arnika round the world

Leaving Russia was a 2 night train ride into the heart of Mongolia, our next destination. As I mentioned before the train was really just one carriage that was attached to different trains across the two countries and well over half of these were foreigners, all doing the same ‘lonely planet’ tour as you may say. It was funny to meet all these people who had done similar things to us but we just never saw them, I think its better that you are really just alone in Russia on the trains otherwise it would be a bit like being on a real tour but the train ride was fun having lots of people around especially having Jannina, Juliet and Paulin from Olkhon with us. We crossed the Russian border after about 24 hours on the train, in true Russian style we arrived at the border town around 2pm and didn’t leave till around 8pm, while our carriage just sat on the tracks.

(Russia has lots of vodka options)

We wandered around the tiny, depressing town to stock up on chocolate and vodka and discovered the person carriage that was attached to our train, compleate with armed Russian guards who ferried prisoners handcuffed from the train into a waiting van. A little disconcerting but we felt better after the carriage didn’t come with us to Mongolia. Finally we got stamped out with a token customs checks. When you arrive in Russia you get this little white piece of paper to get you visa registrations stamped which is said to be really important, as is not losing the paper as people say you can get fined up to $500, but of course there was no problem and the guards didn’t pay attention to our carefully set out registrations. Oh well, better safe than sorry I guess.

So out of Russia into Mongolia where the border officials were remarkably nicer. Another night on the train spent playing stupid games and cramming as many people as possible into our little cabin.

(Tom, Jannina, Paulin and Damien inside our train cabin)

We had to travel the equivalent of second class on this train as there is only one carriage so only one option, much flasher but really expensive, almost as much as all our trains across Russia! We pulled into the Mongolian capital Ulaanbaator (or UB) around 6am, nice and early, nice and dark and nice and cold. Luckily the guest-house was there to pick us up along with most of the train who were staying there. UB guest-house is the most well known and a bargain at $5 a night which is great after Russia.

After showering and eating we heading out with the Jannina and Juliet to brave the freezing cold of UB and see  few sights. UB is not exactly a pretty city, in fact kind of ugly but it does have its charm.

We checked out a big square with Chinggis Khan (not not Ghengis, Chenggis) statues and then went to the museum with some of the worst taxidermy animals of all time and terrible lighting, some sweet dinosaur bones though as Mongolia has a lot of Dinosaur bones preserved in the Gobi.

After making fun of the museum for a bit we went back for a dvd then out to a totally bizarre Mongolia restaurant. We thought it may have been  strip club sometimes. They had us wait for a table in  a dusty back room while a  guy stumbled in with a girl trying to get her into another back room…it was a little weird. Eventually we got a table and despite my attempts at something non meat I got a plate full of it. Tired and hungry I headed to bed while the others went out to a club.

We had one more day before heading out on our mega Gobi trip and we checked the monastery which was really cool, big area with lots of Monks chilling out and doing morning prayers.

The the rest of the day was spent manically sorting things out for our 2 week van trip, out to the black market for warm clothes (Mongolia is freezing), getting USD out (only to find exchange rate has dropped dramatically…lame), trying to get a train ticket, buying food…it was all way to much walking! But we got it done and had yummy thai for tea before bed time ready for THE GOBI!!!!

From Olkhon Island it was another long 7 hour journey back into Irkutsk where we picked up our passports (complete with Mongolia visa!) and made use of the rest of the day which was an amazing 16 degrees (the warmest since Lithuania). I had a wander around the big food market where I picked up some vege’s for dinner. I really love shopping in markets, it’s so cool and such a great way to buy stuff, its like real life, all these people out buying food from the same old lady...it’s a fun time. There were lots of old babushka’s with tiny tables just selling a handful of goods, like a couple of tomatoes and a few bunches of herbs. I brought my vege’s off a friendly lady who even had a semi conversation with me about where I was from (in sign language of course). It was fun.

