I let my lethargy catch up with me today and stayed in the flat for most of the morning and afternoon, not doing much apart from giving my essay some more thought. When I went to the supermarket at lunchtime to buy a pizza I had just 90 kopecks too little money - even after hurriedly fumbling in the pockets of my jeans for a minute and pulling out four one rouble coins - so I had to hold everyone up and scamper to the cash machine. In the late afternoon the sky turned dark purple and there was a loud [View Full Entry]

---

---

I got up fairly early today. It would have been good to stay in bed but I am behind on all my work so my conscience wouldn't let me. Michael and Tamzin went to Petersburg overnight so I was the only RLUS person in Tver to meet the director Dr. Bivon, on his tour of the centres where British students study. He phoned ahead to say he would be at the university at 11 so I waited for him in the language centre. At 1, Lyudmila Georgevna told me that he wouldn't be coming. What a waste of two hours when [View Full Entry]

---

---

Everybody woke up feeling bad. The linen that the women on the train hand out for 67 roubles is never big enough to serve as a real blanket, and the compartments are very hot all through the night. Even on the bottom bunk there is the threat of falling out when the train jolts. When the lights came on at 6, an hour from Moscow, my skin was greasy and my head hurt. The queue along the aisle to step off onto the platform after a long journey is always funereal. We bought our elektrichka tickets at 7.30 and walked towards [View Full Entry]

---

---

This afternoon as we did was walk around to say our goodbyes. The girls went to a museum that I had already been to, so I did some shopping and explored ulitsa Baumana for the last time. In one corner two men had set up a 'stage', taken their shirts off and were singing Beatles songs in a punk fashion, one man breaking his guitar strings with the three chords he knew, the other tapping his tambourine when he felt like it. They stopped between tracks to sip cups of tea and, bizarrely, to tune their instruments. It took me until [View Full Entry]

---

---

The blue spring sky came back today, then turned to shades of grey in the afternoon. Both myself and Ella ordered the same 'sendvich dlya lancha' for lunch, and recieved half of the same one twenty minutes apart. Russian logic for you. We spent the day between Kremlevskaya and Baumana, and the steep cobbled streets that link them. As we were sitting on a bench in the street 'Angels' by Robbie Williams started to play from one of the clothes shops. It reminded me of my class singing it in the Tatarstan wilderness when we stopped in the middle of our [View Full Entry]

---

---

Liisa spent yesterday in Ulyanovsk, a town four hours away by minibus. It has been re-named as it is the place in which Lenin was born. I went to the station at 5.20 in the morning to meet her, to save her walking back on her own. It can't have been a particularly interesting town, as all she spoke about was the people she met while buying her tickets and the journey itself. We got lost on the walk back to the hotel and ended up in a Shokoladnitsa café. We watched the sun rise out of the window while drinking [View Full Entry]

---

---

A mix-up this morning meant that the girls thought I was sleeping at 10.30, and left the hotel without me while I was having a shower to get ready to go somewhere with them. I had to settle for a walk around the kremlin in the rain on my own; the perfect weather had changed but it was warm never-the-less. Overnight my phone balance went from 9 y.e to minus 9 y.e so I had to call in at a phone shop to sort the problem out. The rest of the day was sports' day. AK-BARS beat Omsk again to win [View Full Entry]

---

---

To serve me right I woke up exhausted today. I remembered that I'm here to relax and not just to sight-see, so I made today as quiet as possible. There was a little boy of about five in reception as I left this morning, I think the son of the woman who works there. When I walked past him he called to me "Hello!". I said a cheerful "Hello!" to him back, then he continued in Russian: "you're English, aren't you?" I said yes, and his eyes lit up and he started to giggle. I rested my elbows on the desk [View Full Entry]

---

---

The sky was blue today also, with a few more grey clouds, and it was as warm as yesterday. I even spent the morning without my coat on. We strolled around town for a couple of hours to find some more places. Kazan isn't just beautiful due to the architecture, the people are beautiful too. The boys dress from the MTV Moskva guide-book in expensive jackets and ripped jeans; for the girls ulitsa Baumana is a catwalk, to show off their new hairstyles and spring collection miniskirts. the Tatar girls dress a bit more modestly, but are just as stunning. The [View Full Entry]

---

---

We arrived at Hotel Fatima at about 10 in the morning. We all had a much needed shower, teeth clean and change of clothes, then left our comfortable rooms to stroll around the Kazan kremlin which is only two minutes walk away. It is the only fortress in the Russian Federation with both an orthodox cathedral and a mosque within its walls. My good friend Chris W, who I shared so many good times with in Yaroslavl, lives and studies here now. Unfortunately being a holiday he also made plans to go away and is in Moscow with his parents, so [View Full Entry]

---

---