Swimming with two cute German girls in Siberia

Piling out of the train at 6am in Irkutsk with creaking and cracking backs, knees, hips and shoulders, we were all looking forward to a hot shower and a decent stretch of the legs. Unfortunately we had an hour and a half drive up the road to the small lakeside town of Listvianka. The town is situated on the southern end of Lake Baikal, which is the eighth largest lake by area in the world but is the deepest at more than 1800 meters and holds more than 20% of the world’s fresh water, more than all the Great Lakes combined. It’s more than 600km length is nestled between heavily wooded mountains and it is in one of these valleys that Listvyanka is located.

We arrived at our guesthouse, which was by far the nicest place that we have stayed on the trip. I got a room in on the top floor, with a fine water view (see the photo below) and, most importantly, a shower with a whole lot of hot water. We also met Nikolai, the semi-crazy but very cool owner / builder / banya operator / cook.

Immedaitely after the best shower of my life we headed out for lunch and then a nice long walk. The topic of lunch take me on two slight diversions. The first is that all menus in Russia have a cigarettes section, and to be honest this section usually has more selection than the rest of the menu. The other thing is that service in Russia is horrible. We waited more than an hour between ordering and getting the food. And even then three things came out wrong and most of it was cold. Sarah ordered a dish of potatoes, brocolli, tomato and olives. The only thing that she got was potatoes, as that was all they had, but the waitress didnt bother to mention that was all they had.

Verena, Sarah, Robin and I took a great, long walk up to a hearby hill, that afforded a great view of the lake and surrounding forest. It felt great to just get out and exercise after so long being cooped up in the train, though we did take a chairlift to the top of the hill and walked down. Russians are big believers in taking shortcuts and so we took a couple. Unfortunately the last one led to a dead end and so we ended up sliding down the side of a pretty steep hill to finally reach the main road.

Fortunately, I wasn't sharing a room with The Snorer, and so I slept like a baby for over 13 hours and woke refreshed and ready to go to to lunch. The trouble with having made the walk up the hill the previous evening and already buying a fridge magnet was that there was pretty much nothing else to do in town and so we just wandered for the afternoon. There were a couple of local markets and that is about it. The wind was howling, so it wasnt that much fun to sit on the rocky beach, but that didnt seem to deter the locals and so we sat for a while, people watched and skipped rocks into the lake. As an aside, I will say that Listvyanka is under going a massive growth spurt and I would guess that in five years it will be another busy tourist trap and you will need to go further up the lake for a little piece and quiet.

Verena and I had been talking since the train about swimming in the lake at some point, no matter how cold it was and so in the late afternoon we managed to talk Sarah and Robin in to joining us and we went to brave the cold waters. While it was pretty chilly and we were only in for about five minutes, it was way warmer than in Murmansk and was actually refreshing rather than just plain cold and uncomfortable.

Even better, right after our swim it was time for our banya, which is the Russian equivalent of a sauna. Our crazy host Nicolai had preparred everything and so six of us headed in to the steam room, which measured 105 degrees celcius when we first entered. It was funny that Raul had sweat pouring off him in two minutes but it took the Aussies in the group at least five minutes to break a sweat. I have never been in a sauna before and it was fun, but I was a little disturbed when Nicolai leaned over, ran his hand across my chest, tasted the sweat and exclaimed "Vodka!". After working up a good sweat, we headed out for a couple of minutes and then one by one we headed back in to be whipped with a bunch of leaves, which had been soaking in boiling water, by Nicolai. After a good whipping, we headed outside to jump into a freezing cold pool of water that actually felt lukewarm, given how hot it had been in the sauna. After repeating the flagellation and cold water we went back in for one last steaming and then the painful part of the whole experience, scrubbing with what felt like a piece of coral. Nicolai seemed to take great pleasure in using all his force to take six or seven layers of skin, and quite possibly the first quarter inch of flesh off my back, before dousing me with a bucket of ice water to finish. Overall it was a great experience, leaving me refreshed, perfectly clean and sure that I would do it again, given a chance.