On the way out you could also get your photo taken with giant taxidermy bears….part of Russians strange obsession with bears. Back at the hostel there were loads more people around and we cooked dinner and hung out for a bit until bed. The next day was our last day in Russia before our train later that night, crazy to think how the month went by so fast and a little bit sad as after a month you kind of get a handle on how things work, although in Russia its pretty much impossible, but you do learn a few things, then it’s time to leave again, off to a new country with a whole new set of rules and customs. Of course it was freezing our last day, like glacier cold so didn’t get up to too much, just did a few jobs, did some train shopping and managed to track down some Russian dolls to buy (souvenirs basically don’t exist after Moscow).

Then we were packed up and headed off to the train station to meet up with Janinna, Juliet, Paulon, plus half our hostel and a whole lot more backpackers on the train. Actually the ‘train’ to UB was really only a carriage, about 70% westerners, the carriage got attached to lots of different trains over the course of the 36 hour train journey.

So it was time to leave Russia…I feel like I could write a whole book on thoughts about Russia and travelling there, perhaps one day I will. But for now here are a few thoughts….

Russian oddities

Fashion

Although the boys tend to disagree with me on this one, every single female traveler I have met has always pointed it out or thought the same. Basically most girls in Russian dress….well like prostitutes, OK maybe not most girls, and maybe not quite like prostitutes but leaning that way. Pretty much everyone wears high heeled boots, and not just normal boots like knee and thigh high patent shiny leather boots, with mini skirts. And jackets that are so shiny and tacky they could be made from plastic backs. Then there’s the fur which is rather practical for the weather but just all so tacky, I mean whole white fun coats are just not cool. So you see why guys like it, they can check out all the girls in their tight clothes. And I guess its not too bad for most of the girls who are all tall and thin and beautiful but problems really start when the above 40’s start to urmm…express themselves with tight, tight clothing. The further you get away from St P’s the less classy it is and more tacky. Its all just a bit strange and seems to be way to much effort for every day wear, I mean stiletto boots down to the grocery store??

Queues

Like many non-western countries, queuing is not something that is ingrained in society, Mc Donalds was apparently the first place to teach Thai’s how to queue and the Chinese have been getting lessons in the lead up to the Olympics. Russia seems to be trying to get crowds to queue but in fact have the worst queuing systems ever invented, I mean even in management science 101 I learned more about queuing. Its odd. Most queues form sideways, along the counter, which eventually runs out of space, or there is no queue and pushing. Or there is 3 different places to queue to get a tickets to give to someone to get some then to pay for it. Lots of time the queues are just set up badly leaving little room for people to actually wait, only opening one ticket window at a time or not setting it up so people can actually use all the ticket windows. And one people make it to the front of the queue because they have waited so long they will make sure they ask every question and make full use of the service making queuing a long drawn out process. Queuing is a surprisingly strange process in Russia

Old ladies

Pretty much old ladies or ‘babushkas’ rule Russia. Whatever they want, they get. You can always tell a babushka because of her stooped walk, angry face, with a head scarf and always carrying two plastic bags full of stuff. They push in front of you in every queue possible, push you out of the way to get pasty, steal your bed in the train or sleep all day on the bed you’re supposed to sit in. As you can tell by the end of Russia we no longer like old women

Photo’s

People love to take photos of themselves in Russia, particularly girls. Everywhere you go are groups of chicks posing for each other in photos. So you can kind of fit in as a tourist taking photos everywhere. Although it is a little weird, all these girls full on posing with these weird angry faces I guess trying to look ‘good’ or something. People also like to dress up and go do photo shoots of themselves in parks and things, in the typical cheesy style, twirling under leaves, leaning seductively against a tree…its all a bit weird. Wedding photos are even stranger as we arrived in the wedding month so every city from St P’s to Irkutsk had wedding parties having photos shoots in public spaces, the groom never really having anything to do with it, always just stuck in the photo as an afterthought while the bride is always in her element. Its all strange

