Our journey has not ended yet, we got on board again.
We arrived in complete darkness to the northwest corner of Russia, into the port-town of Kola Gulf, Murmansk, located just a few kilometres from the Barents Sea. Not only the lack of sunrise but also the city itself gave a gloomy atmosphere, like ghosts of the Kursk submarine’s crew, – sank in the year of 2000, – even today were getting on, not only on the memorial, but also on the walls of the buildings. The church is really a shelter here, final comfort for the local ones.
However most famous relic of the city is the Lenin called first nuclear-powered icebreaker of the world, anchoring today as a museum. Getting closer to the 134 meters long monster some lights of dawn sank in, those we later could see just from the bridge because we were mostly walking in the bowl of the ship.
Finally, almost literally we struggled ourselves up to the enormous second world war Aljosa monument, where from, there was a full panorama to the harbour. Only the bone-deep cold did not allow us to contemplate long, and by the time we got back to the Trans Siberian Express, dusk greeted us again.
One of the disadvantages of the northern winter is darkness, still that few hours light just illuminated as bluish dawn the running landscape seen from the window of the train, lent a special atmosphere to the anyhow peculiar area. View of wooden houses and onion shaped cupolas varied and on 7th January, on the day of the orthodox Christmas, arriving to Suzdal the celebration crowned our journey. We travelled through the already Russian ancient chronicle mentioned city centre by horse drawn sledges, then we got off at the Kreml of Suzdal, we listened to a male choir in one of the convents, thus at the end we could have warmed up again by a festive lunch served for us in a family home.
The open air museum showing wooden buildings and life of peasants reflected uniqueness of the city too, that at the end said goodbye to us with silky shining twilight through the clouds.
Eventually our train arrived at Moscow’s Yaroslavsky Railway Station. We bade farewell to the train and the staff and we throwed ourselves into the capital’s minuses. I have never ever took part in such cold sightseeing before. But the feeling of Christmas, over-decorated passageways of GUM, visiting Kreml before opening hours brought us such worthy memories those absolutely made us to forget the more layers clothing collection we were wearing and ended our journey with a remarkable finale.
