Yekaterinburg surprised us in many ways. We had already seen 3 beautiful, big cities in Russia and when we arrived in Yekaterinburg, we were somehow not that impressed at the beginning. The mixture of soviet-time architecture, skyscrapers, shopping malls and old churches didn’t manage to charm us straight away. But the four days there showed …
As we had been moving relatively fast the last days, we were really looking forward to our first longer train ride in Russia, from Nizhny Nogorod to Yekaterinburg. We would, of course, be now moving even faster – through 2 timezones, but the next 20 hours we could just relax. We had booked the third …
We really, really liked Nizhny Novgorod. Even though it is the fifth largest city of Russia, with the population of 1,25 million, it had a nice small city vibe. A lot of the city’s life is centered around the lively Bolshaya Pokrovskaya pedestrian street up on the hill. Next to it is the old kreml …