Tobolsk is off the main train route, but used to be the capital of Siberia (in 17th and 18th Centuries) and has a stunning Kremlin (fortress) complex and a load of cathedrals. It also has a certain notoriety as it was the staging prison for a lot of "famous" people being sent into Siberia and into exile, and the last Tsar and his family stayed here before they were taken to Ekaterinburg and killed. It is also the smallest city we are travelling to, with a population of just under 100k.

Once again, we had fun with the bus to get into town, as we just managed to miss the perfect bus to get us from the station, which is 10kms from the Kremlin, to our hotel. We therefore had to wait for another bus, which may or my not have taken us to the correct place. Thankfully a lovely Russian lady, with barely any English decided to adopt us and help us into town.

She got us on one bus, off it, and onto a new bus that would take us where we needed to be. She even waited for us to get on the second bus before she left. We are starting to form the opinion that Russians have what we are calling a "resting Russian face", which is generally rather severe and does not smile. On the first bus, the conductor, and the old lady who waited at the station with us, both stared at us, and then decided that our Samaritan must know us, so asked her about us. I gather they asked her where we were from (the conductor decided we were French - I put her right) and what we were doing in Tobolsk. Thankfully I was able to sort of understand and answered for our Samaritan who didn't know anything about us.

Tobolsk is a strange place, it feels a bit deserted, not many tourisis (certainly no large groups of Asian tourists like Lake Baikal) but there is an amazing Kremlin complex which dates back to the 17th Century on an escarpment, which overlooks a decaying old town. The Kremlin and the churches and bell-towers which surround it are really picturesque, and I have far too many photos of the gold topped domes.

We are being stared at a lot with full "resting Russian face".

The town itself (well the "touristy" bit we are staying in) is still pretty sparse, with lots of ugly Soviet blocks of flats, and has quite a lot of people sitting around drunk in parks. I'm not sure it will rank as a favourite, even though the Kremlin and surrounds are stunning, and the history very interesting.

I managed to get us here on a Monday, which of course meant that all the museums were closed. We had a good day therefore wandering round the outsides of places, and taking a walking trip through a bit of the old town.

The Lonely Planet describes the old town as delightful wooden buildings sinking into the flood plain. Well since the Lonely Planet was here, it looks like a lot of those buildings have been demolished and new flats have been put in their place, and a lot of the nicer brick buildings have become derelict, I presume whilst they wait for demolition and the building of new flats.

We did meet a nice church cat however, he was hanging around one of the churches and followed us inside (where the church warden - an old lady, every Orthodox church seems to have one) didn't bat an eye-lid, just smiled when we stopped to pat him on the way out. The rest of the old town felt deserted.

Tuesday was a day for all the museums.

- The prison museum, which was interesting, but rather depressing and acted as a functioning prison for far too long given the conditions (it looked like it was still operational in the 1980s), and started life as the staging prison for Siberian exiles in the 19th Century, and then became a Soviet prison, where during 1937 (the purges) over 1800 people were shot, sometimes over 250 in one day. There were certain underground holding cells, which felt like if you took a photo, you would see a ghostly image in one of them. Very creepy.
- The Deputy-Governors museum, which had english signage, which was so very exciting and gave us a history of Tobolsk. My favourite exhibit was a bell which had tolled for the murder of an heir to the throne, and was therefore taken down, had its clapper taken out, it was given lashes and exiled to Siberia - yes a bell!! amazing.
- The Provincial Museum which had a mammoth skeleton and some really bad taxidermy.

Next stop is a day train to Ekaterinburg - back on the main Trans-Siberian route and heading out of Siberia.

Our carriage mate (Alec) on the 10 hour train trip was a security guard for Gazprom who was on his way home from a business trip. He wanted to chat. I think his English was only slightly better than my Russian, but only just. We used Google Translate quite a bit. We did all the usual stuff about where we were from etc, what we did for a living, how much Luke earned (!!), we shared a bit of cognac, and then he told us he was in the army and served in Chechnya and showed us pictures of him in his uniform (and also his dad in his Soviet uniform) and with tanks... he then asked about the Australian army (which I know very little about).

When having lunch, I got out Luke's sharp knife to cut our bread and cucumber and Alec asked to have a look, and proceeded to do some weighing and flipping and stabbing motions, before declaring it ok... I made it clear that the knife was for bread!

Anyway, the slight stress of communicating made the trip go both more quickly, but at the same time a lot more slowly. Whilst it was good to meet another friendly Russian, it would have been nice to call it quits a bit earlier.

We made it into Ekaterinburg just shy of 10pm, and caught a cab to the hotel. I know what lush's!!