And Your Specialist Subject Is......

Sam displayed a scholarly knowledge of German beer the other night when, not only did she know of Berliner Kindl, the disturbing green beer, she also knew that the green stuff was woodruff flavoured syrup and that at least one other variety existed. It's this sort of dedication to a worthy cause that might just see us through these dark days.

Back then to our adventures in Eastern Europe; thanks for your patience. You left our two intrepid explorers last time outside an Irish bar in Warsaw, heading for the railway station and a midnight train bound for St. Petersburg.

Warsaw's main railway station is one of those vaguely menacing places, especially later on in the evening, so we were trying to appear confident, whistling happy tunes, stuff like that. The armed guard didn't add to the atmosphere either, at one point persuading the sleeping drunk to be on his way with the end of his boot! Eventually and not a moment too soon, although we probably hadn't been there more than an hour, it was time for us to board our train.

Although our journey to St. Petersburg wasn't part of the Trans-Siberian route that would take up our next couple of weeks, it was our first experience of the microculture of east European long distance rail travel: hundreds of people milling round on the platform, nylon bags bursting at the seams but exactly the right size for the luggage compartments, old women selling food and other essentials for the trip, the four bed compartments, the water heater at the end of the corridor, the lack of bathing facilities.

We shared our compartment for the first part of the trip with a quiet, middle-aged woman from St. Petersburg, Luda. Luda was a bit disgruntled, as she'd thought she was going to be on her own and sharing a room with two strangers certainly wasn't what she'd had in mind. She was very polite about it with us and spoke a little German (certainly more than I could), so we were soon getting on fine and the rest of the first night passed off unremarkably.

Around lunchtime on the next day, the first border crossing, into Belarus, was upon us. We hadn't been looking forward to this moment at all, as along with the various other visas we needed for Russia and China, were transit visas to get us through Belarus. After entrusting this to an agency in London, whose mantra to our concerns when time was becoming tight was 'don't worry about it', our passports were returned to us the day before we left Britain with the wrong date on the transit visas! The kind gentleman from the agency refuted any responsibility for this and suggested that we sorted the problem out ourselves!

We'd decided on the 'do nothing approach', to take our chances and play dumb when we got to the border. However, this didn't seem such a good idea when the frontier guard took our passports away into an archetypal grey concrete communist bloc and hadn't returned with them when it looked like the train was being made ready to leave. Luda and the carriage attendant (are they called providechics?) were doing their best to help us and see what was happening but we could see no other outcome than being told to leave the train and a return to Warsaw to get new visas.

Eventually, the guard returned and showed us the dates on the transit visas. In a dramatic change of plan, we showed him the correctly dated Russian visas, shrugged our shoulders, muttered that there had been a mistake and threw ourselves at his mercy. After a few seconds consideration, he smiled, handed us our passports back and wished us 'Good luck'! I've almost never been so relieved.

Shortly after this, our peace was disturbed by a Russian army officer, Clava, who would be our new carriage mate through to St. Petersburg. Luda was far from happy about this but had no influence in the matter. Clava was a standard Russian bear of a man, larger than life and extravagantly generous with the slightly rotting provisions that he brought! He also brought two plastic bottles full of vodka with him for the trip, which he was just as keen to share.

What I remember of that evening is hazy but Catherine has filled in some of the spaces. The oft repeated warnings against drinking home-made vodka, the threat of blindness or worse was completely ignored as the bottles began to empty; toasts were drunk, we persuaded Clava that 'chocolate!' was a popular English toast; we tried to drag the providechic in to join us; continued the toasting when boiling hot glasses of coffee arrived, narrowly avoiding a scalding; I demanded Luda's and Clava's e-mail address from them, despite their insistence that they didn't have one; waking up with my trousers immaculately folded over the bed rail!

I don't know if I'd been sick but Clava had taken me to the toilet at the end of our party. Catherine, who'd very sensibly decided that one of us needed to remain somewhere in the vicinity of sober, knocked on the door to make sure nothing untoward was going on! A similar blank spell befell an old work colleague who, when waking up from a drunken stupor in a strange man's house in Amsterdam, was able to vouchsafe to us that he hadn't been breached while he'd been out of the game! Fortunately, I am in a position to make the same assurance.

Miraculously, I felt pretty good the next morning, which was just as well as we were now approaching the Russian border and would soon be in St.Petersburg. The border crossing went without hitch and we reached our destination. Clava insisted that his relatives, who were collecting him from the station, would drive us to our hotel. Luda told us to be very careful, while the providechic said they were good men. As we didn't have any Roubles or any idea how to get there under our own steam, it seemed rude to refuse.

Clava and his two leather coated relatives ushered us into a large black sedan and away we went, accompanied by ear splitting techno. The railway station and the hotel must have been on opposite sides of the city, as the trip took forever. We seemed to cross the same river at least a dozen times and one street merged seamlessly into another; we could have been anywhere. I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't a little worried about where we were going but we eventually arrived and, with much bear hugging and other traditional farewells, they were off.

What a welcome to Russia!