Other bizarre things are the useless traffic management system, a strange tendency to continue building ugly cold war apartment blocks while over half the city still has unfinished buildings…and well about a million other things. Russia is definitely an interesting place to travel in and while it was hard I did really enjoy it and keen to fight the visa bureaucracy once more

Making it to Irkutsk was a pretty big milestone as it was our last destination in Russia, we had made it across Siberia and were hoping things were going to get a bit easier as there are actually tourists in Irkutsk. Most travellers on the trans-sib only stop in Irkutsk before heading on the Mongolia so there are a few hostels and actually other tourists, which was a bit of a novelty. It was kind of funny though as you spend so long not seeing any other backpackers and thinking you are the only ones in Russia when suddenly there are all these other people who have been doing the same thing as you and it doesn’t feel so adventurous any more. We had a couple of nights in Irkutsk which is a nice town close to lake Baikal, the world’s biggest lake. Baikal is so big it contains 20% of the worlds drinking supply, and if the world ran out of water it could provide enough water for the entire population for the next 40 years. We are talking about a big big lake here. Which is why Irkutsk is so popular, although it’s not right on the lake it’s a jumping off point for lake side towns. We were going to head out to Olkhon Island but had a day in Irkutsk to look around. It was however, freezing cold and at one point started to snow. I was over it so after we dropped our passports off to get our Mongolian visa’s and handing over money for the most expensive train ticket so far to Mongolia, I hid back in our dorm room in the warm. It was nice to be in a hostel again and meet some other travelers to hear stories and swap tips over a few beers. There were just five of us on the second night there, we all cooked tea together, made cookies with left over ingredients we found in the cupboard and watched a dvd. So normal but nice way to spend a night.

The drive to Olkhon Island was 7 hours so we headed out early to find a mini bus which supposedly left at 9. After ditching our tram because it got stuck in the most ridiculous traffic jam ever (even I could plan Russia’s traffic systems better) we headed off on foot to find the bus station and ended up getting spotted by a driver (do we stand out that much as tourists?) and were loaded on to a mini bus. The drive over to the island was really beautiful passing yellow fields and clear blue skies. We picked up passengers along the way and the mini bus filled up and emptied out at different points. The area around the lake is home to semi autonomous region of the Buyrat people who look much more Mongolian than Russia, shamanism is big here and we passed lots of ribbons tied around trees and the two ladies in the front threw out a few coins at different holy sites along the way. After a long drive we eventually made it to the ferry to take us across to the island, of course being Russia the whole process took ages and was stupidly organized with heaps of cars and vans trying to drive on at once. While waiting though we had nice views of the lake which is extreamely clear and blue.

In a couple of months the lake will be totally frozen over and there is an ice road across to the island. Finally on the ferry it was short ride across to the island then another half an hour drive to the town which has become really popular with tourists because of this one guest house called Nikkita’s. Nikkita’s is really an amazing place, on this island in the middle of nowhere, after hardly seeing another tourist for weeks we are suddenly at tourist enclave with English speaking staff and people around.

All the rooms are in little cottages, all built really ornately and the place is beautiful. We got a nice room with a fireplace and meet 3 others who had arrived that day, Yennina and Juliet- Dutch and German girls travelling together, and Paulon a French guy. We ended up spending quite a bit of time with them as they were on our train leaving Russia. The best part about the guest house is that is provides all meals so we got a late lunch when we arrived of soup bread and fish in the dining room. We went for a wander down to the lake as the sun was setting, we were near some rocks which have some significance and the ladies from the bus were down the end praying and doing some sort of ritual, and then a group of men close by drinking vodka, there were lots of blue ribbons ties around poles which worship the sky god, so you see those everywhere. The township is on the side of the island close to mainland so looking across it doesn’t look very big but along the side you can see the water stretches on forever.

