-Crossing border and when you can leave the train...
From Beijing, we passed Tianjin, Shenyang, Harbin, and Manchuria (Inner Mongolia) before crossing to Russia. When we were at the border in China, which was in Manchuria, the train stopped for almost 3 hours. The immigration officers came into our coach and checked around. Three officers stopped in front of our compartment and one asked for our passports. Another officer checked inside of our compartment a bit and left. After they took our passports, we had to wait in the compartment until they were done and gave us our passports back. One officer came back to take my picture which I still have no idea why and I didn’t dare to ask. They did not speak English, by the way.
“The train stopped several times but not every time we were allowed to get out of the train. Almost everything stopped working. The sockets didn’t work and both BATHROOMS WERE ALWAYS CLOSED...”
After crossing the border to Zabeikalsk, Russia, the immigration officers came into our coach, took our passports, and asked us to open the luggage and checked a bit. We had to wait until we got our passports back and then we were told to get out and come back in 5 hours! We were very excited but there was not much nearby.
As I mentioned in Part2 and Part3 , the station had one restaurant/cafe and one ATM machine. Besides, it had a rest area with seats and bathrooms...but that was all. Outside was very cold and the nearby area didn’t have much to explore. We only went out to shop for instant food and snack at the convenience store. After 3 hours, we just sat in the rest area using our phones to check Facebook, searched for what we wanted to know on google, and checked videos on YouTube….just things we didn’t get to do in China.
From Zabeikalsk, we passed Tcita, Ulan-Ude, Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, Omsk, Tjumen, Ekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk), Perm, and finally arrived Moscow! We also went past Lake Baikal!
In Part 2, I also mentioned that you should check the train schedule from the officer who takes care of your compartment. Here is the reason why.
The train stopped several times but not every time we were allowed to get out of the train. Almost everything stopped working. The sockets didn’t work and both BATHROOMS WERE ALWAYS CLOSED. The lights still worked though.
If you know the schedule, you could plan to use the bathroom before the train stops. Last time, I had to hold for about 40 minutes! Well, if the train stops while you are sleeping at the night time and you wake up feeling like using the bathroom during it, you still have no choice but to hold! It actually happened to us both.
If the train stops for about an hour, you’ll get a chance to get out for roughly 20 minutes. Most of the time, the lady in our coach didn’t tell us when we could get out, except for when the stop took more than an hour. So we had to ask by ourselves if we could get out. Sometimes, we had only 5 minutes and so we had to rush to a small shop next to the train (in the train stop/station) and picked whatever we felt like having from each shop without thinking through as we didn’t have much time and never knew if the next stop/station would have the a shop for buying food.
As we went on this trip during winter, it was incredibly cold outside but was comfortably warm inside so we didn’t wear much. When we wanted to get out, we put a lot of clothes on, like thick pants, a jacket, and waterproof shoes for snow. It took quite a bit of time to get ready. So imagine that you have only 5 minutes outside and you take one minutes to get ready.....you have only 4 minutes left.
You can’t just get in the train at any passenger coach. I tried once as I ran out of time and that coach was near to the shop I bought food from. The officer in that coach didn’t let me in and told me to leave. I didn't have my ticket with me so I freaked out and ran quickly to my coach. After I got into my coach for like a minute, the train left and the lady at my coach gave me a reproaching look, which I totally understood. I’m sure she didn’t want me to miss the train when I was alone!
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