Novosibirsk

Reputed to be the largest train station in Russia, it takes an area of almost 30,000 m2, and can simultaneously host 4,000 passengers. 

Novosibirsk Glavniy Train Station is designed like a steam engine, heading East, with interiors which one of the visitors described like: ‘Huge and decorated like a concert hall in Vienna...high ceiling, big chandeliers, the architecture - it is unique!’

A splash of green in the middle of the bustling city, at least in summer, with fountains and pleasant cafes.

Horse rides at weekends, with live music concerts. 

Right opposite Novosibirsk City Hall at Lenin square. 

Perhaps the best located hotel in Novosibirsk for those who need to be right in the city centre. A two minutes walk from the Lenin Square, ten minute drive from Novosibirsk Glavniy train station, and about 40 minute drive from Tolmachyovo airport. 

Tsentralnaya Hotel is a budget option, covering the basics like free wifi, free parking, ATMs, air tickets office, sushi bar and a buffet, laundry, ironing and hairdressers. 

The hotel offers studios, as well as deluxe and standard double and single rooms. 

This exceptional collection of brightly coloured historic engines and carriages, dating from pre-revolutionary times, is fascinating as much for the casual visitor as the railway fanatic. 

You can climb into many of the old exhibits, and get a sense of the extraordinary Soviet locomotives that opened up Siberia in the age of steam.

From the city, you can get here by local train, perhaps combining a visit with sightseeing in Akademgorodok and at the Ob Sea.

Organised in 2009 by a family of Irina and Yuri Dryomin, The Museum of Happiness quickly became popular for ‘the feeling of pure joy it leaves you with’, as visitors say. 

The owners of the museum travel the world to gather the items, symbolising happiness to people of different cultures.

There is a collection of ‘German Happiness’, along with the one for France, Russia and Kazakhstan. 

Apparently the only USSR museum in Russia, opened in 2009 and situated in a pretty 1917-built wooden house, nestled between the city centre office and residence blocks. 

So far it is more a chaotic collection of all kinds of items from the Soviet times, from iron hair-straightener to an old fashioned TV set, and famous Soviet perfumes, rather than a systemised museum exposition-but it is still worth a visit! 

Some of the items are for sale. 

This is a satellite town, some 20 km to the south from the centre of Novosibirsk, amid enchanting woodland close to the Ob Sea. Accessible by local train or minibus from the city, too.

Set up in Soviet times by one of Russia’s greatest minds, mathematician Mikhail Lavrentyev, it allowed the young forward-thinking scientists who moved East from Moscow and St Petersburg a pleasant lifestyle, enabling them to work successfully.

It is home to 32 institutes and researching centres, the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Novosibirsk State University. 

Completed during the Second World War, and with its first performance three days after peace in Europe on 12 May 1945, it is arguably the most extraordinary building in all Siberia. 

Located on Lenin Square, it includes a vast dome some 60 metres wide and 35 metres high supported by neither columns nor girders. The dome is some 8cm thick, meaning that the ratio to its radius is less than that of a hen's egg. 

The theatre has a capacity of just under 1,800, with a total area of 11,837 square metres and a volume of 294,340 cubic metres.

A modern Western-style hostel popular with travellers on a budget, including those seeking a night or two off the Trans-Siberian train. 

Seen as great value for money with good security. Run by entrepreneurs Marina Nikiforova and Ksenia Chernikova, who say on their excellent website: ‘Attention backpackers and penny savers! Good news from Siberia. Recent university grads launched the first Western-type hostel in Novosibirsk. 

'The city is notorious for lack of affordable decent accommodations. Dostoevsky Hostel: great location, English-speaking team and everything you need during your budget travel’. 

You may be bang smack in the middle of old Imperial Russia, and so about as far from the sea as you can get, but Novosibirsk boasts several notable beaches.

One is in the city, called Nautilus, on the west bank of the Ob River near the Tube Bridge - and gets crowded on hot summer days. 

Or venture to the Ob Sea, a vast artificial lake created in 1957, and filled in 1959 near Akademgorodok, where university students chill out between lectures.