The JaYmes Escape

“Tomorrow we arrive in Europe, Tomorrow I arrive home”, I explain in my phrasebook? Russian to Nikolai,? the soldier who’s sharing my Kupe on the very well-appointed train number 25, the? Sibirsk. I’m not really arriving home, but crossing the Ural mountains and being on the right continent seems like an? important step.? Appreciating this significance,? Nikolai digs around in his bag? and extracts? a Siberian pine cone, which he tells me I? should have as a souvenir.

The train is bound for Moscow but Nikolai is headed home to his wife and seven year old son in the city of Nizhny Novgrod, some seven hours short of the capital, after visiting his parents in Novosibirsk. I’m on? a 43 hour ride? to the town of Vladimir, the? 12th century? capital of Russia, about? 200km east of the big city and? home to a dazzling array of gold-domed cathedrals and monasteries.

Somehow I instinctively manage to wake myself in time. At? about 4am in Moscow, 7am in Novosibirsk I sit up in my bunk and peer out of the window? into the darkness, knowing that we must be about there. Apparently this location is the real deal; it’s? all to do with drainage basins and watersheds. Somewhere near the marker post that says we’re 1777km from Moscow, a large white obelisk protrudes into the early morning sky beside the track.? This marks the? official spot where Asia ends and Europe begins. As the train? starts a noticeable downward gradient and? I drift back off to sleep, home somehow seems a whole lot closer.