Let me introduce you to old soviet trains, from my memories of a couple of cross country trips. Cozy, you line up by the window in the hallway as it pulls away while your parents unpack and put the suitcases in the high-up compartment in the little room - 2 bunk beds. You get the top one where you hang out and later fall asleep watching the window and listening to the train. There are 4 spots, so you have a guest joining you for the trip, and he tells you interesting stories and plays chess w/ you while drinking his tea. Magic.

Trains when I went back to Russia for a couple of years as an adult: mix of soviet and modern cars. In the soviet ones, the bedding is still from those soviet times. It's itchy, you're not sure whether it's clean, it smells a little funny. The toilets are disgusting, and you want to wash your hands and face from a water bottle -just trust me on that. You got some bunk mates in the 4-bed room. They're annoying, they're idiots, and they pretend to drink tea in class, while mostly just drinking cheap vodka. They step out by the car entrance to smoke every ten minutes, but reak of booze, BO, and smoke - so the whole car reaks too.

The new cars are clean, double the price, nice toilets, everything is plastic, everything smells like plastic. It feels like you're on an airplane. There's no magic.

Spent about a month in Kazakhstan, but flew in there from Moscow. Honestly - egh. Nothing special, just a smaller city with fairly friendly people trying to get through the day.