked like a temple inside. Will try to attach pictures. Siberia is everything you've ever heard: cold dismal, featureless -a great place to send someone you really do not like. Mongolia is amazing, looks a lot like the American plains with herds of cows and bands of horses dotting the landscape. Lots of gurr's (yurts) everywhere. In many of the towns and villages, people live in houses, but still have their yurts set up in the back yard, smoke coming from the chimney.

At the Chinese/Mongolian border, all the cars had to be hoisted in the air to switch to the narrower gage Russian wheels to fit their narrower tracks. The Russians, fearing a land invasion from China, made their tracks smaller so as to be useless to any invading Chinese troop trains.

At about three in the morning, Mongolian officials boarded the train to check our passports and search our cabins(looking for Chinese stow-aways?) They were about 10 young soldiers in full military dress, led by(I kid you not) a young woman in a skin tight decorated military jacket and matching ultra mini skirt (all black) with black silk stockings and thigh high skin tight black boots. Kept watching for James Bond to appear and sweep her away.

The ride across Russia was beautiful, thousands of miles of talls birch forests, rolling hay and grain fields, incredible little villages.

Will write you each a little tomorrow, very tired now. Will try for photos. Love , Gracie