The town is reasonably sized, but really a collection of ramshackle houses, dirt roads and a lot of cows and dogs wandering around, it’s a very slow and relaxed place but nice. The colours of the yellow island and the blue sky with the setting sun were amazing and we walked along the edge for a bit before cutting back through town and arriving just in time for…dinner! Only a couple of hours after our huge lunch, but another delicious big meal of fish and vegetables. The owner came in to play piano for a bit and we sat around drinking tea and reading before finding the other 3 where we headed to Paulon’s room to drink some vodka. Then it was off to bed, my last night being 22.

We had the full day on the island which was my birthday. It was a beautiful day, warm and sunny, we had a huge breakfast of eggs bread and porridge then hung around for a huge lunch before heading off on a walk trying to walk to the top of the hill behind the town to try get a better view of the lake, of course harder than it looked and we ended up just wandering around the forest for a few hours without really seeing anything, But no worries, we went back to the guest house and me and Rdoc braved the icy waters for a quick dip in the lake which is the cool thing to do, and apparently adds 25 years on to your life. It really was the fastest swim ever, in and out immediately as the water was freezing!

(after our swim…looks warm, but it wasn’t)

But it felt good and was very refreshing! Tom wasn’t feeling well so didn’t come down but of course couldn’t be out done so ended up getting up really early the next morning and going swimming. We meet up with the other 3 who had hired bikes and hadn’t had much success finding the other side of the lake either, had some dinner then I went with them sand they shouted me a birthday banya, a Russian style sauna complete with birch branches to whip each other with, which I got from all three while they sung me happy birthday…one of my more interesting birthdays! It was ridiculously hot but warmed me up from our earlier swim. After enough of the heat we found the boys then went out to find the one small bar on the island which didn’t have many people inside but whole groups of people outside parked up with loud music pumping from their Lada’s. Classic. We had a few beers and played a whole lot of games, thanks to Paulon who has this amazing knack of keeping people entertained.

(Rdoc, Paulon and Yennina at the super cool ‘bar’)

We walked back under the clear sky with thousands of stars. Great way to spend my birthday!

Our arrival in Krasnyarsk presented yet another accommodation challenge as we hadn’t booked a room. If I haven’t explained this before booking accommodation is possibly one of the hardest things about Siberia as there are no hostels and no one speaks English so making it impossible to ring ahead before hand, on top of this all the LP options have horribly out of date prices. Anyway we arrived and brought ourselves an outgong train ticket without too much difficulty then trolley bused our way into town pushing past annoying babushkas who insist on pushing in front of you all the time. I have never disliked old ladies quite so much as in Russia. Our soviet era trolley bus pulled on to the main street of a nice-ish town which bizarrely had speakers on every corner and played music constantly. It made a strange comparison the up beat jazz playing alongside people depressingly walking around (In Russian people on the street always look depressed). We ended up spending 2 hours walking around town trying to find a cheap bed, our first choice of hostels was “closed” as told by the guy on the desk. We tried everything from the boats along the river to the hostels right down the other end of town. During these times I am always glad of my light pack, which is probably half the weight of the boys…wearing the same clothes every day is not that bad compared to lugging around 20 kilo’s on your back. Eventually we found a very cheap hostel right on the main room. Truly soviet style, complete with cyrillic only check in forms (these took a long time with the phrase book to fill in), super angry reception girls, massive corridors but small, cigarette smelling rooms.

It had been a pretty tiring afternoon so we spent the rest of the day relaxing and getting some food before finding a nice café for coffee. We had the full day there before our train which was late in the evening and the reason we had come was to go to this national park to see some giant rock formations.

Turns out finding the place was harder than expected, as always guidebooks have out of date info on buses but eventually we ended up on one we hoped was going the right way, we got off and climbed some big hill before seeing the road leading into the park, we had to climb down this very, very steep hill face to get there but made it on to the road, which was nice to be out of the cities.

