2008: A Trans-Siberian Odyssey

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Part 2: Juke box in Siberia

The train journey from Ulan Ude was another overnighter - only about 10 hours though and we were expecting to arrive at around 8am at our destination: Irkutsk (pron: ear-kootsk - and don't forget to roll your R's). No smugglers on this train that we were aware of but we gave the provodnista a good laugh when we told her we didn't need bed linen as we had sleeping bags. She found this quite hilarious and threw the linen onto one of the bunks and marched off to the next cabin. Back-packers are funny!

This train was probably what you'd expect a Russian train to be. A bit noisy, a bit daggy, a bit uncomfortable, a lot wood paneled - basically rather past it's 'best before' date. At one stage Lee had gotten up to shut the cabin's sliding door when a lady in the railway's uniform appeared at one end of the carriage, went running down the corridor and out the other end. 10 seconds later 2 burly blokes in military looking uniforms went marching through in her footsteps. This was a little alarming at first but was quickly forgotten when Lee attempted to close the cabin door. It wouldn't budge. These doors have a vertical lever handle on both sides of the door and although it turned as it should the mechanism which holds the door in the open position wouldn't release. We could see the mechanism that would keep the door closed was moving just fine but regardless of Lee's pushing, pulling, prising and swearing the door wouldn't move.

When the uniformed burly blokes reappeared and stopped at our door requesting our passports we quickly forgot about the door again. This seemed pretty unusual to us. We had passed through the border into Russia 2 days ago - there was no border crossing on this trip! We handed over our passports and they did the usual check & double check of our photos and started muttering to each other - "Mongolia" & "Australian" were the only words we understood. Funny how 30 seconds can seem like 30 minutes when Russian soldiers are having a conversation about your passport! At length they decided that we probably weren't a significant threat to national security and returned our passports. As they left, one of the guards considerately went to close the door for us, obviously not realising what a futile effort this would be. But of course this guy must have known something we didn't. We were amazed and delighted as in a flash he slid the damned thing half closed. Then, in another flash, he realised the door was open when he arrived at our cabin and quickly slammed it back into the open position & disappeared down the corridor. Lee sprouted another grey hair and a couple of blue words! After a few minutes Lee resumed his attempt at closing the door and still it wouldn't move. Eventually, just after giving up, he gave the door one last pathetic little tug and it came free and glided shut just as smooth as silk.

This was the first train we had caught that was arriving early in the morning. In fact it was actually arriving an hour earlier than we thought. We had set an alarm for 7am so when someone knocked at our door at 6am we were not sure who was knocking or why. Lee jumped into some clothes and opened the door... NOT! It was stuck again! He called through the door that it was stuck but got no response from the other side. Of course there was not much point yelling for our visitor to help when no-one out there spoke English! After several more minutes of heated negotiations with the door there came more knocking. Our visitor was still waiting! Lee was once again trying to explain that the door was stuck - only louder this time as if that would overcome the language barrier - when the demon door suddenly and inexplicably opened again. At which point Lee discovered he was talking to no-one. We then realised it is standard practice for the provodnistas to knock on the cabin doors to wake up the passengers before the train arrives. We thought it was a bit rude being woken 2 hours before arrival - surely 1 hour would be enough, but we began slowly getting ready anyway. Of course we were completely wrong: it was a 1 hour wake up call, the train arrived at 7am not 8am, and we were caught - almost literally - with our pants down! We had already had breakfast and had started packing our gear so we quickly finished and jumped off the train to meet our guide, Leanna, who took us to our home stay in Irkutsk.

Again we were a little disturbed by the appearance of the apartment building we arrived at. Another big, grey, dirty looking concrete block with a big solid steel door. Hardly inviting! Upstairs we were greeted by a lovely little middle aged lady named Olga smiling and welcoming us in. She immediately sat us down to a breakfast of omlettes. A second breakfast - Lee was so delighted! Olga's apartment was lovely inside. It seems to be standard that these Soviet age apartment blocks are cold and uninviting on the outside but the occupants put much effort into making nice homes inside. Olga's husband is a doctor and they had obviously put considerable money and effort into their interior decor.

