The Trans-Siberian Railway Takes Seven Nights

Train number 2, the Rossiya, departs Moscow's Yaroslavsky station on odd-numbered calendar days and arrives in Vladivostok 144 hours later. That is six days. The route, opened in stages between 1891 and 1916, covers 9,289 kilometers — still the longest railway line in the world.

Construction was ordered by Tsar Alexander III in 1891, and his son Nicholas II turned the first ceremonial shovel of earth at Vladivostok. The actual digging was done by soldiers, peasant workers, and convicts, moving east from both ends simultaneously. The section through the mountains above Lake Baikal was the hardest: workers blasted through granite cliff faces and built 39 tunnels in 200 kilometers. That section took until 1904 to finish, and even then it required a temporary rail ferry across the lake in winter.

Today the train runs on Moscow time from end to end, which means the departure and arrival signs at every station show the capital's clock regardless of where you are. Passengers crossing into Siberia find their watches increasingly at odds with the light outside the window — by the time you reach Krasnoyarsk, Moscow time is 4 hours behind local reality.

First-class compartments hold two berths; second-class holds four. The dining car changes staff and menu at major cities — Perm, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk. At each stop of more than a few minutes, vendors appear on the platform selling smoked fish, bread, and boiled potatoes. The stops are often the only way to gauge time outside.