JOHN SIMPSON

If it hadn't been for the massive, ugly block of the Sverdlovsk Hotel - opposite the station where my train arrived and just as Soviet and uncompromising as when I stayed there in the bad old days - I wouldn't have recognised the place. Yekaterinburg now has its old name back - and its bright shops are full of European goods, its streets lined with European cars, and its people dressed in lively colours. Its Soviet incarnation, Sverdlovsk, dull and poverty-stricken, is already fading from memory. One day, no doubt, I'll feel nostalgic about it. Not yet though.

The way I came here would once have been pretty much unthinkable, too. What would Leonid Brezhnev have thought about having a superbly appointed, Western-operated train running smoothly and luxuriously across the face of his country? Times have changed with a vengeance. And best of all, the new Trans-Siberian Express, though run by a British company, is built in Russia and staffed and driven by Russians.

Like anyone who has ever read Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, I have always thought that the proper way to get around Russia was by train. In the past I have flown from Moscow to Yekaterinburg, and stood all the way like a commuter, clinging tightly to a rail when we took off and landed. And when I arrived at three in the morning, with the snow lying four feet deep, I was overjoyed to find that a taxi driver had bothered to turn up in case there might be any foreigners on board.

But the proper way to do it is to go to one of Moscow's magnificent railway terminals - great 19th-century palaces - and get on a train. Our Trans-Siberian Express left from Kazansky station, with its enormous overarching roof of glass and brick, grander and more expansive than just about any Western European railway station. (The Russian word for a terminus is voksal; a team of engineers, who came from Russia in the 1850s to see how the British planned their railways, visited the station at Vauxhall, London, and applied the name to stations in general.)

This was the inaugural journey of the newly built train, so a Russian brass band, puffing and sweating under their caps, serenaded us on the station platform: national anthems, but also some meltingly emotional Russian standards like "Dark Eyes" and "Moscow Nights", whose very sound brings a prickle to the eye. Grandees in suits and uniforms shook hands, photographs were taken, someone ran the length of the platform to shout a message, and with a blast on its hooter the train jerked into life and moved out on its long celebratory journey to Yekaterinburg.

We were almost absurdly comfortable. The combination of Western styling and Russian sturdiness works well on a train, and my cabin was relatively spacious, with two fold-out beds, one of them just about big enough for a couple. The shower-room and lavatory were intelligently designed and efficient; and there was a button you could press at any time of the day or night for a glass of tea or something stronger, a sandwich or a bowl of fruit. And somehow the company had trained the staff to smile and be charming; which is, perhaps, the greatest change of all. There was a delightful bar carriage with a pianist - who never, I think, played the same tune during the entire four-day journey - and a dining car like something out of an Hercule Poirot story, with white-clad waiters swaying backwards and forwards with tureens of soup and plates of something encouraging. And after that it was back to the bar for the rest of the evening, before I stumbled through the shifting, unpredictable corridor to my cabin, as though I was on a ship in a gale.

I slept remarkably well on my three nights, even though I was always aware of the train's movement. In the morning there was the pleasure of pressing the switch to open the blinds, and pressing another to order a cup of tea. And outside the countryside ran unalterably on: the birch trees, the fir trees, the meadows, the wooden houses and dachas, the industrial outskirts, the unreconstructed Soviet architecture of the towns themselves, the outskirts again, and the everlasting birch trees. It is hypnotic; especially if you have brought a decent Russian novel, and some Tchaikovsky or Balakirev on your iPod.

I can't think when I have spent a quieter or more rewarding four days. I didn't lose weight but I met a lot of really pleasant and interesting people. And I got the train bug in a way I hadn't previously thought possible. All those films and novels about dramas on trains, from Sherlock Holmes to John Buchan and Graham Greene, seem to come alive as you sway at speed through the landscape. I'm already trying to see if I can take the time to travel from Moscow to Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan (normally closed to me as a journalist) and eventually to Beijing, and from Cape Town in South Africa to Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania and (with an intermediate stage by plane) on to the Nile in Egypt for a boat to Cairo when that service starts next year. Like staring out at the landscape, these things can easily become addictive.

Everywhere there will be surprises and pleasures, like discovering the changes that have taken place here in Sverdlovsk/Yekaterinburg. The organisers of the journey, knowing that my time was short, asked if I wouldn't prefer to leave the train here, and fly back to Britain from the local airport (there are a couple of flights a week). You must be kidding, I said.

John Simpson is the BBC's world affairs editor and can be seen around the globe on the BBC World news channel. BBC World is available in 200 countries and territories worldwide and on selected flights.