The paved road continues right through the park which didn’t make for a very authentic nature experience, but all the same we followed families and groups of friends up the path, stopping for lunch. We weren’t very successful in finding the rock formations and ended up a long way from the entrance in the cold and pouring rain. We were pretty wet by the time we arrived back into town so went back to the nice warm café for coffee, food and a glass of wine which strangely is cheaper than coffee. Actually we were the only ones drinking coffee, everyone else had wine and beer despite being an Italian style coffee place. We had some dinner, grabbed some train food and head out to the station where our train was delayed. For just about the first time since leaving Moscow we spotted a backpacker across the waiting room, obviously standing out as no one in Russia has backpacks, either they put their stuff in plastic bags or boxes or often don’t have any luggage at all. Anthony was heading to the same place but on a different train so we left him for the evening but meet up again at the hostel in the next town.

Our train to Irkutsk was around 20 hours long and finally we had a good seating arrangement with a whole section to ourselves. We spent a lot of the time watching the tiny villages go by which had huge cemeteries, a reminder of what Siberia really meant during Soviet times.

Just a quick update, I have left Russia and in Mongolia, home of Nomads, camels, mutton and bad lighting. We are leaving tomorrow on a 13 day journey into the Gobi desert, should be very intense and bad food. So I will be out of action for a bit but am still alive hopefully somewhere out there. When we get back we will be straight on a train to Beijing. A busy next few weeks….will write about it later….

Tomsk turned out to be a lovely city, the great bargain rooms helped and the weather was perfect, so finally good enough weather to lie around in the sun. Tomsk is a university town so lots of young people around who are generally a bit happier and more friendly than old people, lots of nice cafes and a big park where people hung out in.

Being Autumn as well the colours of the trees were changing and everywhere was orange leaves and trees, good times. We spent 3 days there, catching up on sleep, lying in the park, eating at this great cheap cafe with amazing cake and watching MTV on our TV’s. I may have mentioned this before but all western tv is dubbed over with the worst Russian voice overs, you can still hear the english underneath. But because MTV is so trash you don’t really need to understand what was going on.

Tomsk is famous for its wooden houses so we wandered along one of the roads to see some of the nice ones, lots of them have all gotten old and falling apart heaps, literally sinking into the ground. I don’t think they have many building regulations here as lots of houses have whole corners sinking into the ground. But there are a few that are restored. We wandered through a really cool market as well, packed with old ladies selling vege’s and clothing, knitted hats, berries and meat. Loads of food everywhere, a few people told me that food was hard to come by in Russia but there are always old ladies selling things on the road. Someone was also selling cigarrettes in boxes with Stalin and Lenin on the front…very random but had to buy some as they only cost about 30 cents a box…not sure how they can seriously sell things with Stalin on the front when he was the cause of so many problems and they don’t really celebrate him, but still got myself some Stain cigarettes.

One restaurant we went to, recommended by both guide books, nice food and things but we had to pay a 50 rub ($3) charge for the ‘music’, which turned out to be a guy wth a laptop who sung terrible karaoke style music over top. So typically Russian and so bad…but people seem to love it. There were groups of girls singing and dancing along and taking photos of themselves. One thing Russians seem to love is photos and everywhere we go people are taking photos of themselves in these bizarre over posed styles. Like in the park there were girls down there dressed in red stilettos and mini skirts posing in the tree’s, their high heels sinking into the dirt. its just very very strange…kind of like all young girls want to show off and pose with their “I am hot and bitchy” face.

Our last day we had a train late at night and the weather was a bit colder so we dragged out the day in a cafe where everyone ordered fired dumplings all day long, not sure if it was a special thing for the day but obviously it was the cool thing to order, however their “English” menu was actually German and we ordered a few wrong things before we finally got ourselves some fried dumplings filled with potato and meat. We often spend a lot of time in cafes waiting and ordering things spaced out over time so we can stay longer!

