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Day 20 - Wednesday, Oct 2 - At home

Carmen had arrived home from Maine on Sunday and had been busy working outside, planting chrysanthemums, mowing the lawn and making everything look nice. I went to the Dr. in the morning and got antibiotic drops for the conjunctivitis. He said I just had to tough it out with the cold. We returned the rental car and came home. I had lost 14 pounds over the duration of the trip, mainly from not eating for about 4 days. My mother is very thin and weak as she has eaten little for a week. On her way home, she stopped at the ER in Cooperstown and was given steroids and antibiotics for bacterial pneumonia. Hopefully, the health experience of our group was not typical. 10 out of the 14 of us became sick with colds and/or intestinal issues. We didn’t see several people in our group for 3 days as they were confined to their compartments on the train. Still, it was an amazing trip, learning many things and seeing amazing sights. It is hard to pick out a favorite place bu...
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Day 19 - Tuesday, Oct 1 - Returning home

Thankfully, we are at least able to be up and about this morning. A private car service took us to the Domodedovo airport which took about an hour. Fortunately there wasn’t much traffic. While we were stopped at a light, a car rear-ended the car stopped beside us – two very unhappy drivers. On the way to the airport, there were more varieties of trees than we had seen crossing Siberia which were mostly conifers and silver birch. Here the maples are turning brilliant red/orange and the oak trees are turning yellow/brown. The check-in was different from most airports as there weren’t dedicated counters for each airline, just stations 1-100. Huge displays showing the departing flights indicated which station one had to go to in order to check in. We are flying Lufthansa to Munich and then as a code-share United flight to Newark. It was a very long walk from our arrival and departure gates in Munich and we arrived at the scheduled departure time but the flight was delayed a...
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Day 18 - Monday, Sept 30 - In Moscow

This morning I woke up with a full-blown cold, conjunctivitis, and “intestinal” distress. My mother hasn’t been feeling well for the past 5 days and missed many of the excursions. We stayed in the room all day, resting and watching TV. After watching several repeats of international news on the BBC and EuroNews channels, we switched to the English channel of Russia Today, the news channel run by the Russian Government. I was surprise to see an hour-long program on the Russian space program that featured Fyodor Yurchikhin who I had met with the day before. It was very good and included the American astronaut Jack Bishop who was on the same mission.  Russia Today Space Program Movie After that was a VLOG mainly about swimsuit (largely young women in bikinis) skiing in Siberia and Sochi during April.  Youtube video of bikini skiing Then a program about the Bolshoi ballet school in Rio de Janiero for underprivileged students – the only Bolshoi school outside of Ru...
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Day 17 - Sunday, Sept 29 - In Moscow

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In the morning, we went to the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics which highlights the history of Soviet/Russian space exploration where they had numerous advances over the American space program. It starts with Sputnik, the first successful satellite in 1957, the dogs that went into space and Yuri Gagarin, the first man to circle the earth in 1961. The museum is similar to the US museums at Cape Canaveral and Johnson Space Center. At the end of our tour we were able to visit with the Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin and ask him questions about his experiences. He is an easy-going and charismatic man who was happy to answer our questions. He wanted to emphasize that although the politics between Russia and the US may be complicated, there was never an issue working on the International Space Station. Model of Sputnik Actual first surviving space dogs (stuffed after natural death) Discussion with cosmonaut "Our" cosmonaut - from Russia Today program Afte...
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Day 16 - Saturday, Sept 28 - Off the train and in Moscow

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 This our last day on the train. This was a great way to visit cities along the way and see the Siberian countryside. I don’t know that I am a fan of rail travel. Although the beds are very comfortable, the train really rocks and bumps along at night with loud screeching and clanking sounds which make it difficult to sleep. We are fortunate to have an upgraded compartment with its own bathroom and shower but it still feels very cramped. Many in our group are in smaller compartments and need to use bathrooms and showers at the end of the car. They need to sign up for slots of shower time. It is a little warmer this morning with temperatures around 40 degrees. There is a 50% chance of rain every day this week in Moscow – we are keeping our fingers crossed. We arrived in Moscow at 11:30 and got off the train for the last time. We said goodbye to our train attendants Sergei and Nadia who took care of our room and would bring us tea or coffee in our room. Porters took our l...
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Day 15 - Friday, Sept 27 - In Kazan

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After setting the clock back 2 hours, I’m waking up pretty early and waiting until it is reasonable to get up. It was light at 5am as we are at the very eastern part of the timezone. We are now in the Moscow timezone, 7 hours ahead of New York. It is a pretty dismal morning, overcast and sprinkling with the temperature just above freezing. We see some large fields but can’t tell what was being grown. There are some dairy cows grazing on both sides of the track – hopefully they know to get out of the way when the train comes through. All the people with intestinal problems are up this morning. My mother still has a nasty cold and is going to stay on the train today. We are stopping in Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan, the Tatar Republic of the Russian Federation, with a population of 1.2 million. It was founded over a 1000 years ago. It has a complicated history, being conquered by the Mongols in the 13 th century and then by the Russian Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible) i...
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Day 14 - Thursday, Sept 26 - On the train and arriving in Yekaterinburg

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Another beautiful but very chilly morning as the sun came up. Only 32 degrees with heavy frost and some fresh ice on small ponds along the train. Fortunately, my mother is feeling better this morning but 3 others in our group are down with intestinal problems. I’m religiously washing my hands, using hand sanitizer and keeping my fingers crossed. At 8:30 we are stopping briefly in Tyumen, the center of gas and oil production in Siberia. The railroad station here was constructed in 1915. In the morning, Tamara gave a presentation on the very convoluted history of the Romanov Dynasty from 1613 to 1917/1918. The last czar, Czar Nicholas II abdicated in May 1917 to the demands of the people who wanted a Russian Republic. This was very short-lived as the Bolshevik revolution was in October 1917. His entire family was murdered in July 1918. This afternoon we are getting off the train in Yekaterinburg, the second largest city in Siberia with a population of 1.5 millio...
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