Trans-Siberian railway trip

On an independent Trans-Siberian Railway trip in May 2013, my wife, Dee, and I arrived in Irkutsk, Russia, five time zones east of Moscow, at 8 a.m. We were picked up in a 9-passenger van with a few other passengers and driven to Listvyanka on the shores of Lake Baikal, the largest freshwater lake in the world in terms of volume. It was sunny and 40°F out. It was about a 90-minute drive to Listvyanka, where we went to a wooden chalet. After getting settled and trying to use the Internet, we were driven about an hour to the Cossacks Village, dating from the late 1600s. The replica village included some original and some reconstructed buildings*. In Russia, the Cossacks had gone east to find new lands to live on, similar to settlers in America who went west. We were served lunch in the village, then returned to the chalet to rest and have dinner before a night’s sleep and returning to the train.

— STAN INK, North Fort Myers, FL

[The "Cossacks Village," as it was called in the print version of this article, should have been identified as the Taltsy Museum of Wooden Architecture. For more, see "Taltsy open-air museum" (Sept. '14, pg. 55). — Editor]