Golden Eagle    We now get back to the Round the World by Rail trip, which centered on the private cruise train, the Golden Eagle, that runs on the Trans-Sib route—more or less, since variations are always possible. Anyway, I did choose the westbound direction from Vladivostok to Moscow. (Golden Eagle is the newer name; when I took it, it was the train run by "GW Travel".) In 2005/8 I wrote:

The following pictures illustrate the above quote:

https://www.planetrail.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Golden-Eagle-Trans-Siberian-Express.jpg

https://www.irtsociety.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/4.jpg

What at the time was First Class and Deluxe Class is now apparently called Silver Class and Gold Class:

https://thebesttravelplaces.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Where-to-sleep-at-The-Trans-Siberian-Railway.jpg

https://realrussia.co.uk/portals/0/images/Floorplan-golden-eagle.jpg

https://www.railbookers.com/content/uploads/2018/03/Map-Golden-Eagle-M-to-V.jpeg

This, more or less, is the route of the Golden Eagle trip. The numbers are accurate. It was a 14-day trip, with a hotel stay at either end—perfectly valid—and 12 nights on the train. Our trip did NOT include a side trip half-way into Mongolia on the Trans-Mongolian route as shown here, which I do not mind missing at all. But what it did include was much more fulfilling for me, since I was looking for an all-Russia trip. Once we were in European Russia, we swung northeast first for a day in Saint Petersburg before continuing back down to Moscow. Even tho I was going to revisit Saint Petersburg later on my own, I was happy to do the touring we did from the train, and very pleased that we were tracing the historic route of the train to the former capital. Also, this meant that we did go transcontinentally from the Pacific to the Baltic (Atlantic).

This was an excellent trip and was the keystone of the Round the World trip. There was good-quality, ethnic food, which I was quite pleased with. There were excursions that were really outstanding and afforded strong memories that remain with me to this very day, but others that I found boring to the point where I skipped a couple after reading their descriptions. I comment on these, constructively, in 2005/8 Ctrl-F: Criticism. In addition, please keep handy this political map of Russia we used on the last posting:

http://www.ezilon.com/maps/images/europe/political-map-of-Russia.gif

Turning Lemons into Lemonade    I really must talk again about a "bump in the road" that threatened to be a problem, but that worked out quite well. I'll condense what I wrote on 2005/8: I booked the compartment on the [Golden Eagle] just over a year before it left, [even] before this year’s date was published on the website. I did that, knowing that it sells out quickly. . . And I always plan well in advance, especially if a trip like this is not being taken in isolation, but instead the centerpiece of a much larger trip requiring many more reservations. I then got a phone call from the travel agent I used who dealt with Russia; a self-contained Stanford University alumni study group had booked a large part of the train—did I want to change? Of course I couldn't. They said the group would fill 92% of the train, but with attrition and expanding the size of the train, it eventually became something between ¾ and 2/3 of the passengers.

After clearing customs in Vladivostok, Tatyana, the company rep from the train, who was sending people to the tour buses into town, checked my name and then told her associate that I was "nye Stanfórdski". Although that designation made me laugh out loud, I was beginning to resent the whole situation. When I later got to my compartment on the train, there was a card on the table welcoming me to travel with Stanford. My blood began to boil. What [they were] thinking when they set up two different factions on the same train at the same time was beyond me. . .

Some very nice people I was speaking to . . . were also convinced Stanford had organized this train trip, knew nothing of [the Golden Eagle otherwise, nor] that this train runs on this and other routes regularly and frequently. The feeling seemed to be that the 30 or so of the others of us were just joining in, sort of as hangers-on. They didn't realize that they were the ones who were confused, and were an oversized majority on a regular cruise train.

The "regular passengers" consisted of four Americans, an Australian couple, and some 27-28 New Zealanders ("Kiwis") traveling together in a group, but otherwise independent in outlook. . . . On the first full day on the train we got the schedule for the day, including mealtimes and events. Events were listed under these headings: Stanford Passengers and Non-Stanford Passengers. I hit the roof. . . . I had a discussion with Tatyana, and . . . immediately suggested changing that negative phrasing into "Independents & Kiwis", and that’s how the schedule was listed every day for the rest of the trip. . . . I suppose in retrospect I had become the spokesperson for and advocate of the independent travelers on board.

In the hotel [lobby] in Vladivostok, . . . people were looking around at all the signs and trying to figure out the Cyrillic lettering and the words. I started talking about some letters, and people really seemed interested and enjoying it, so the idea I told Tatyana about was a natural. I asked her to list three [impromptu] lectures called "Easy Introduction to Cyrillic by Dr Vincent DiNapoli". She was glad to have them, and the group received them very well.

Some Stanford members even asked to join the lecture after seeing the daily bulletin, and that was of course just fine. Tatyana got us one of the free lounge cars, usually while some deep, erudite lecture was going on in another lounge car for the Stanfórdski group. I had to make do with taping some sheets of paper onto the wall to be able to write on. The results we got were quite pleasing. After we worked with the alphabet, I remember touring on the Independents-&-Kiwis bus. When it stopped at a corner, the lady next to me was delighted to look at the sign that had stopped us and commented that the sign actually said СТОП in English! I remember the bus passing a dining establishment and someone happily noting the sign that said that it was a Ресторан. In the end, the group of New Zealanders unofficially made me an "Honorary Kiwi", a point I enjoyed keeping in mind when I finally got to travel in New Zealand four years later, in 2009.

After the trip, I felt I had to contact whoever was in charge, and I ended up writing Tim Littler. I asked him that, tho things ended up excellently, "What did you have in mind?" putting such a large group into a long-planned trip. He did explain that he usually rides his trains, but on my trip, a personal matter kept him home. We've corresponded periodically since. It was Tim who first informed me that there was a train that went to Tibet, a trip I took in 2014. We worked it out to get together in August 2007 in Minneapolis for a most pleasant dinner when we both knew we'd be there. He wrote in recently (2019/9) on the subject of transcontinental rail routes in Africa and South America—and did so while riding his Golden Eagle, eastbound--his first email was from Yekaterinburg and his second from Novosibirsk.

Thus a potential bump in the road turned out to be some very nice travel experiences.

Golden Eagle Excursions    I'll comment on several of the very memorable experiences on the trip. After Владивосто́к / Vladivostok, we went a couple of days without any overly interesting stops, but that changed as we approached the area of Lake Baikal (see map), which more than made up for it. Siberia is infamously known as a land of exiles, and we had two fascinating visits that reflected that exile heritage, one on either side of Lake Baikal.

Old Believers of Tarbagatay    The first was near Ulán-Udé (u.LAN u.DEH)—see map—involving the Old Believers living in Tarbagatay, a village from the 17C. In 2005/8, I said:

Estimates as of 2006 place the total number of Old Believers worldwide as being between 1 and 2 million, some living in extremely isolated communities in places to which they fled centuries ago to avoid persecution. They are in Alaska, and elsewhere in the US and Canada, as well as in South America, Australia and New Zealand. Others remain isolated in Russia's far north.

Here are two Староверы in Тарбагатай / Tarbagatay (Photo by Аркадий Зарубин) (=Arkadiy Zarubin). Notable are both the colorful clothing, and the colorful house façade, both of which are quite typical. This is a particularly ornate gate to a house dated 1906, an attempt to show more wealth (Photo by Кузнецов) (=Kuznetsov).

