Trans-Siberian part 2: Kazan to Yekaterinburg
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 (3rd 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
Tags: Russia, TRAVELS 2008, videos 2008
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