We jumped on the train, a short overnight journey to Krasnyarsk, another train journey, no vodka this time and arrived in the afternoon the next day. One difficult thing to adjust to hee is the time difference, with just about every city being an hour or 2 ahead of the last. But all the train timetables are on Moscow time, and the train station clocks on Moscow time, but the towns up to 5 hours ahead of Moscow, and then daylight savings apparently in some places and also our guide book actually having the wrong time zones…it can get very confusing about what time it actually is and making sure you get the right ticket and gt to the train station not local time but Moscow time….confusing. Also having to adjust to a new time zone every 3 days, for ages I still felt I was on Moscow time so getting up in the morning was like getting up at 3am, However am used to it now and we will be staying in the same time zone for all of Mongolia and China.

(Russian train station…we spend a lot of time in buildings like this waiting….)

So this leg of the journey turned out to be one of the toughest. Our train ride was 24 hours, and we had 3 top bunks which meant no real place to sit. We did actually have one bottom bunk but turns out some old lady had over taken that one. During the day the top bunks fold up and then you all sit on the bottom ones, but this is dependent on whether the person on the bottom ever gets up, and old ladies never get up, they lie around all day long. But the day passed ok, we read lots, played cards and went through our supply of instant noodles and instant coffee.

(Platskart train days…)

We were well and truly into Siberia now and we watched it pass through the dirty train windows, not the barren land I imagined but all yellowing trees and field of grass, quite pretty actually.

A pretty uneventful day until we were standing around the samovar (hot water dispenser) making bed time hot chocolates when we meant 2 young Kazakhstani guys travelling to Novosibirsk (where we were heading to change to a bus to Tomsk) for a metal concert. They were med students and spoke a little bit of English, so just as we were about to go to bed the invited us to drink Kazakhstani vodka, better than Russian vodka of course. Somehow the vodka kept coming and a few bottles later we were singing each other songs on an untuned guitar in the smoking areas while old Russian women laughed at us. Our phrase book came in handy again for the other random Russians who came to join us. Language barriers cease to be a problem after awhile. The down side to this was having to get off the train in the middle of the night, after no sleep, still dark outside and a long walk to the bus station. I am not sure how we managed to make it off the train with all our stuff but we did and had a 2 hour nap in the station until it was light then walked the 30minutes across town in 5degree weather to this tiny bus station with no seats and too many people.

Probably the most difficult walk ever, just needing concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other. We waited an hour for the bus and slept the whole 5 hours to Tomsk.

By the time we arrived in Tomsk we had crossed another time zone, hadn’t eaten for the whole day and again were without accommodation. Me and Tom left Rdoc in the station with our packs and went out to find somewhere to stay. We walked right across town getting turned away everywhere before our last hope turned out to have rooms, very cheap rooms with amazing showers, tv’s and fridges-although slightly dodgy building standards. It was bliss to have a shower and get some real food. Another mega intense journey that reminded us we should book hotels in advance. Problem being that no one speaks english so this is actually impossible most of the time….

A bit more confident we had planned better for the next leg of the journey we jumped on the 14 hour train ride to Yekaterinburg with a supply of food. It was overnight so we were on the real trans-sib platskart (3^rd class, open style carriage with 52 bunks) trains. We didn’t have a good combination of beds as last time, its good when you have 2 lower bunks and once upper because then as 3 of us we can kind of overtake the compartment bit. But luckily the people we were sitting with were nice and very soon we were sharing vodka and making friends with the crazy drunk guy, my Russian phrase book has been one of the most useful things on this trip and I think we could have made an ad for it that night! In the morning the crazy drunk guy was still drunk and turned up with a bottle of vodka to share with us at 10am, Russians are very persistent with their vodka and Tom ended up with a bit too much until we hid the cups. Arriving in Yekaterinburg we couldn’t find the trolleybus to take us to our hostel as it turns out there were road works, so it took a few hours of waiting and walking before we finally found it. Again just crazy Russian ways, of just cancelling the trolley buses and doing road works in the middle of the day across the whole main street. Yekaterinburg has the worst traffic management, with hardly any road markings and intersections are a huge mess of cars and buses.