Further research has now told me that the community of people in Tarbagatay are Семе́йские / Seméyskiye, Orthodox Old Believers who've been here since the reign of Catherine the Great, who exiled them to Siberia on the pretext that they could become farmers for the Cossack guards who defended the borders of the Russian empire, and their descendants have been here ever since. They have a long oral tradition, particularly in vocal music, sung a cappella. Their songs, both religious and secular, are notable for their polyphonic dissonance. Polyphony consists of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody; while consonance is typically associated with sweetness, pleasantness, and acceptability, dissonance is associated with harshness, unpleasantness, or unacceptability.) This gives their music a unique sound. The Seméyskiye were placed on the UNESCO List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2001.

Watch and listen to two YouTube videos from Tarbagatay. The first (1:00), shows a Seméyskiye song. See what you think of the polyphonic dissonance. The second (0:23), shows a Seméyskiye "wedding".

Locomotive Ride!    The next day, as we were near Lake Baikal, we were all thrilled to here there was to be a locomotive ride! And outside the locomotive to boot!: In the morning a special treat was announced. We had switched to a diesel engine for this stretch, and we would be allowed to ride on the locomotive. Every fifteen minutes or so the train would stop, the next bunch of passengers would walk from the first passenger car to the engine, and climb up the stairs to the outside. There were railings along the sides and front, and for a quarter-hour, as the train chugged along slowly, we had the view of a lifetime of the [spectacular] lake and mountains.

http://www.palytra.com/upload/wysiwyg/images/afanasy_nikitin3.jpg

In case you can't imagine such a thing, I've found this picture of a Russian engine of similar design. (This is NOT our train.) When stopped, a first group would emerge from the first car, walk along the tracks, and climb a ladder onto the outside of the engine. We could move about on either side, and in the front. It was beautiful weather and the views of Lake Baikal couldn't have been better. It was hard to yield to the next group!

In the midst of all that enjoyment, it never occurred to me to wonder how the train could stop along the busy Trans-Sib route and even have passengers walk along the tracks. There was something about it being an abandoned section of track, but there must have been more to it than that. I know now, and wish I'd been more fully informed at the time—it would have added to the fun. More to follow.

Baikal Barbecue    That same evening on that section of track we had a Baikal lakeside barbecue, since . . . the train was able to just stop on this single track, and as it turned out, there was a beach there and steps in the hillside down to it. [So] we just got out of the train and walked down the steps to where the kitchen crew had set up the barbecue of pork and chicken shashlik, and whole fish, plus a table of side dishes and beverages. It was really idyllic having a stand-up dinner on the side of the lake in the evening with the snow-covered mountains in the background. It's really quite a unique memory. As I said, many high points of the trip happened on one side of Lake Baikal or the other.

Lake Baikal    The Baikal (bai.KAL) story is a very interesting one which I knew, but I was concerned that I didn't know enough about the railroad history of this area. Why was there an abandoned track? This central, key area of Siberia needed more research.

Orient yourself again on the political map to see how the Lake Baikal area lies between Ulan-Ude and Irkutsk. Now compare that to this local map in German of Lake Baikal (Map by Sansculotte). We see the banana-shape of the lake. In the north, we know that the BAM stops in Syeverobaikalsk, and we see in the south (click) a matching town called Baikalsk, or Baikalville. We see Ulan-Ude; Tarbagatay is not named, but lies to its southwest at the fork in the road. We see the Trans-Sib along the south shore of the lake, then running up to Irkutsk on the Angara River. Only NOW do we see at the bottom point of the lake the old spur line taking off along the north shore of the lake up to the Angara, to a small town (not shown) locally called Port-Baikal. We also learn for the first time that the spur line is the center of a National Park (!), which continues halfway up the lake. What's all this about?

Lake Baikal is all about superlatives. The lake is about the size of Switzerland. It's the largest freshwater lake by volume in the world, containing 22–23% of the world's fresh surface water. It contains more water than all the Great Lakes in North America combined. It's the deepest lake in the world, with a maximum depth of 1,642 m (5,387 ft). It's considered the world's oldest lake at 25–30 million years. I understand that its great depth is because Eurasia is splitting apart at this point and may someday become two continents. (Ha! Here, and not at the Urals!) It is considered among the world's clearest and purest lakes. I wrote: The water is very pure. We had been being supplied with bottled drinking water, and when we reached this area, I was surprised that the bottled water from then on on the trip was Baikal water, harvested from 400 meters down.

https://external-preview.redd.it/cS2C7J3omFaJ-28Usf_s29aTVKv_r46C8l7X2m0DC9E.jpg?width=1024&auto=webp&s=cacd6008b801bc47b021ebbd807533b8304b88c2

Now check this image (click). Baikal is both higher and deeper than the Great Lakes, even huge Lake Superior. (As we know Huron and Michigan are really two lobes of one large lake.) Once we impress ourselves with the superlatives, we have to dig in to find out about that Trans-Sib rail history at the lake.

The "Golden Buckle"    The Trans-Sib was not built end-to-end. It was built in seven sections that were eventually joined together—we just saw the then Tsarevich initiating construction of the Vladivostok section. By 1900, it was almost finished, since only about 320 km (200 mi) were left to finish it off. Since Lake Baikal was an impediment that presented the most difficult engineering problems, it was left to the end. If the Baikal problems could be solved, the Trans-Sib could be completed, and for that reason, from a Trans-Sib engineering point of view, the Lake Baikal area of construction was referred to as the "golden buckle on the steel belt of Russia." The Baikal solutions came about in three stages, each replacing the previous one, over the last century or so: (1) a train ferry across the lake; (2) a railway around the southern end of the lake; (3) a rail shortcut from the lake over the mountains. Tho we had a map of the lake with emphasis on geography, let's now use this map showing more about the Trans-Sib passing by.

https://c8.alamy.com/comp/G2TA0G/vector-map-of-the-russian-lake-baikal-G2TA0G.jpg

We see (click) how today, the Trans-Sib comes from Ulan-Ude to the lake, goes down the eastern shore of the southern end up to the villages of Slyudyanka and Kultuk at its southern tip, then across the mountains near the Irkut River to Irkutsk ("Irkutville"). Here the Irkut joins the Angara River (not named here), which drains OUT of Lake Baikal and continues northwest past Angarsk ("Angar[a]ville"). Also note the Irkutsk Reservoir, formed by damming the upstream Angara. But the transportation history is hidden in a modern map, so at this point, also note on the east shore the town of Babushkin, originally called Mysovaya, and on the west shore the town of Baikal, known locally as Port-Baikal. We now move back twelve decades.

The lake was the major impediment to completing the railway. Coming from the east, the Trans-Sib ended at the lake port of Mysovaya (Babushkin).
(1) THE BAIKAL RAILWAY FERRY: In the west, the mountains were considered too formidable to build the railroad over them, so from 1896 to 1900, the Trans-Sib was extended from Irkutsk along the (pre-reservoir) south bank of the Angara River to Port-Baikal. This left the railroad with a watery gap between the two railheads on either side of the lake. Since a track around the southern part of the lake was considered too expensive and too difficult to build, it was decided to have a train ferry cross the lake between the two railheads. A train ferry and a smaller passenger and goods ferry were ordered from England, and these two ferries were delivered in pieces for reassembling on Lake Baikal.