After breakfast we moved our gear into our room where we noticed that it was snowing outside. This was the first time either of us had seen snow falling so we had to take some video of it and even though we really wanted to go outside and play in it, we decided that we needed to spend some of the day writing the travel blog as we had gotten rather behind while the computer was out of action. This was a fairly substantial post and took several hours to write and edit the photos. See the sacrifices we make for our readers! By the time we finished it was about 4pm and the snow had stopped so we headed off to an internet cafe about half an hour's walk away, following a map Leanna had given us. By the time we had finished posting our blog entry, uploading photos, answering emails, paying bills, blah blah blah it was after about 9pm. We had missed lunch and back out on the street could not find anywhere to eat that had either staff or menus with English. We ended up back in our room eating sandwiches of peanut butter or Vegemite. Kerry was really happy about that... yeah, right!

We only had the one night in Irkutsk and after chatting with Olga over a delightful breakfast of pancakes, Leanna picked us up to take us to our real destination in this region, a small village called Listvyanka, about 1.5 hours away on the shore of Lake Baikal. Also along for this part of the trip were a couple of Irish lads, both called Eoin (Owen) who had hatched their plans to travel the Trans-Siberian from St. Petersburg into China over beers at the pub on Friday nights.
At 630km long, 100km wide, 1.6km deep and holding 20% of the worlds fresh water, Baikal is one of the worlds largest lakes by volume. The lake is indeed an awesome sight - it was like looking at a frozen sea. Walking on the lake is nothing here - we were stunned to see cars and trucks regularly driving across it! The four of us were taken to our home stay in the village, our host was an older lady who spoke virtually no English and lived in a traditional Siberian wooden house with a traditional 'banya' - the Russian equivalent of a sauna - out the back. We'd heard it was essential to try the banya so we were looking forward to the opportunity. None of us caught our host's name so we nick named her "Nana Listvyanka" continuing the tradition Lee & Peter Stephen started in '96 with the seemingly endless stream of 'Nanas' they met while touring Europe. When we arrived at Nana Listvyanka's house she had breakfast waiting for us. Second breakfast again! Lee thought he was in heaven and began to wonder if he might be part Hobbit!!!

After breakfast Leanna took us all on a walking tour of Listvyanka including a fairly famous wooden church which has been moved twice due to floods. Leanna also pointed out a local bar that has an English menu, which we decided with the Eoins would be worth a visit that evening. We then spent some time at the Lake Baikal Museum which has a lot of interesting information on the lake, it's history, environment and wildlife. There is also an aquarium with large tanks containing the various species that live in the lake. They even had 2 members of the lake's seal colony, the only fresh water seals in the world. Although the seal tank was quite large it would be nice if they had more room - although they seemed happy enough they were quite fat!

Eventually we returned to Nana Listvyanka's place for a rather late lunch and then we decided to go for a walk on the lake just because we could. We found one of the 'roads' created by the locals driving a short cut from the southern end of the ice to the northern end of Listvyanka. The regular traffic removes the snow and seems to somehow polish the ice so that it is extremely slippery. Lee had a great time sliding along the ice as fast as he could while Kerry caught it all on video. Then we swapped and Kerry had a go sliding and so Lee was able to capture Kerry's beautiful butt-plant on video for all to see and enjoy. We returned home and soon enough Nana was informing us the banya was ready. MMMMMMM... Banya!!!