Yekaterinburg: the city of unfinished buildings

The city of Yekaterinburg is a big industrial city with way too much building going on, and way too many buildings having been abandoned before finishing. Our hostel was a tiny place in a Soviet style apartment block but thankfully with a kitchen so we could cook up some healthy food. We thought we were the only ones on the 6 bed dorm but 3 extra people turned up at 5am each morning, one of which snored very loudly. We had a train ticket for leaving early in the morning after 2 nights so we had a full day there. There is a 2 hour time difference so we didn’t end up leaving the hostel till after 1pm, another big day of walking around, seeing monuments, a railway museum and a bizarre monument to the keyboard, a graffited and overgrown key board set in a grassy hill next to the river.

The city is pretty well known in Russian as it is the border between Europe and Asia and also where the Romanovs were murdered. The Romanovs were the ruling Tsar family before they were overthrown in the revolution. They were taking to Yekaterinburg and the whole family brutally murdered. Now they are celebrated and have achieved a saint like status with a huge memorial church and statues commemorating them.

Russia seems to not like a lot of people but then in later years decided that they were actually great and build them big monuments.Guess its hard with such a complicated history.

We saw a lot of other ugly buildings, and lots of unfinished ones, stoked up for the next train and splashed out on a taxi to take us at 6am to the station for the next leg of the journey

Writing this from our hostel in Irkutsk, we are over half way to Beijing, it’s been about 2 weeks since leaving Suzdal and it truly has been a crazy journey. We have now crossed right over Siberia and have made it to our last Russian destination. People often told me that Russian travel was difficult and it seems that it is! It has been a pretty hard week or so with some very intense days but good and not impossible obviously as we have made it this far! Doing the Trans-Sib journey the way we are doing, a full month stopping lots on the way is a very different experience that the usual straight through or only stopping once or twice that most people do. As I have said before buying train tickets can be a very frustrating experience and finding accommodation is a nightmare as there are no hostels and very, very few budget hotels. I am sure if you spoke Russian you would have a very different experience, although I think sometimes in Russia things just don’t make sense regardless of whether you understand the explanation or not. But, in saying that it’s still pretty cool, no other backpackers and you really feel like you are off the beaten track.

So I will explain the last few thousand miles in the next few posts…

Suzdal to Nizny Novgorod to Kazan

(fluffy hat Police men…don’t piss them off)

This was probably the most intense and frustrating 24 hours of my life. We bused in to Vladimir, where the next train to Nizhny Novgorod where we could change trains to Kazan wasn’t for about 4 hours. We hung around, stocking up on a bit of food for the next few train journeys. Eventually our train pulled up. It was really flash-only about 3 hours long, but nice compartments and we even got a little food packets and bottled water. We arrived in Nizhny at around 10pm where we were hoping to find an overnight train that night to Kazan which was about 9 hours away. Unfortunately we worked out (with a bit of difficulty) that the train wasn’t until 5.45am the next morning. As it was already late we didn’t want to pay for a hotel so decided to spend the night in the train station. We moved to the main station area from the suburban bit we had arrived in to the waiting room, of course filled with the crazy type of people that usually spend all night in a train station. The security guards were pretty tough and wouldn’t let anyone sleep for very long before coming and waking them up. A kid came and sat close to us before the police took him away and warned us about keeping our ipods out of sight. There were random puppies cruising round and some drunks. At about 3am we tried to buy a train ticket but were turned away. Nyet. No explanation, just no ticket. Eventually we got the tickets, waited out the next couple of hours, by which time it was freezing cold. Outside was icy. So we got on the train for the 9 hour journey managing to sleep most of the way.

Arriving in Kazan the first hotel we tried was expensive, the second was cheap but full. That was about all our budget options exhausted. But this stage we were exhausted and hadn’t eaten anything all day. We stopped by the tourist office where the girl found us a room at the first place we had tried for much cheaper, even with the 25% “reservation” fee they charge. So she made a booking and we walked (with our packs) back to the first hotel who apparently had not made us a booking and wouldn’t let us in. Eventually after phones calls and a lot of arguing and pointing we worked out they she would give us a room but not till 7pm. We agreed and waited the 4 hours in the McDonalds next door. By the time we got our expensive room we were totally exhausted, dirty and needing to sleep. Intense…but we held it together reasonably well, it’s just carrying packs everywhere gets a bit much and it is so difficult to explain things with our no Russian.