In October 1901, the Baikal Railway Ferry was officially put into operation, taking four hours to connect the railheads at Port-Baikal and Mysovaya (Babushkin). Trains were carried on the special ice breaker-ferry SS Baikal, which had three parallel tracks on its train deck. The smaller ice-breaker passenger ferry was the SS Angara, and the ferries carried two loads a day each.

https://cdni.rbth.com/rbthmedia/images/2018.10/original/5bc991c985600a4ed110b2c6.jpg

https://retours.eu/nl/22-panorama-transsiberien-expo-1900/image/Piasetsky-panorama-transsiberian-Baikal.jpg

Above are two more images of the SS Baikal. The first seems to be one of those informative historic postcards, and the second looks more like a watercolor, but it features the trains and the name of the ship, in Cyrillic, but understandable. But alas, all of this came to naught, and the ferry was short-lived. After the first year or so of use, it was seen that it would never be the solution to the problem. Not only did the lake have extreme storms and fog, but it was primarily the lake ice in winter! This being Siberia, even the huge ferry couldn't manage to break thru the three meters/yards of winter ice. So the next step was to move from Plan A to Plan B.

(2) THE KRUGOBAIKÁLKA: The next solution was to build a railway around the southern part of the lake. Again, the name looks more formidable than it really is. The word круг is "circle" and it adds a connecting O to become a prefix to the name Кругобайка́льская ЖД / Krugobaikál'skaya ZhD, translated as the Circum-Baikal RW. But the name is just Krugo-baikál'-skaya, including a feminine adjective ending to agree with the noun for RW.

The name might of course be misleading, implying circling completely around the lake, while it circles only at best maybe the southern quarter of the lake. I have a 1906 map that shows the original plan. Of course, it's in Russian, but no matter--what it shows is clear. This is the original 1906 plan of the Krugobaikálka. Most obvious is its dark red route around the lower lake between the two railheads. At each railhead you can see the black line (click) of the Trans-Sib feeding the railheads, especially along the Angara from Irkutsk. But don't fail to notice the light red lines across the mountains from Irkutsk right to the bottom of the lake. These possible options of a mountain route were rejected back in the day as being too difficult and too expensive, but that's where the current connection has been since the mid 20C.

The two sides of the U-shaped route around the lake are quite different. The routing of the railroad's eastern section, from Mysovaya (Babushkin) to Kultuk and Slyudanka at the southern tip (see previous maps), passes along the flat east coast of the lake, and did not cause difficulties. The greatest complexities were encountered on the western section, meant to connect Kultuk to Port-Baikal. That route had to be blasted with great difficulty and expense, without using complex machinery, and practically by hand. Over five years, the following were built just along the west coast side of the route: 260 km (162 mi) of railway, 41 tunnels (total length 9.5 km [5.9 mi]), 15 stone galleries and 3 concrete galleries (roofs over tracks abutting a hillside), 270 retaining walls, 470 bridges, and 6 viaducts, all squeezed in along the water's edge. The "buckle" was called "golden", not only because of the high cost, but because of the spectacular engineering required.

The first train ran on the route in late 1904, and in 1905, the railway was brought into full operation as the seventh section of the Trans-Sib, linking its eastern and western rails. In other words, the railheads were finally connected by actual rail, not by a ferry.

(3) THE MOUNTAIN SHORTCUT: But the Krugobaikálka lasted as such only for just over four decades, at which point that shortcut between the bottom of the lake and Irkutsk was built, resulting in what turned out to be Plan C. From 1947 to 1949, an electric transfer railway across the mountains between Slyudyanka and Irkutsk was built, noticeably shortening the distance compared to the zig-zag Krugobaikalka, at which point the main route of the Trans-Sib was transferred to the new section. Thus the situation today looks like this on our "gold map" (Map by Jkan997).
The dashed red line between Irkutsk and Port-Baikal shows the former Angara tracks, which were considered of little importance and were dismantled in 1956. They'd always easily flooded anyway, and the Irkutsk Reservoir has replaced them.
The relatively easy-to-build eastern shore stretch (black line) of the former Krugobaikálka is no longer called that and is considered totally integrated into the Trans-Sib, connecting with the modern route over the mountain to Irkutsk. This is a view of container train on the flatter stretch (Photo by Sorovas) at the south end of the lake between Baikalsk and Slyudyanka (see modern maps).

The Remnant    Now note the dark red line on the western shore of the gold map, which is the only remnant of the "Golden Buckle". It's this historic, difficult-to-build, bypassed, dead-end stretch, no longer part of the Trans-Sib, which is the only part that is customarily referred to today as the Krugobaikálka, or, if you insist, the Circum-Baikal. In 1950, it suffered the further indignity of having its by then underused second track removed. In the early 1980s, some even proposed its closure, or worse, that a road be constructed in its place. But instead, this section, between Kultuk and Port-Baikal, was declared an architectural, engineering, and scenic reserve. It's now part of the National Park and is under State protection.

And it's still alive! Currently, a single scheduled train runs the route, consisting of a diesel locomotive and two cars, the entire distance taking 4h40. Trains passing by (such as ours) visit the route, and occasionally, a steam locomotive comes down the road pulling a train. Tho the villages along its route are now remote and have declined in population, they still need servicing, so the Krugobaikálka remains as a single-track railroad with a section of double track for passing. The lakeside route (Photo by Elena Kutsenko) runs a distance of 89 km (55 mi), servicing the four stops shown on the gold map, passing by, over, and thru all those retaining walls, bridges, viaducts, and tunnels.

But unlike the other tunnels on the route, this longest tunnel was cut thru absolutely straight and you can see thru it end to end, as shown on this picture, available only on Russian Wikipedia, as was much of this information (Photo by A. L. [loading]). As a quirk, right to the west of this tunnel, and just across the river, is the Чайкинский тоннель / Chaikinskyy Tonnel', which, at about 30 m (98.4 ft) is the shortest of the many tunnels on this route. This is a view of an excursion train letting off visitors (Photo by Artem Svetlov) near Halfway Tunnel, visible in the background (click).

Here we have a dramatic view of a lakeside rail cut (Photo by Irk-grishin) and this is an excursion train on a stone viaduct (Photo by Artem Svetlov). The route described for this excursion was V-shaped: Irkutsk - Sludyanka – Port-Baikal and return, the whole trip running to 126 km (78.3 mi). But do click to see passengers riding on the side of the engine!

The 100th anniversary of the Krugobaikálka was celebrated in the autumn of 2005. For this event the Baikal station was reconstructed, in which an exhibit was opened devoted to the railroad. The Slyudyanka station was also rebuilt.

I don't know how far along the route the Golden Eagle got—I wish I'd been given more information at the time. We all heartily enjoyed being there as airhead tourists merely enjoying the moment as we were led by the nose, but never got details beyond that we were on a disused spur line. When we were riding the locomotive and when we had that wonderful lakeside picnic, were we up the line just a bit or a lot? I don't know, and I kick myself for waiting fifteen years to research all this that I've since found out.

Irkutsk    We then moved on to Иркутск / Irkutsk, which, in prerevolutionary days, had the nicknames "Eastern Paris", "Siberian Saint Petersburg" and "Siberian Athens". But it was also a destination for 19C exiles. We'd had one type of "exile experience" with the Old Believers, but in Irkutsk, we had a much more moving and culturally significant one, dealing with the Decembrists of the 19C, which were exiled from European Russia for political reasons.

While Irkutsk is a beautiful city to visit, during the afternoon we really had a highlight. We participated in something that has stayed in the forefront of my memory all these years. It was a presentation by elegantly dressed actors of an "evening" in Irkutsk at the home of exiles in the 1840s. It wasn't a theater, but a museum. Only now do I fully understand that it was actually the house where Mariya Volkonskaya, our "hostess", had actually lived as the grande dame of the exiles. We were seated in a salon and the actor-singers treated us like guests at a soirée. At the end they called out for "Champagne!", and the doors swung open and elegantly-dressed servants treated us all (to sparkling wine). It was a time-travel experience into the past like few I've had. For the full experience, look up 2005/8, do Ctrl-F: event, and read the description there.

