Warm days are fading away. And all you want is to get the last portion of it in full swing. I know such a place where you can really get lost in the past and enjoy nature. But you’ll derive pleasure from it only if you love history and like trains. So go to the “Cuckoo Museum” near the city of Pereslavl.

Cuckoo (in Russian – Kukushka) is a small steam locomotive used in narrow-gauge industrial railway. Its whistle sounds like a bird, so that’s why they called it that. There – in the forests and swamps of Mother Russia – people worked really hard collecting turf. It was widely used in Russia as fuel for electric power plants as well as fertilizer on collective farms. And the Cuckoo train was the only kind of transport to bring the turf out. Later on it was reloaded onto larger trains.

This narrow-gauge rail blossomed until the end of the 1980s when the planned economy went down the drain. The place immediately became almost empty. Nothing was happening there until a group of young entrepreneurs decided to buy the site from the bankrupt company. So they started to bring all the Cuckoo trains here from various locations to set up an open-air museum. They even brought one train from the South of Russia. I still can’t believe how it was possible to place the steamer on the huge truck and drive it for 2,000 miles!!!

The first thing you see when you come to the museum is a small railway station in the 1930’s style. You immediately become mesmerized, seeing all these old-fashioned radios, uniforms of railway workers, all the important accessories to keep all these Cuckoos going. You have a chance to explore these locomotives and railway cars. Half an hour – and then you feel that the sense of reality is being transformed into some fairy tale in the middle of the Russian forest where your job is to be the boss of all these trains. There is even a sedan on railway wheels for the bosses.

But the moment of ultimate pleasure comes when you go along the rails yourself to the turf sites using a handcar. Fifteen minutes on the rails in the forest and you seem to appreciate the hard work these people were doing to heat the country in 1930s.

There are other exhibits of the past – trucks and motorcycles that add up to a feeling of time travel. So when in Russia – don’t forget to say “hello” to Cuckoo trains to get a better idea of the country. Just ask your Russian friends to help you with directions at www.kukushka.ru (unfortunately, it’s only in Russian) and make this unforgettable journey. This is what I keep doing every summer!!!