So after a very exciting time in Listviyanka we head back to the hostel and a couple of days of Russian Beauracracy to register our visas and then plan the final stages of our time in Russia. Florian and Lonneke have both cleverly overlapped there Mongolian visas with the Russian one so they get an easy route out of town on the Trans-Mongolian and from Irkutsk this takes less than a day to cross the border allowing them to use most of there visa time before disappearing as the train leaves every day! I have however delayed my visa till July [View Full Entry]

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Florian and I manage to scramble out of bed early after a late night of rowdy behaviour. We walk over to the bus station which is about an a fourty five minute walk and arrive at a scene of chaos. Lonneke is in tears at the bus counter and quickly grabs me to come and talk to the Russian lady behind the counter. i am not sure what is going on or what my limited Russian can do but it seems that Lonneke met two Koreans from our Hostel who were going to Olkhon Island by bus today and had bought [View Full Entry]

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Day four on the train passes uneventfully. Many of the passengers have now left the train and overall the train is now fairly empty. I am starting to feel ill on the pot noodle and I realise that today would be my last day on the train regardless of destination. But fortunately Irkutsk is coming up early tomorrow and some real food is close. The soldier is conversational today as he knows it will be my final day on the train. He tells me he is going to Chita which means he will be on the train one further day to [View Full Entry]

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Day three - Mainly I am keeping my routine of getting up early and washing and changing before taking photos and then learning Russian from the phrasebook. No sign of any other tourists on the Train and I have pushed for six carriages in either direction. The train is moving through one time zone in each day with roughly two hours time difference in each shift - it does not sound like alot but when you see the sun go down and you think it is seven it does have a big impact and you do feel tired. My body is [View Full Entry]

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So I wake to my first full day on the Trans-Siberian! Not much sleep but I did manage to pass out for a few hours. The lady in the carriage slipped out sometime in the night and so my soldier friend is more comfortable in an all male environment. We only manage one main stop today where there is food and so it is pot noodle for the second day in a row - almost like being a student again - but I am struggling with it. The choice is pot mash - not really a choice and I would love [View Full Entry]

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So with a sore face after so much laughing I try and get out of the Hostel but the lady working today seems to think I have not payed the bill so in a typical russian fashion there is a long protracted discussion - at least in english - where it starts with 'you are on list that say you no pay' - when I ask her to check the reciepts for the day I arrived 'no need you are on the list that say you no pay' this goes on for some time but the Russian's are used to dealing [View Full Entry]

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So day two in Moscow is preceeded by a brief encounter with a Russian couple staying at the same hostel but departing on my first night. Vadim Lukomskiy is my first real Russian conversation. He is from Murmansk and travels to Moscow for a conference where none of the other participants show up so he is there with his girlfriend and decides to take in the capital for the second time in his life. He is a giant bear of a man and we exchange stories of travel plans and general work and career comments. He is very impressed with my [View Full Entry]

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So the 26th April had one additional treat - the first ride on the Moscow Metro! Back at University one of my best friends (Louise Bastable) had a small book on the Moscow Metro that she had found in one of the second hand bookshops that filled Liverpool at the time - So we used to sit in our studio space over our lunch and go through the book in awe of what we saw and dreaming of a day we might have an opportunity to go to Moscow to see it. Through the book we travelled to Moscow many times [View Full Entry]

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So I awake early after another night of fifteen minutes sleep to see one of the great sights so far - the train is moving over a lake with no sign of land whatsoever and there is a blood red line of sunrise in the Horizon. The three russian bears were still asleep and snoring soundly bit I managed to sneak a picture although it does not do the scene justice! Then later when the three bears have arrived we tuck into the breakfast supplied. Food in Russia seems to have one key quality by which to rate it - how [View Full Entry]

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So yet another glorious day in Russia - I have to spend some time organising a ticket for the overnight train to Moscow - and then I head out to see the Hermitage. The spaces are magnificent and I have not taken any real pictures of the collection so that you can all see them for yourselves some time. The museum does have a fairly strong ancient world and very strong impressionist collection - but I know that I did not have time to see all of the areas of the museum and I am sure that there were wonderful things [View Full Entry]

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