I will copy this much: One man from our group [stepped] forward to thank the Director for the presentation. He ended by saying we were sorry we weren’t dressed properly for the [elegant] occasion. The Director then [referred to ] Pushkin, who once had arrived disheveled at a function in Irkutsk from sailing on Lake Baikal. The Director’s point: if Pushkin could do it arriving from a boat, we could do it arriving from a train. It was a most gracious comment . . . Through this charming host we had traveled back in time, and had become [pseudo-]contemporaries of Mariya Volkonskaya.

I'd like to try to show what this fabulous afternoon was like—it was NOT like any normal museum visit. You really had to be there, but imagine a private afternoon ("evening") concert at the Volkonsky Museum's salon where visitors are greeted as attendees at a soirée given in exile by the extraordinary hostess-in-exile Mariya Volkonskaya. Candles were lit as tho it were evening and it was both enjoyable and very moving. I have a longish (15:50) YouTube video of a similar concert in 2015, that you may want to skim a bit. But watch the "hostess" light the evening candles, and follow as much of the program as you wish in the candlelit darkness. If you skim, be sure to pick it up again at 13:45 when the lights go on for the finale and refreshments come out for all.

Scott Joplin    There was musical entertainment on board, sometimes with a performer boarding for a number of hours or overnight then deboarding at a later station. One of them was a pianist that, to my great pleasure, played a lot of Scott Joplin. I've told this story twice, once in 2005/9 while in Russia, and more recently in 2015/19, when visiting the Scott Joplin house in Saint Louis. In 2005/9 I wrote: I was listening to the pianist at the bar one evening, and then saw him take out a book of music with the title: Рэгтаймы Скотта Джоплина . . . . This was a collection of "Regtahyms of Scott Joplin", which we would call "Scott Joplin Rags". The pianist played one or two, then I pointed to the "Maple Leaf Rag" for him to play . . . , and he also played the most famous one, of course, "The Entertainer", re-popularized in the movie "The Sting". So we rolled across Siberia to ragtime music. How very, very small the world is.

Yekaterinburg    Check the political map to find the later stop at Екатеринбу́рг (ye.ka.te.rin.BURG). Peter the Great had the city founded, and so it was named after his wife, Catherine I, who later became Empress in her own right (it was Catherine II who was Catherine the Great.)

The Yekaterinburg Assassinations    We had a tour around Yekaterinburg, but as with a number of stops, much of it seemed familiar and not unique. However, a profound historic event did take place here, the assassination of an entire prominent family, which makes visiting the city, and the location of the assassinations, very much a unique event. For many, many years after it happened, the site continued to exist, but now it's gone, tho replaced by a church.

We are talking of course of the assassination of Tsar Nicholas II and his family in the summer of 1918 (Photo Courtesy of the Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R03964 / CC-BY-SA 3.0). In this 1913 family portrait, taken five years before they were assassinated, are (click), from the left, Olga, Mariya, Nikolai, Aleksandra, Anastasiya, Aleksei, Tatiana. In this portrait, the boy was about nine. If it helps to mentally place the time period with a flavor of nobility, think of Downton Abbey just before the Great War, which the women's dresses will confirm. It's worth first knowing a bit more about them.

TITLES: Each of the four daughters had the title Великая Княжна / Velíkaya Knyázhna, which corresponds to "Grand Duchess".
More interesting are the other titles. I'm not sure everyone is aware of the royal titles that derive from the name Caesar. Tho in English, Caesar is pronounced, rather surprisingly, SI.zer, a thoughtful look at the spelling would show that the original Latin word had to have been pronounced KA.e.sar, which explains the German title Kaiser, and, much less obviously, the shorter Russian title Tsar. (The title "Tsar" was also used once upon a time in Bulgaria and Serbia.)

Back to royalty, where there's more confusion. Either the wife of a Tsar, or a woman ruling on her own, is the Царица / Tsaritsa. However, the name outside Russia has become mangled, and usually appears in English as Tsarina, tho I'll stick with the original name. I've always seen German influence here, but now I know there's also Italian influence.

The German suffix -in denotes the female equivalent: Student, Studentin; Berliner, Berlinerin, Zar, Zarin. I now have discovered that the route of English "Tsarina" was this: German Zarin accounts for the "-IN"; thence to Italian Czarina, which accounts for the "-A", thence to English as Czarina. It's better spelled and pronounced Tsarina, but still, I'll stay original with Tsaritsa.
The son of the Tsar is the Царéвич / Tsarévich, and I'm surprised to find that in the original, the first syllable is not stressed, but rather the second: tsa.RE.vich. A Царевна / Tsarevna can be a daughter of a Tsar, or the wife of an adult Tsarevich.
You would think that that would be it, as I did, but I now find another word that seemingly is used only in Russian, not in translation. A Tsar might have several sons, and each is a Tsarevich. But only one of them is the heir, and he is known as the Цесаревич / Tsesarevich, a longer word with resembles "Caesar" much more (the wife of the heir would be the Цесаревна / Tsesarevna.)

A bit more on the family: this is an older family portrait taken c1904 on the occasion of Aleksei's christening. And do not be deceived and think this picture is a mirror image. We are looking at Tsar Nicholas II of Russia on the left with his physically similar cousin, King George V of the UK on the right. But there are great ironies in this picture. The photo was taken in Berlin on 26 May 1913, and both are wearing German military uniforms. (!) The Great War (WWI) would break out just fourteen months later on 28 July 1914. Nicholas would be assassinated just four years after the outbreak. (George V died in January 1936.)

This is an undated photo of Tsaritsa Aleksandra. She was German, born in Darmstadt as Princess Alix of Hesse (Hessia). The couple were desperately trying to produce a male heir to the throne, which is why they had so many children—four girls, and then finally a boy. But Aleksei, seen here in 1913, was a hemophiliac, and his mother's faith in the Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin severely damaged her popularity and that of the Romanov monarchy with the Russian people.

Finally, we have here a wartime scene without the Tsaritsa (Cropped Photo Courtesy of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University). The rest of the family, with Cossack officers, are inspecting the troops during the Great War (WWI) on 14 October 1916. From the left are Anastasiya, Olga, Nikolai, Aleksei, Tatiana, Mariya. This is just before the year of the two Russian Revolutions. After Kerensky's February Revolution, the Tsar was forced to abdicate on 15 March 1917, just five months after this picture was taken. After Lenin's October Revolution, the family was sent to internal exile in several locations, the last of which was Yekaterinburg. All seven family members were assassinated sixteen months after the abdication, on 17 July 1918.

In Yekaterinburg, a house that had been built in the 1880s was bought by its third owner in 1908, a military engineer named Ипáтьев / Ipát'yev. As was typical in revolutionary Russia in regard to wealthier landowners, Ipát'yev was summoned to the office of the Ural Soviet at the end of April 1918 and ordered to vacate his house in two days. On 30 April 1918, the Romanov family, with some servants, were moved into the house for what was to be their last imprisonment and spent their final 78 days at the house.

This is the Ipát'yev House as it looked in July 1930, a dozen years after the event (Photo by N. Tatarchenko). The two front and two side windows wrapping around the corner are in the room where the Tsar, Tsaritsa, and Tsarevich stayed. The third window on the front from the left is where the four Grand Dutchesses stayed. All windows were sealed shut and blacked out so no one could see out or in. (Ominously, the arched window below in the semi-basement is where the assassinations took place.) This is the dining room. The door in the back led to the room of the Grand Duchesses. This is the bedroom of the Tsar, Tsaritsa, and Tsarevich.

