Well, we flew from Moscow on Aeroflot, not an experience I recommend, but we survived. We spent the night huddled on seats in the airport and early the next morning set off for Frankfurt, Chicago, Denver and finally, Vail. The adventure is over.

So, what did we do over these last weeks? What did we accomplish?

Well, here are some of the facts:

• We traveled almost 11,000 miles on the train.
• We spent a total of 245 hours on trains.
• We slept on trains for 14 nights.
• The longest stretch was 52 1/2 hours from Ulan Ude to Khabarovsk.
• The shortest was seven hours from Helsinki to St. Petersburg.
• We went through three countries.

I guess, in short, we did something that not a lot of people do … we took the Trans Siberian Railroad and rode it to the max. It is not something you do again lightly, it is a once in a lifetime experience, but I can tell you that if I did repeat the trip, I would do it in the wintertime to see the difference.

Here are some recommendations for those who plan to do this journey.

1. Do NOT buy your tickets in the U.S. You will pay between two and three times as much for your tickets versus buying them over there. Granted, occasionally it will be a challenge (unless of course you speak Russian). We spent about $900 each for our 2nd class rail tickets (Peter a little more when he lost one of his tickets!), including Mongolia and China and had we acquired them here in the U.S., it would have cost approximately $2,500.

2. If you can reserve your hotels from here, (if your schedule is that set) do it. It will save you some hassle. We came out OK in the end, but having hotel reservations will save you some headaches.

3. Don’t go for the most expensive hotels in town. This doesn’t mean you have to go for flea-bag hotels, but we averaged about $40/night for a single, including the expensive one in Helsinki.

4. Buy Ramen noodles for the train. The food isn’t really all that good, especially if you do not speak the language and therefore cannot read the menu. We found the breakfasts to be OK, but lunch and dinner were not too exciting.

There are not very many guide books on the Trans Siberian, but we used the Lonely Planet, Trailblazer and Frommer’s. Lonely Planet (granted it was 3 years old) was quite off on its prices. One of the many examples is that the guide lists a hotel room at $25 and when we called it was $105. Also the fax and telephone numbers were frustrating because of inaccuracies. The Frommer’s Guide on the other hand, is quite exact or within inflationary range. They also have more options, which in general were better.

Let me leave you with the following observations and please note that these are just very personal opinions. We found that there are two distinct classes of people in Russia, those under 35 and those over.

The first age group speaks other languages (mainly English) and is highly interested in other cultures; they want to know what is being said about their country and they are naturally curious. Those people over 35 are still lamenting the loss of communism and the state which took care of them — they cannot cope and have no desire to do so. They don’t speak any other language and have no desire to learn one. The best words we found for this group are apathetic and phlegmatic.

In closing allow me to cite you an example of the difference between the Russians and the Chinese. When we crossed the border in SuiFenHe from Russia into China, we had to wait for a couple of minutes while everyone cleared customs. While we stood there, all of a sudden we heard this car horn blaring and when we looked, we saw a car barreling towards us at top speed, with an arm waving out of the window. The car came closer and closer, the horn still blaring, the arm still waving.

It came to a screeching halt right next to us and a Chinese face looked out of the window and asked “Taxi?” Compare this to various times Peter and I tried to get a taxi in Russia, when the driver of the taxi just lazily pointed to the next one in line, because he was “so busy.” That, in my opinion, is the big difference between the two races and that, again in my opinion, is the reason for the vast economic differences between the two countries.

I hope you enjoyed the last 10 weeks of our reporting and that you found it interesting. Also for your information, Peter and I are still good friends and I will close with repeating what I said after the Asia trip: “Don’t dream it, do it!”