After watching a quite spectacular, if cold and windy, sunset with Verena down on the lake shore and a couple of frosty beers, I realized that when I tried to go to bed I had train lag. Train lag is kind of like jet lag and somes from crossing five timezones in four days. It seemed that pretty much everyone on the trip suffered from it and had trouble sleeping the second night. This was of particular concern as we had to get back on a train the next afternoon for two night and we all would have loved to get two nights of decent sleep.

Leaving Listvyanka early in the morning, we headed in to Irkutsk for the day. We started with a very, very, very detained tour of the house of one of the Decemberists, a group of Russian rebels from the 1800's, who were exiled to Siberia and were responsible for the initial development of the region. It was an interesting tour but I did get a little sick of hearing how all the women were heroes for following their husbands out and then having 12 children each.

Irkutsk doesnt have that much going for it but I will say that it is certainly a boom town. There are cranes everywhere and half the road seem to be under construction. The only Russian area that I would call a housing community, in the American sense, with identical looking houses, was in Irkutsk. It is on the outskirts of the town and each house two stories, complete with garden, satellite dish and picket fence. The funny thing is, though, that the government hasnt gotten around to doing the roads, so there are dirt tracks leading from the main road to the community.

While I am on the topic of roads, there is no way that you could get me to drive in Russia, even if I had a navigator. It is not because of crazy drivers or anything like that, as they road rules are obeyed as well as anywhere in the world. It is because there are almost no street names (Moscow isn't too bad, if you know where to look but I only saw one street name in the whole of St Petersburg), and where there are street signs, they are in Cyrillic. Cyrillic is a combination of English letters, Greek letter and some others. I can imagine that if I was driving with navigator, the conversation would go something like this:

Navigator: You are going to turn right at either the third or fourth intersection. It is not clear on the map. The name is spelled like this: Upside down capital L, backwards N, backwards N with a tilde over it, Y, backwards euro symbol, Pamela Anderson (there is a character that is two circles squashed together, with a line between them. Use your imagination), Funky A (not the normal A, wich is also used), Pi symbol with a squiggly leg, W with an M superimposed on it. (as an aside, this is a 9 letter word and hence short by Russian standards, there are no Main or Elm streets here.)

Me: OK, got it.

I would then take the street I thought was right and then...

Navigator: What are you doing? Why did you turn there? It wasnt the right street.

Me: The first three letters looked right.

Navigator: That wasnt even close. The second N didnt have a tilde, it was a regular Pi, not the squiggly one and there was a P on the end of the street name.

Me: Sorry, but there was a guy right up my butt and it looked good. So where does this road go?

Navigator: Not sure, but these guys on the side of the road with machine guns that are waving us down may be able to help us.

Back in Irkutsk there wasnt a whole lot to do. After walking through the local market, Robin and Sarah went to the local museum, while Verena and I went and sat by the river and watched the world go by and wonder at the world's lamest water fountain. It was good to talk with someone for a few hours about stuff other than trivialities, and in between German and English lessons we talked about everything from growing up to politics.

As this is really the last bit in Russia, apart from sitting for 6 hours in a manky border town where we just wandered a bit, trying to avoid the town drunks, I will leave you with a few parting thoughts on the country. the first thing is that it is a quite interesting and beautiful country in parts and well worth a visit. The overwhelming thing that I will remember though, unfortuantely, is the general unfrendliness of the people who you would think would be helpful. There was no overt hostility, but it is glaring that for many people working in the hospitality industry there was no wilingness to help or even provide a service with a smile. I will say, though, that the average Russian citizen is quite nice and willing to help if they can and I had a great time meeting some of them.

Of my list of things that I really wanted to accomplish in Russia, I got the following done:
- Get really drunk on Vodka
- Talk to a couple of Russian people
- See the ballet
- Take a cooking lesson
- Swim in the Arctic Ocean
- Buy a fur hat

The only thing that I really didnt get done, which was not possible on this trip, was to see the country in Winter. When I do come back to Russia, it will definitely be to see it under a coat of white snow.

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Part of trip: The Big One

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