The family was kept in strict isolation within the house. They were forbidden to speak any language but Russian, so the guards could monitor what was said. They couldn't access their luggage, which was kept I an outbuilding. Their brownie cameras were confiscated. Nicholas, deposed as a monarch, was addressed by the sentries as "Nicholas Romanov", and the servants were ordered to avoid all titles. The family was subject to regular searches of their belongings and confiscation of any money. Just before the family arrived, a four-meter/yard high wooden palisade was put up around the house to obscure the view of the building (Photo by Alexei Nametkin). On 5 June, a second palisade was put up, higher and longer, for good measure.

The senior guards had complete access to all the rooms, and the family was required to ring a bell each time they wished to use the bathroom in the landing. Water and the meager food were rationed. When nearby nuns brought the family food, most was taken by the captors. There was a half-hour recreation in the garden in the morning, then again in the afternoon. There were no visitors, and no mail was allowed. The doctor visits to treat Aleksei were eventually stopped. By early June, the family could no longer receive their daily newspapers. Visiting the Vosnesensky Church right across the street was prohibited.

The 16 men of the internal guard slept in the basement and hallway. The external guard numbered 56, and took over the neighboring Popov house. The guards were allowed to bring in women for sex and drinking sessions in both the Popov House and the basement of the Ipat'yev House (where the executions later took place).

There were four machine gun emplacements. One was in its belfry of the Vosnesensky Church across the street, pointed at the Tsar and Tsaritsa's bedroom, a second in the basement window of the Ipat'yev House, a third overlooking a rear balcony, and the fourth in the attic above the Tsar and Tsaritsa's bedroom overlooking the street intersection outside.

The Event    So then it happened. The Ural Regional Soviet agreed in a meeting on 29 June that the Romanov family should be executed. One evening the family was awakened and told to dress on the pretext that they were to be taken to another location for safety. They and their servants were brought down into that semi-basement room, which was 6×5 m (20×16 ft) in size, and in the early morning hours of 17 July 1918, the Bolsheviks shot and bayonetted the royal family and their servants, which took about 20 minutes. Nicholas was 50, Aleksandra 46, Olga 22, Tatiana 21, Mariya 19, Anastasiya 17, and Aleksei was two weeks shy of his 14th birthday.

With great confusion and gross lack of planning, the bodies finally ended up being buried in the shaft of a copper mine 15 km north of Yekaterinburg covered with sulfuric acid and quicklime. As part of the confusion, while most bodies were put in the shaft, those of Aleksei and Mariya were burned and buried in a separate pit some 15 meters/yards away. The thought was apparently that, if the main burial site were ever found, the lack of enough bodies might cause confusion. It's been said that the burial was as gruesome as the execution.

These are period pictures c1919 of the principal mine shaft burial site (Photo Scan from Book by Витольд Муратов) (=Vitold Muratov) and of the nearby secondary site for Aleksei and Mariya, covered in railroad ties.

The Ipat'yev House in Yekaterinburg continued to stand. It served as a museum of the revolution, and then as an agricultural school. During this period is was customary for party officials to arrive in large tour groups and pose in front of the bullet-damaged wall in the basement. The wall had been torn apart in search of bullets and other evidence by investigators in 1919, when the two above grave pictures were taken. The double doors leading to a storeroom were locked during the execution. In 1946, the house was taken over by the local Communist Party. In 1974, it was formally listed as a Historical Revolutionary Monument.

But then events started to move in another direction and became an embarrassment to the government. Instead of continuing as a symbol of the Revolution, it was steadily becoming a place of pilgrimage for those who wished to honor the memory of the imperial family.

The house survived into the mid-20C--this is the Ipat'yev House at a date sometime between 1957 and 1960 (Photo by Vitold Muratov), but it unfortunately did not survive a little longer up until the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991. In 1977, as the 60th anniversary of the Russian Revolution approached, the Politburo decided to take action about the now embarrassing nature of the house and declared that it was no longer of "sufficient historical significance", and ordering the demolition of the house. As it turns out, Boris Yeltsin was chair of the local party, and the task was passed to him, and he had the house demolished in September 1977, before the anniversary of the October Revolution. Yeltsin later wrote in his 1990 memoirs in regard to the destruction that "sooner or later we will be ashamed of this piece of barbarism." Nevertheless, despite this additional barbarism, visitors kept on coming, often in secret and at night, leaving tokens of remembrance on the vacant site.

The Turnaround    In the 1970s a geologist who had heard rumors his entire life as to where the burial site was began searching and did find the mineshaft site and bones in 1979. But this was still during the time of the Soviet Union, and he feared reprisals from the government, so he reburied the bones. I suppose you could say it was still "too early".

But the late 1980s was Gorbachev's time of перестрóйка/perestróika ("restructuring") and глáсность/glásnost' ("openness"), and in 1988, the geologist approached Gorbachev's government and asked for an investigation. It was finally carried out in 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, so the date of the gravesite discovery counts as both 1979 and 1991. Then a builder who belonged to a club that spent weekends searching for Romanov graves finally found the second pit in 2007.

DNA Identification    Forensic anthropologists used numerous methods to identify the bones, including digitally overlaying facial photos over pictures of skulls, and of course, DNA was central to the identification. But what do you compare the DNA in the bones to? Ironically, that was simplified by the fact that the royal houses of Europe had intermarried so extensively over time. And as it turned out, most of the DNA proof came from Prince Philip!

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This is a Romanov family tree in German. You won't find Ivan the Terrible/Fearsome from the 1500s, as he was not a Romanov, but in the third row is Peter (I) the Great and his wife Yekaterina I, who Yekaterinburg was named after. Two rows further down is Catherine (II) the Great. But of importance here is that two rows further down we find Nikolai I, our key figure.
From Nikolai I, trace down to his son Aleksander II, then his grandson Aleksander III (who famously has a bridge in Paris named after him), then his great-grandson, Nikolai II, then to his five great-great-grandchildren.
Now go back to Nikolai I and follow the line to the right to his second son, Konstantin, then to his granddaughter Olga Konstantinovna, the Romanov wife of the King of Greece, then to his great-grandson (Olga's seventh child) Andrew of Greece, then to his great-great grandson, Philip Mountbatten, Duke of Edinburgh.
And so we have the connection via Nikolai I. Both Andrew of Greece and Tsar Nikolai II are his great-grandsons, and Prince Philip and Tsarevich Aleksei and his four sisters are his great-great grandchildren.

You may think that's the end of it, but then you'd be underestimating the complexities of European royal houses. The name Mountbatten was a purposeful translation in Britain during WWI of the name Battenberg, to avoid having an obviously German name. Battenberg is a town in Hesse/Hessia, which gave rise to the House of Battenberg.
Now turn to the left bottom of the tree and you'll find Prince Andrew of Greece being shown a second time, this time with his wife, Alice of Battenberg, Prince Philip's mother, which accounts for his name being Philip Mountbatten. This whole corner of the tree is here to show (very highly abbreviated) the connection to the Tsaritsa.

At the top is Queen Victoria, with Prince Albert. Of their nine children, the third was Princess Alice. She married Louis (Ludwig) IV, Grand Duke of Hesse, and they had seven children.
Their eldest was Victoria-Alberta of Hesse, the mother of Alice of Battenberg, and grandmother of Prince Philip. Thus Philip is the great-great-grandson of Victoria.
Go back to Alice and Louis. Their sixth child was Alix of Hesse, who became Tsaritsa Aleksandra. She would be Philip's great-aunt. She would also be a granddaughter of Victoria. And her children, Aleksei and his four sisters, are great-grandchildren of Victoria.
[As an unrelated side comment: as Philip descends from Victoria's third child Alice, Queen Elizabeth descends from Victoria's second child King Edward VII. Thus both are great-great grandchildren of Victoria, and cousins to each other.]

