Three days train ride from Msocow's Yaroslavsky Station sits the 400-year-old Siberian city of Tomsk. After vaulting across time zones, whizzing through the Ural Mountains and hurtling across sites of the country's industrial heartland, Tomsk is a wonderful example of where Russia's European heritage meets its infinite wilderness.

It may not be instantly familiar but anybody appreciative of traditional German architecture will be spoilt by the finest collection of wooden buildings in Russia. Indeed, the city played host to a high level Germany-Russia summit in 2006 and investment in maintaining the cities heritage subsequently soared.

If Siberia's administrative capital of Novisibirsk is Russia's Las Vegas, then Tomsk is its Athens, a city built on education and architecture. Its large selection of universities give it a youthful feel, typified by the collection of sculptures that lay across the city. One of particular note is a satirical take on Anton Checkhov following his less than glowing account of a stay there during the 1890's. The city is full of small surprises such as this, some constructed others natural.

Tomsk remains relatively affordable and supplies the perfect launchpad for further excursions into the forests and taiga of Siberia. It is has a depth and friendliness that is sometimes lacking in the major industrial towns of central Russia. This intimacy is further accentuated by the fact that the city is hemmed in within a dense forest giving it the feel of a bastion of Europe stuck within the vast outlay of Asia.