When night falls it was time to head over to the train station for my first train leg. The track of approximately 650 km was opened in 1851, when it took around 25 hours to get from Saint Petersburg to Moscow. In 2020, this has been reduced to a mere 4 hours when opting for the fastest train. In addition thereto, there are many overnight trains which take around 8 hours and allow you to travel overnight. The perfect solution for me as travelling overnight will not snoop anything of the valuable time for wandering around during daytime and also saves me the expenses of a hotel in either of the cities.
Dedicated train stations
It is not surprising that this is the busiest train line in Russia, but I was surprised by the fact that Saint Petersburg has a huge train station fully dedicated to trains departing to Moscow, typically called Moskovsky Railway Station. This is actually pretty common, also in Moscow itself. There are no ‘general’ stations, only stations dedicated to certain destinations: Leningradsky, Kazansky, Belorussky, Kievsky, et cetera. As such, I arrived at Moscow Leningradsky Station (one of the former names of Saint Petersburg) and will depart from Moscow Kazansky Station in a few days, heading in the direction of… yep… Kazan.
I chose to take the 0025 called Smena A Bentakur which departs at 21:55 and arrives at 6:06 in the morning. There are several classes in each train. Depending on the train, the first-class cabins generally have two berths whereas the second-class cabins (called kupé) have four berths. Most of the trains also have the cheapest third-class cabins (called platzkartny) which do not have separate cabins but consists of one open cabin with many bunk berths.
I was amazed by the sheer amount of movements that take place at this train station. It is not just the amount of trains leaving for Moscow, but the trains are also insanely long. I thought I was well on time, but it took me a good 10 minutes to walk from the beginning of the platform to my train carriage. In the cabin I met Vlad, a vet from the south of Russia who was travelling to his friends and family in Moscow. When the train started to move, it soon became clear that we were lucky and had the four-berth kupé to ourselves. After a pleasant conversation until 1 AM it was time to jump into our berths. Slightly excited with my first night in the train (with many more to come), I must admit that it was a short night. It also took me a while to get adjusted to the movements of the train, the noises outside at each stop or when another train passed in the opposite direction and the bright light at some of the stops. At 5:30 the train conductor (called provodnitsa or provodnik) woke us and before I knew it, I stepped foot at Russia’s capital. Privet Moscow!
Arriving before the city awakes
And there I had it… It was only 6 AM, the sun just started to rise over the city and everything was still so quiet. Exploring a city as busy as Moscow before the rest of the city started with their day gave me a special feeling and was perfect to soak up the first impressions.
It took a metro and a bus ride of about half an hour to get to the hotel which was exactly in front of the Kremlin. Wow, what a way to start a day in Moscow! The hotel already had a room available for me so I could immediately drop my stuff and brace myself for all the kilometres of Moscow left to explore in the upcoming days.
