long red lines across a map

Being in a city for only a few days you are really only trying to build a slight impression of the place.  For Yekaterinburg that would be unfinished buildings.  Most strikingly was what I assume was supposed to be a communications tower.  Instead of one aerial thrusting upwards there were many strands of concrete reinforcers forming a bamboo fence like crown.  Also impressively on this particular structure was some of the graffiti.  Not in itself but more from where it was being right at the top of this maybe thirty story structure with only a very rickety metal ladder up the side to climb.  For a city supposedly showing off its new found mineral wealth it was not doing a very good job.  Perhaps the highlight was getting halfway down the central city river walk only to have the path end and end up scrambling around rubble and through collapsing buildings to break through back onto the street grid.

This river walk had sucked us in with the promise of perhaps the most inexplicable monument ever.  Richard was as excited as I think I have ever seen him.  In his words ‘a rendering of something I’ve spent half my life at.’  What else could elicit such emotion from our implacable companion than a twenty metre long stone Qwerty keyboard.  Recessed into a grass bank and with two sullen types occupying the number keys it was magnificently improbable.  The look on myself and Arnika’s faces mimicked the bemusement shown on our host’s face that morning when he got asked to locate it on a map for us.  We jumped around the keys for a while spelling our names and the like.  The teenagers glowered at us.

Humour I suppose.

[read on]

With all the hostel dramas it was quite an effort to force ourselves to get out and explore a little bit and make some use of the day remaining.  A major incentive was the Sunday only market which Ivan informed us was the premier one in the country.  He was right if the product desired was leather jackets, stonewash jeans, bad shoes, frumpy looking female underwear, or fur coats.  An important discovery was that when the stall assistant approaches trying to entice you into a truly appalling leather jacket by saying “mafia” in a hopeful way it is not because he is or thinks you are but that by making such a purchase you could look like a mafioso type.  Tempting. [read on]