Maybe the trains are telling me something?

When your train does an emergency stop it generally isn't a good thing. You all groan and wonder how long until they move the branch/leaves/whatever the big issue is that day. When your carriage guard starts shouting and runs down your carriage with a fire extinguisher you know the outlook isn't good. Only then did I notice the smoke outside and distinguish the strange smell of things burning that shouldn't be from the residual musty cigarette smoke that seems to permeate everything Russian.

Long story short, my sleeper train between Berlin and Moscow caught fire, in the next carriage down from ours, about 20 minutes out from Berlin. What with this and the Eurostar fire I'm starting to wonder whether taking trains half way round the world really IS such a good idea...

Looking on the positive side, I have some really impressive photos of German fire fighters, and it did break the ice with the Russians on the train, meaning that we did attempt to communicate, and boy am I glad I learnt a bit of Russian, because they were ALL Russian, with only a few words of English between them! I have now made it to Moscow, albeit 3 hours late, and very sleep deprived from the 4.20 am and 5.20 am border crossings, plus that the train driver seemed to decide that he enjoyed the emergency stop so much at the beginning of the journey that he'd continue to use that as method of choice meaning that EVERY stop during the night (of which there were many) sent everything flying round the cabin, including the occasional person!