Irkutsk

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My few hours kip didn’t happen, you would thing that being on a train for 5 days and doing nothing but sleeping, reading and eating I would be wide awake and raring to go. No I was knackered, I did set the alarm but slept through it and 10:30 there was a knock on the door but I had to make my excuses. Looks like my complaints about the mattress were totally unfounded as I went straight back to it and slept for another 3 hours.

I had my first shower in 5 days and it was Tony ( the Tiger - gggrrreeeaaatttttt), I managed to lose my shampoo somewhere though so I used the hotels hand wash ( I think the landlord has OCD as this place is so clean and there are a lot of rules).

I decided to have a wonder round Irkutsk and to be honest it’s not the kind of place you would come on holiday, nice to see the Victoria Beckham syndrome is still strong in Siberia though. After walking round the central market and looking at more tanks, missiles etc, I had a nice lunch at a canteen style place (Mamochka)where they spoke good English and had an English menu. I did try and find an internet place but they are a little thin on the ground here and when I did find one it was closed.

I then popped to the supermarket for some essentials and back to the hostel. The owner of the hostel had been replaced by another guy (whose name escapes me but if your reading this hi - I hope your IELTS goes well). I wanted to see a little more of Irkutsk so I wondered up to the main square (read : I fancied a few beers and there was an ‘English’ pub on the main square). So off I trotted, I did find it and it was basically the interior of and English pub in Bradford that had been transported to Irkutsk. I also calculated that I had done 7819km by train, still have 2672km to Beijing though and about 3710km from Beijing to Saigon. If you also add up all the other train journeys I’m doing (around China and North Korea to Beijing) it’s a total of 18393km by train, I’m not even half way.

Anyway I had 3 or 4 beers and headed back to the hostel, I was dying to talk to someone so I bought some beers on the way back to share with the guy looking after the hostel, he gratefully accepted and we basically got drunk and chatted till the early hours, god I do say some crap when I’m drunk though. I also decided to ring Kate but she must have had a sixth sense that I was drunk as it went straight to answer phone.

I also decided at least initially that Russians are some of the most miserable people on the face of the planet (with the exception of the guy above) there are no smiles and no tolerance for trying to help a foreigner. There seems to be two ways to get past this, either get to know them (they tend to become a little more relaxed after 48hrs) or get them pissed. I think this must be a throwback to the KGB and everyone’s watching them kind of thing.

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