Hemophilia    One last important issue, hemophilia. This is a family tree limited to the passing of the disease thru some female descendants of Victoria (and Albert) to some male descendants (© Photo: Wikipedia / Shakko). All these females were carriers of the gene, all these males had the disease. Notable on the left are the children of Princess Alice (and Louis).
Her third child, Princess Irene of Hesse, passed it on to two sons.
Her fifth child, Prince Friedrich of Hesse, died of it at age 2.
Her sixth child, Alix of Hesse, the Tsaritsa, passed it on to her only son, Aleksei.

The bottom line here is that Prince Philip has a two-part Romanov connection, one to each side, which allowed DNA identification of the family, and surely other Romanovs assassinated elsewhere. It also means that Prince Charles, and Princes William and Harry, are all Romanov relatives.

The State Responds    Post-Soviet Union and post-identification, developments continued. In 1993, a criminal case against the assassins was opened by the post-Soviet government, but nobody was prosecuted since all the perpetrators were dead. In 2008, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation ruled that Nicholas II and his family were victims of political repression and rehabilitated them. (The rehabilitation was denounced by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.)

The Church Responds    In 2000, the Russian Orthodox Church announced the canonization of the family (and their servants, and other Romanovs killed elsewhere). This elevation to sainthood was based on their "humbleness, patience, and meekness" in the face of their fate. At the time, I wondered if what wasn't a bit extreme, but I understand better now what was done. They were not declared martyrs, but "passion bearers" instead. Apparently, in Eastern Orthodoxy, a страстотéрпец/strastotérpets, translated as "passion bearer", is not a martyr, who dies defending his or her religion, but instead a person who faces death in a resolute manner. Thus, while all martyrs are automatically also passion bearers, not all passion bearers are martyrs.

I find this development very interesting. I am not a royalist—I wouldn't mind it if all royalty worldwide abdicated tomorrow in favor of republics—nor am I a religionist. But I am deeply interested in history, including ethnic history, and the canonization of the Tsar and his family I find very notable. I find this ikon of the Romanov family a striking example of ethnic art (Photo by Aliksandar). It is SO typical. That the figures are of the 20C is irrelevant—they're all dressed in medieval garb, with Aleksei looking like a medieval pageboy. They all have the typical large halos, in gold, and all the colors are vibrant. As is so typical, they all have pained expressions on their faces. And, at least on this particular ikon, Aleksei is dressed in the colors of the Russian flag, white, blue, and red.

We've discussed in the past that at the time of the Revolution in 1917, a number of simplifications were made in the Russian alphabet, mostly involving unnecessary duplications. One was that an I-sound had three possible letters it could be spelled with, depending on the word. Two were eliminated, leaving just И. Unfortunately from a Western point of view, one of the spellings that was eliminated was I, just like in the Latin alphabet (tho I is retained in Ukrainian and Belarusian). Therefore, the name Nikolai, which had been spelled Нiколай with an I, is now spelled Николай with an И.

I bring this up because on the above ikon, in the upper left corner it identifies Tsar Nikolai as Царь Нiколай, using the antiquated spelling. We can't read all of the other names, but similar spellings I'm sure prevail: two below his name we see what is the end of Anastasiya's name as -iя, again with I. While I am a champion of simplified spelling, I applaud this quaint usage, both here and on their tombs (see below) as an artistic manifestation of historic ethnicity--great ethnic art.

The Burial Site    Outside of Yekaterinburg, near the site of the burial, there is today a church of Saint Nicholas, and near that is the actual site of the mineshaft (Both Photos by Mariluna).

The Assassination Site    I have not been to the burial site. Our tour from the train did bring us to the site of the Ipat'yev House, and under other circumstances, since the house is now gone, it would have just been a matter of experiencing the site according to that Latin phrase I formulated, HIC LOCUS EST, merely absorbing the knowledge that "this is the spot". But circumstances are different now, and to commemorate, mourn, and honor the family, today there is a spectacular church (click) built directly over the site of the house (Photo by Vladimir Udilov). The five-domed church was built between 2000 and 2003 in Russian Byzantine style and has now become the main attraction in Yekaterinburg. It's called the Храм на Крови́ (KHRAM na kro.VI), or Church upon the Blood, and yes, "na" does really mean "upon, on top of", since it's located right on the site of the house and that basement room. A slightly longer version of the name I found on Russian Wikipedia is Храм-Пáмятник на Крови́; a "pámyatnik" is a monument or memorial, and I prefer this version of the name: the Memorial Church upon the Blood.

I'm sure our tour went into the church, but I just have no memory of it, so I'll have to rely on what I've recently read. The absolutely complete name of the church is a mouthful, which in English is the "Memorial Church on the Blood in Honor of All Saints Resplendent in the Russian Land". It turns out the church is two-level, and in a sense, two churches. The upper church is the All Saints Church. It can be seen in the picture as tall with many tall windows, essentially the white top of the building. The lower church, down at the brick level, is the Memorial Church upon the Blood. In contrast, it was planned with low vaults, little light, and is semi-gloomy. It's here that the crypt is located, symbolically recreating the basement execution room. (But there bones are elsewhere, as we'll see.) Thus the church attracts two types of visitors, those seeking history, like we were, as well as Orthodox pilgrims going to the shrine for religious reasons.

We'd said there was a church across the square that the family was not allowed to visit. It's the historic Вознесéнская Церковь / Voznesénskaya Tserkov' or Ascension Church, which dates from 1770. It was closed in 1926 and became first a school, then a museum of the revolution, before finally being reopened in 1991. This is an aerial view of the two churches (Photo by Митрохина Марина)(=Mitrokhina Marina). They're a colorful contrast to each other (click), but remember that it was in the belfry of the historic Ascension Church that a machine gun had been trained on the Ipat'yev House across the square.

To finish the Romanov narrative, we have to leave Yekaterinburg for a moment and jump ahead seven days from June 7 to the 14, when I was on my own in fabulous Saint Petersburg. I took the Metro out to one of the outstanding sights there, the Петропáвлoвская крéпость/Pyetropávlovskaya krépost' (Peter and Paul Fortress) to visit the Петропáвлoвский собóр / Pyetropávlovskiy sobór (Peter and Paul Cathedral). Do NOT be daunted by that beautiful name. The grammatically masculine form is Pyetro+pávlov+skii and the feminine form is Pyetro+pávlov+skaya, and both are constructed as "Peter-Paul-ish". With a little practice, those long words will roll off the tongue.

This is an aerial view of the Peter and Paul Fortress (click), which is the original citadel of Saint Petersburg, founded by Peter the Great in 1703 and built from 1706 to 1740 as a star fortress. It has functioned as a museum since 1924. Note the yellow church in the center, located among other notable buildings. This is the Peter and Paul Cathedral (click), built from 1712 to 1733 (Both Photos by Andrew Shiva/Wikipedia/CC BY-SA 4.0). Most striking (no pun intended) is the 122.5 m (402 ft) bell-tower with a gilded angel-topped cupola, which is the world's tallest Orthodox bell tower. Since it is not a stand-alone belfry, but an integral part of the main building, the cathedral can be considered the tallest Orthodox church in the world.

The cathedral has the tombs of all Russian tsars (Photo by Richard Mortel) starting with Peter the Great (Photo by Eino Mustonen)--see family tree--with the exception of two. In 1998, 80 years after the executions, the remains of the Romanov family were reinterred in the cathedral in a chapel to the right of the entrance. In the above photo of the church's exterior, you can see the front and side windows at the corner to the right of the columns.

