Blogs from Siberia, Russia, Europe - page 60

Hallo, Ich bin wieder einmal in der Naehe eines PC’s. Das wichtigste - es geht mir gut. Ich fuehle mich zwar ein wenig schlapp, aber das wird schon. Bin von Ekaterinburg weiter nach Omsk gereist. Ich bin zur Zeit in Novosibirsk. Nun versuche ich hier etwas online zu bringen aber dieser PC stuerzt andauern ab. Weiterhin spinnt die Leertaste auf der Moehre und der pc macht so komische Streifen, welche beim hinschauen schmerzen... Richtig Angst macht mir aber nur das Kabel, welches ohne Isolierung 5 cm neben meiner Maus liegt. Aber keine Angst, so wie ich Russland kenne ist da bestimmt sowieso kein Strom drauf weil irgendwo etwas nicht funktioniert. Was kann ich ueber Omsk sagen, irgendwie verschlafen. Aber ich habe bei drei sehr netten Maedels aus Kasachstan gewohnt, und wieder eine dieser endlosen Kuechendiskussionen gehabt, ... read more

January 3rd, 2006 Trans Siberian-Mongolian Railway Moscow to Beijing (total distance = 7865 km) This installment: Moscow to Irkutsk Left Moscow at 21:20 Temperature = -15C I boarded the train with an hour to spare. I found my cabin and much to my delight I had the entire space to myself (I have good luck in this department). Naturally this didn’t mean someone else wouldn’t join along the way. My cabin is equipped with a table, two beds, a TV (are you kidding me?!) and a plug (highly useful). Every train car has an attendant and ours is a portly and friendly (thank God) middle aged Russian lady (upon proof reading you might find the ‘friendly’ title puzzling given later encounters!). In her EXTREMELY broken English and in my TERRIBLE Russian she managed to communicate to ... read more

We arrived in Vladivostock, Russia on a cold dark winter's morning, having completed the longest train journey of our lives so far - a journey of 32 hours fuelled by the last of our chinese noodles and lots of coffee. We had travelled on Chinese train N23 from Harbin in northwest China crossing the border into Russia. What made the journey unique was the fact that our carriage, packed solid with enormous Russians, was the only carriage on the N23 bound for Russia. It would be detached from the N23 and joined onto a Russian train as the journey progressed, at one point even being lifted by a crane so it could be moved from the Chinese track system onto Russian tracks. At times though, the effort of keeping all the inbound Russians and tourists (me ... read more

My time in lovely Irkutsk has come to an end. Tonight I take the 4 day train to Moscow. I spent yeserday afternoon at lake Baikal. It was like a dream. I stepped of the bus and walked around the stalls of people selling smoked fish. As I was heading toward a cafe a guy took me oby the arm and almost forced me onto his tour boat. It was great! I stool outside in the chilling wind as we cruised around the Southern part of the lake. Baikal is so big is looks more like the sea than a lake. And it was so cold it was hard to imagine any creatures able to live in such frigid water. Apparently 80% of the wildlife in the lake is special to Baikal and can only be ... read more

Hi Everyone.. Hopefully i can get some photos up today / tomorrow on this! Well we have done 2 border crossing in a couple of days, spent some long hours on the train and we have reached the town of Irtuksk in Siberia. We stayed with a Russian family, our host was a lady called Rita and her house was near Lake Baikal which is the largest fresh water lake in the world. Ate great seafood and the local fish Omul which was great. We had a Russian banya that eveing which is a sauna pretty much except u get bashed by a bunch of Russian branches ... the idea is to go and run into Lake Baikal afterwards but it was bloody freezing.. 3.6 degrees so we had a few vodkas instead up on the ... read more