Tysyacha
“Pazhalsta, ya ne ponimyou russkiy”, I say to the blonde, blue-eyed? woman at the stall. My journey northward is becoming increasingly chilly, and, cursing myself for dumping my tatty winter clothes in Australia and Thailand, I’m browsing jackets and gloves at the market in Khabarovsk. 
I don’t need to buy anything just yet but Siberia isn’t a synonym for ‘bloody cold’ without reason; I’ll be there in a few days and I want to get an idea of how much I might? have to fork out. Trouble is? there are few prices on display and the traders just keep gabbling at me in their language; my reply means “sorry I don’t understand Russian”.
So my journey along the longest railway? in the world has begun; After a few days of sightseeing I left Vladivostok last night on board the No 7 train Sibir, bound for Novosibirsk in Siberia. My first stop is elegant Khabarovsk where the railway veers from north to west, skirting the far north-east of China which is visible across the Amur river. Tomorrow I’ll be continuing towards Siberia and the legendary Lake Baikal.
“Skol’ka stoit?”, I ask the woman, “Tysyacha”, she replies, “Tysyacha roubley”. I just asked her how much the jacket was but I don’t know what “Tysyacha” means. Seeing my confusion she writes? the number? in the air with her finger. “Ah, tysyacha”, I reply with a nod; I have simultaneously learnt that a decent jacket is likely to set me back about twenty quid, and that the Russian word for thousand is “tysyacha”.