This is the chapel with the tombs of Nikolai II and his family (Photo by Dennis Jarvis). They are each memorialized via tombstone-like plaques on the walls.

In the center, on a stand (click), is another medieval-style ikon of the family. On the left side, and a bit harder to see, is the plaque of Aleksei Nikolayevich ("Nikolai-son"), followed by Ol'ga Nikolayevna ("Nikolai-daughter"), Tatiana Nikolayevna, [Tsar] Nikolai Aleksandrovich (a reference to Aleksander III), [Tsaritsa] Aleksandra Fyodorovna, Mariya Nikolayevna, and Anastasiya Nikolayevna.
On the right side, again a bit harder to see, is the plaque for the retainers that were assassinated with them. There seem to be five indicated, but I know of only four. Yevgeny (Eugene) Botkin was their physician, Anna Demidova was a lady's maid, Aleksei Trupp was a footman, and Ivan Kharitonov was their cook. Just listing those occupations dating from that time period again gives a whiff of Downton Abbey, tho gone horribly wrong.

This display gives such a panoply of Russian history and customs, but you have to know where to look. All the spellings are prerevolutionary—just check the dotted I's for Mariya and Anastasiya (I cannot explain why Nikolai doesn't have a dotted I). I can spot three other disused letters that are used here. There are numerous duplicate dates. On the Tsar's plaque, just to the left of the ikon, you see the 1918 date in July of the assassination listed as both the 4th and 17th. It's the 17th on the generally accepted Gregorian calendar, but the 4th on the older Julian calendar. In regard to dates, two are obviously missing. Look at the white blank on Aleksei's plaque and on Mariya's. These were the two graves that were discovered later, and there is no burial date listed, presumably because of the greater uncertainty.

In 1998, 80 years after the event, Russia issued this three-ruble postage stamp. The vignette on the right should be familiar.

Continental Borders    Right after Yekaterinburg, going west, the train passed the continental border between Asia and Europe. Ideally, there should be no such thing as a continental border, since they're supposed to be independent land masses, such as Australia and Antarctica. North and South America are considered to be two continents, even tho they're attached, but it's a short border. Africa is attached to Asia, but again at a short border. That leaves the greatest anomaly of all, Eurasia, since it's so obviously one single landmass that's been arbitrarily divided between Western and Eastern cultures. Even so, Eurasia is still oddly divided, since the ancient Greek, Roman, Assyrian, Persian, Mesopotamian, and Indus civilizations seem more connected with each other than the latter ones connect with East Asia. Much of the Middle East has logically more in common with Europe than with Asia, but still it's considered part of (West) Asia. And consider language. Our language family is called Indo-European (Map by Alphathon), because the Indo-Iranian branch (in blue) stretches so far east (the spread of Russian to the Pacific is nowhere nearly as ancient).

However, starting with ancient Greek geographers, the continental border was arbitrarily set much farther west, and in reality, it's only defined by convention, as indicated on this map (Derivative Map by Dbachmann).
EUROPE: The green areas, with the islands shown (but excluding overseas territories) are countries that are considered completely within Europe. The two light blue areas are considered (again, arbitrarily) the European parts of the two countries that straddle the two continents, Turkey and Russia.
ASIA: The dark blue areas are the Asian parts of Turkey and Russia, and the purple areas (including Cyprus) are countries considered totally within Asia. (Light purple is Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, considered Asian, while Egypt is mostly in Africa.)
It's thus obvious that Turkey's division (click) is a simple water border, consisting of the Bosporus, Sea of Marmora, and the Dardanelles, jointly called the Turkish Straits, while Russia's division is much more massive, and subject to much more interpretation. This map (Derivative Map by Dbachmann) shows the arbitrary nature of the border within Russia. The red line shows the modern convention (since c1850) following the Ural River and Ural Mountains, and in the south, the crest of the Caucasus Mountains. The orange lines show how definitions flip-flopped in the 18C and 19C, following the Don, Volga, and other rivers. Line A even placed all of the Caucasus in Asia.

Beverly and I were in Istanbul in 1965, which we'll discuss as part of the posting on the Orient Express. When there, we made it a point to take a ferry between Europe and Asia from downtown to Üsküdar and back, because we wanted a pleasant boat ride, wanted to have sailed on the Bosporus, and wanted to have set foot in Asian Turkey. Thus that afternoon, we crossed between continents round-trip.
But now back to the narrative. I wrote: Shortly after leaving Yekaterinburg we crossed the Urals and the official border between Asia and Europe, [so] the train slowed down so we could see the white stone obelisk to the south [left] of the train marking the border . . . I'm pleased to say I kept vigil until I saw it whiz by. I now have tried to find a picture of the obelisk, which was not easy. I've now learned, given the size of Russia, that in total in the Ural region there are more than 20 obelisks or other markers denoting the continental border—I'm sure every major road must have one. The one closest to Yekaterinburg is apparently larger and better known. It's 17 km (10.5 mi) west on the Moscow highway, toward Perm, and I do have a picture of that one (Photo by Jirka.h23). But I wanted a picture of "my" obelisk, the one along the rail route, and perseverance won out:

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This is the obelisk, beside the railway line about 36 km (22 mi) west of Yekaterinburg, that marks the border at this particular point between the continents. The slightly blurry picture was apparently taken from a slowly moving train, but, looking south, the upper arrow pointing left (east) does read Азия and the lower arrow pointing right (west) says Европа.

We finished the Golden Eagle trip in the start (within Russia) of the European part of Eurasia, our narrative goal in this discussion. So far, in Europe, the only overnight trip we've discussed was the week-long Transcantábrico. On the Golden Eagle, we did not go directly to Moscow, but instead swung up to Saint Petersburg for a very enjoyable full-day's visit. I was very pleased with this, even tho I'd be going back there shortly on my own, because it corresponded closely to the original route of the Trans-Siberian, going to the then capital. And since Saint Petersburg is on an arm of the Atlantic, this was already a transcontinental trip Pacific-to-Atlantic, but totally within Russia. After a fabulous day in Saint Petersburg, we had our last overnight on the train and ended in a hotel in Moscow, with a extensive, excellent city tour the next day.

Thus, it was twelve nights physically on the train, plus one night each in Vladivostok and Moscow, making fourteen. I find that package as being reasonable to make this an exact two-week trip, with ALL intermediate nights literally on the train, with no packing up and moving. Thus, this is my longest overnight train trip. On the other hand, the Rovos Pride of Africa trip, also touted as a two-week trip, to my mind is a three-nighter on the train, followed by living on the game preserve for two nights, followed by a nine-nighter on the train, and thus my second-longest overnight train trip. The Transcantábrico at seven nights on the train comes in third.

But I wanted to spend more time to see additional things in both Saint Petersburg and Moscow as a solo traveler, so I did a prompt turnaround in Moscow to go back to Saint Petersburg, and on my return, spent more time in Moscow as well. Both were fabulous, and are fully described in 2005/9. But another reason I repeated that round trip was because I wanted to ride on the well-known and very comfortable overnight express, the Крáсная Стрелá / Krásnaya Strelá, (KRAS.na.ya stre.LA) "Red Arrow", which I'd heard about for years.

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Even the route of the Red Arrow is fun, since it zips overnight northwest from Moscow to Saint Petersburg. I now read that the Red Arrow is the most popular train in Russia, so much so that similar overnight express trains now follow it. When I took it, it left Moscow just before midnight and took about eight hours. Nowadays there's also a high-speed connection—a day train, of course—which brings the conundrum as to which to take. I like high-speed, but I'd still take the Red Arrow.