Kazan was nice though, cold and cloudy but a nice city. The white walled Kremlin with a big mosque inside. There is a main pedestrian street with some nice cafes along it. We shifted hotels to a cheaper and nicer place the next day and secured a train ticket for the following night and managed to book a hostel in the next town. We were not interested in turning up with no place to stay again. So we spent a 2 days in Kazan making use of McDonalds free wireless, drinking coffee, going out to see the might Volga in a semi-abandoned port, and looking around the mosque and Kremlin. We also saw the university where Lenin went, celebrated by a statue out the front. What it fails to mention is that he was expelled for revolutionary behaviour. Selective memory sometimes….but overall nice city with really pretty main streets and the Kremlin was beautiful, especially all lit up at night.

Our last couple of days in Moscow before heading out east on the Trans-Siberian proper, we spent the day out in one of the “golden ring” towns called Sergiev Posad. Of course a very complicated train situation to get there but we eventually made it on to one of the suburban, hard benched seated train with hard faced, angry looking men drinking beer. These towns are called golden ring towns I assume based on the fact they all have golden domed churches.

From travels 08 blogphotos

This town was (in)famous for its big monastery which indeed had a lot of golden domes. We wandered around the monastery for a bit seeing a lot of babushka’s hanging out and groups lining up to kiss the coffin of a saint and fill their bottles with holy water.

From travels 08 blogphotos

From travels 08 blogphotos

It was nice to be in a church area with a bit of activity going on. I like it when churches are used for people to hang out and spend time in, it wasn’t really touristy at all just loads of people hanging out. The churches were beautiful with blue and gold domes although the insides had been converted to shops. It was a nice sunny day so good place to wander around a bit before we headed back to the train station for the 90 minute ride home.

The following day, we headed out of Moscow on an afternoon train but not before checking out Moscow’s cosmonaut memorial, possibly the coolest memorial ever with a huge silver thing with a rocket on top and sweet pictures of Lenin and spacemen…cosmonauts are cool.

From travels 08 blogphotos

From travels 08 blogphotos

From travels 08 blogphotos

We also wandered over to this soviet exhibition area, around 2km long, it was soviet greatness in all its glory with Lenin statues and massive pavilions celebrating all sorts of soviet achievements from space to wheat production. I am sure when it was built all the people starving were stoked that the government was spending so much money on crazy buildings. Now it is used as a convention centre type thing with some sort of fair thing going on inside the buildings. Big cut outs of Spongebob and Mickey mouse were along the avenues so you could take your photo with them, with Lenin overlooking them in the background.

From travels 08 blogphotos

Probably not what the Soviet’s had in mind for their communist country.

It was awesome, Soviet stuff is so over the top. So a good end to Moscow. We grabbed our bags and surprisingly got tickets on another suburban train very easily (strangely the train station had English signs) out to Vladimir where were jumped on a bus to Suzdal, another golden ring town.

Suzdal is famous for its churches, which there are something like one church for every 12 people. That is a lot of churches. We arrived pretty late so we found our hotel inside a decrepit monastery, overpriced, no English speaking staff, no shower and not hot water…hmmm. We ventured out to the quite streets and found some food and then headed back to our over patterned room. Basically there was not a lot to do over than look at churches so we just spent the morning wandering around looking at the hundreds of churches. I went and looked inside one of the monastery’s and watched a monk ring the bells which was really cool, he was up in the tower with all these ropes that he played with his hands and feet for about 20 mins to make cool sounding bell music. It was pretty cool to watch him do it. After a circle of the town and seeing around 50 more churches, plus some wedding parties of course we grabbed our bags and heading off. Nice place but lots and lots of churches that are all a little similar by now.