BootsnAll Travel Network



Articles Tagged ‘blogsherpa’

More articles about ‘blogsherpa’
« Home

Goodbye Russia

Thursday, November 6th, 2008

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

Trans-Sib part one: The real journey begins

Thursday, October 9th, 2008

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.

last days of Moscow

Sunday, October 5th, 2008
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 ... [Continue reading this entry]

Moscow? Nyet…

Wednesday, October 1st, 2008

n619232424_1420075_4949.jpg

(St Basil's Cathedral) Nyet (No) seems to be Russian service people’s favourite word. Particularly at train stations where we write in Cyrillic what we want and hand it over, waiting in ... [Continue reading this entry]

We love St Petersburg

Monday, September 29th, 2008
We ended up with 6 days in St Petersburg which was great to stay somewhere and get to know it a bit better. There is so much to do and see so we hardly saw all of it but did ... [Continue reading this entry]

The motherland

Monday, September 29th, 2008

My travels around Eastern Europe have felt like they are preparing me for the ultimate country of Russia. As the whole point of this trip was the trans-Siberian it was exciting to be ... [Continue reading this entry]

and now we are three…

Thursday, September 18th, 2008
As I mentioned in my last post the rain had started on the way to Riga, Latvia’s capital and was set in to stay when me and Joe arrived in the late afternoon. We pulled up our hoods and set ... [Continue reading this entry]

Lithuania is where?

Sunday, September 14th, 2008
The Baltic’s definitely have a different feel to them from the rest of Eastern Europe, but still similar in that there is an old town with a lot of nice buildings and old churches…which by now I may be getting ... [Continue reading this entry]

Warsaw Rising

Sunday, September 14th, 2008
My stop in Poland was brief as best, mostly due to the fact I wasn’t really planning on going but unfortunately the visa strict Belarus lies between Ukraine and my next destination of Lithuanian. So I decided to stop over ... [Continue reading this entry]

Ukraine-an intro to the real Russia

Sunday, September 14th, 2008
The 20 hour journey towards Lviv (or Lvov in Russian) was a frustratingly slow and altogether soviet experience, it was probably the most eastern European feeling, no other tourists, lots of big ugly apartment blocks scattered through the country side, ... [Continue reading this entry]