I had plenty of time until the train left, so I just looked around the station, and found myself looking at the departure board, enjoying where all the trains were headed. Now in Japan, what saved me was that each line on the departure boards would flip between Japanese and English regularly, and I understand that sometimes happens in Russia as well, but it didn't in this case. After a while, an Englishman sidled up to me wondering about his train, so I helped him out. It struck me that the people on the train that learned the Cyrillic alphabet with me wouldn't have had the trouble he was having. This is a typical Russian departure board, but for another station, the one that the Trans-Sib trains leave from. See what you can follow:

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I assume everyone can see that MO- is Moscow and can find the two trains going to –TOK, or Vladivostok. Any guesses as to the third one from the bottom, realizing that it starts with pi, as in Greek? English quite a while ago dropped the name Pekin, tho it remains in the name of the Pekinese dog. After that, it also dropped Peking, tho that remains in "Peking duck" (also in the alternate form, Pekingese dog). We now use Beijing. But Russian never changed from Pekin, so this train is going to Beijing. Anyway, the below exterior and interior shots of the Krásnaya Strelá show its elegance.

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I was now ready to continue on the bulk of the European part of Eurasia, and I wanted to go from Moscow to the Atlantic. Tho it might surprise some, Europe, a relatively small continent, has been losing overnight services regularly. Aside from air travel, it's good rail news that causes bad rail news. High-speed trains exist in so many places today that often, an overnight trip is no longer necessary (see above).

We described Russian Railways service east from Moscow to Asia. As it turns out, Russian Railways service west to Europe results in the longest routes within Europe. These feature luxurious sleeper cars and are targeted primarily at wealthier customers, with ticket prices well exceeding air fare. There are four services from Moscow to western Europe. All require a gauge change, usually at Brest, which I experienced and will discuss in another posting.

The two shorter routes out of Moscow are:
Moscow-Warsaw-Prague, 1-3 times a week, taking 1.2 days, in other words, one overnight.
Moscow-Berlin, 2 times a week, leaving 8:30 AM, with one overnight, to about 10 AM the next day. This is the train I'd booked in advance to supplement the Golden Eagle as part of my Round the World by Rail trip. It went via Minsk and Warsaw. It was modern and comfortable, much like the Krasnaya Strela.
The two longer ones are:
Moscow-Vienna-Nice, running weekly, taking 2 days, one overnight. I believe this is the longest overnight train in Europe.
Moscow-Berlin-Paris, also weekly, 1.6 days, so one overnight. This is the train that I find most interesting because it duplicates—coming out or Russia—what happened in the late 19C, but coming from the other direction, out of France. This will be an upcoming topic. I'm not sure if this train was running in 2005 yet, but that's of no importance. Tho I was headed for Paris out of Moscow, I specifically wanted to stop in Berlin for a few days, so that's the only connection I looked into.

For the Berlin-Paris connection, I used the CityNightLine (one word, and in English) overnight train service based in Switzerland and serving much of Central Europe. This was a CityNightLine sleeper (Photo by NAC), and this was the CityNightLine route map (Photo by DB Autozug GmbH). Click to find the three routes I've used over time, as follows.
Beverly and I first took the service in 2004 after coming from Budapest via Vienna on a day train to Munich, where we took the CityNightLine "Pollux" northwest to Amsterdam in 12h21. See the orange line on the map. It was Beverly’s last train ride, as she passed away three months later in New York (2004/13).
In 2005, as the next link in the "Round-the-World" trip, I took CityNightLine "Perseus" from Berlin southwest via Brussels to Paris in 11h57. See the violet line on the map; I know for a fact we went via Brussels, tho the map indicates otherwise (2005/10).
In 2008, coming up from the Africa Rovos Rail trip, I visited Switzerland for a while, then took the CityNightLine "Komet" due north from Zürich via Basel to Hamburg, in 11h50. See yellow line on map. It was to board the QM2, where I first met friends Paul and Marya as we were about to board the ship (2008/16).

Each of these took just about 12 hours, and seemed ideal. But I said "was" above, because, apparently the trains weren't moneymakers. I've since learned that CityNightLine existed from 1995 to 2016, when it stopped operating. However, the very good news is that Österreichische Bundesbahnen (ÖBB), (Austrian Federal Railways) bought all the sleepers, which became part of Nightjet as of 2016, which now has its own extensive network.

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This is a map of ÖBB's Nightjet services (click). It still has Zürich-Hamburg, but Paris and Amsterdam are missing. It does add Italy and Poland, Budapest and Prague--and the little black symbols show where you can load your car or motorbike. Some routes not run by ÖBB but other companies operate under the "Nightjet Partner" program. Between 2017 and 2018, the number of passengers carried increased from 1.4 to 1.6 million, and ÖBB is making expansion plans for what is now considered a niche market. So there's hope yet for single overnights in Central Europe.

From what I've seen online, ÖBB seems to offer good facilities. This is an ÖBB Nightjet Schlafwagen/sleeping car waiting in Zürich's main station (Photo by Tobias b köhler), and this is deluxe single/double compartment with shower and restroom—breakfast included (Photo by [Tycho]). There are also couchettes and regular coach seats available.

We'll be seeing shortly how the use of overnight sleeping cars started across the continent of Europe in the late 19C with the Wagons-Lits Company out of Paris, including such famous trains as the Nord-Express and the Orient-Express. I do find that it's somewhat mind-boggling that today, the leading purveyors of overnight train services in Europe are instead Russia and Austria.

It could be considered that reaching Paris could possibly count as having crossed all of Eurasia. Perhaps, but that wasn't good enough, so, after a few days in Paris, a Paris-London segment followed when I took a day trip on the Eurostar via the Channel Tunnel to London, where I also stayed a few days. But I was booked to sail home on the Queen Mary 2 and anyway, I'd viewed the Pacific from Vladivostok harbor and now should properly view the Atlantic out of Southampton Harbor, so a London-Southampton segment concluded the train rides. I took the usual train to Southampton Central and made my way to the QM2 for passage back to New York. Should you be interested, the Moscow to Berlin to Paris to London to Southampton narrative is in 2005/10.

Summation    In two postings, we've summed up many longer overnight train trips, ending here with the Round the World by Rail trip in 2005. To sum that last trip up, we have these numbers:
The Trans-Canada segment from Halifax to Vancouver involved three trains. It by itself is something I'm pleased with, since crossing Canada on one train trip coast-to-coast is not common.
The Trans-Russia segment from Vladivostok on the Pacific to Saint Petersburg on a branch of the Atlantic took just one train as I did it. Otherwise, using the Rossiya plus the Red Arrow would make it two.
The Trans-Eurasian segment just on the mainland, Vladivostok to Paris, took three trains, but skipping Berlin, could have been done in two. This will contrast later with late-19C train connections between Paris and Russia.
But Paris was not the end of the transcontinental trip--Vladivostok-Southampton took five trains.
Thus, Round the World, crossing Canada and Eurasia together, comes to eight trains.
But the total for the entire trip, including the Adirondack and Ocean for the set-up NYC to Halifax, and two for the Red Arrow round trip, comes to an even 12 trains.
But in addition to that, another unplanned rail development with subways occurred which I'm also pleased about.

On June 14 in Saint Petersburg, I used the Метрó (stress the O), and shortly afterwards, the Moscow Метрó. This was followed by the Berlin U-Bahn, the Paris Métro, the London Underground, plus the New York Subway on my return on July 2. Tho not planned, over 18 days I rode on six different world subway systems, averaging out (including the shipboard days) to a different subway every three days. I'm pleased it worked out that way.