We had heard about and read about the 'essential Siberian experience' of the banya - more or less the Russian equivalent of the sauna. In a traditional home like this one there is a separate room from the house for the (long drop) toilet and another for the banya. The banya is a two roomed hut: the first is the (un)dressing room which is not heated and the second is the banya room which is heated by a large wood fired water boiler in one corner. Unlike a Scandinavian sauna there is no steam from pouring water on coals, just heat from the boiler. So you sit on the wooden benches and relax and sweat. When you've had enough of that you grab one of the metal wash basins and put some hot water in it then cool it down by adding water from the large bucket of cold water also in the room. Then you proceed to wash using soap, shampoo etc as you normally would, rinsing off with the water you previously collected. The banya seems to be designed with a slightly sloping floor and a small gap between the wall at the lower end so the water & soap etc just flows away. When you are finished you go back into the dressing room where you stand steaming in the freezing cold room before returning to your senses and diving for your towel! The Russians also sometimes beat themselves with birch branches or something but we weren't up for that!

After banya and dinner we set off to the pub with the Eoins. The walk was about a kilometre or so and dimly lit but we forgot to bring our torches. Fortunately the Eoins had theirs so they spent much of the walk with their torches pointed down 'ushering' us along the slippery roads until we reached our destination. It seems the entire Russian hospitality industry has mastered the art of indifference, even in comparison to the sub-zero temperature outside, our greeting in the bar was barely luke warm. Our waitress eventually decided we weren't going to go away and took our coats to the coat check and gave us menus. The Eoins tried to order several of the beers from the menu before stumbling upon the one that they actually stocked. Our order of 2 gins with tonic apparently required a diploma in sign language but eventually we got 2 hefty shots of gin - no tonic. After another round of diplomatic negotiations with the waitress who had never heard of 'tonic' we discovered the magic word: Schwepps! At hearing this she vanished behind the bar and proudly returned with the magic bottle of Schwepps. Well, as it turns out gin & Bitter Lemon is really quite drinkable!

It was fun & interesting talking to the Eoins about our respective journeys on the Trans-Siberian as we were doing fairly similar trips, just going in opposite directions. So we were all able to share some previous experiences that would be future experiences for our new friends. We were just about to request another round of drinks when the waitress came back to our table and presented the bill. It was still a good half an hour before closing time so we asked for another round instead. The waitress nodded and went back to the bar then returned to our table a while later with no drinks, so we asked again - this time more loudly and with extra sign language - for another round. Again she nodded and headed for the bar and again returned with no drinks. This time she tapped her finger on the bill and refused our request for more drinks saying she had to close (still 15 minutes early). Oh well, at least we had plenty to joke about on the walk home! Leanna had told us that after having a banya we would sleep well that night and sure enough we slept like logs - the hefty shots of gin probably didn't hurt either!

The following day was intended for one of the main events we all had planned for this side trip, The Circum-Baikal railway; 80km of railway built into the craggy cliffs around the southern end of the lake. This line was built in the early 1900's utilising hundreds of bridges and tunnels but is no longer used a part of the Trans-Siberian. It is now only a tourist train running twice a week. But not the week we were there. Although the catalogue from which we had booked out trip said this was available all year round, Leanna told us that it was not running as there were not enough tourists. Lee was particularly upset by this as he had become more & more interested in this railway and it's fascinating history since first reading about it in the catalogue. Instead, the tour company had organised a 3 hour trip on a hovercraft around the edge of the lake where the railway runs. We first visited the small museum at Port Baikal from which the train normally departs - Leanna had to get someone to open it up for us. Then we were taken across the lake to several locations where there were tunnels and galleries that we could climb up to from the edge of the lake. At this end of the lake there are many large banks of jagged ice sticking up out of the regular flat surface of the lake. These form as the lake is beginning to freeze and chunks of ice are taken south with the current towards the lakes only outpouring - the Angara river. Every so often the Hovercraft driver would have to stop and get out so he could use a huge crow bar to break up a sharp shard of ice that was protruding into our intended path. He also stopped at a particularly large bank of ice so we could all check it out. Lee found a crystal clear icicle amongst the shards of ice so he broke it off and ate it! Such beautiful pure water! Even Lee admits that it was a good day, but it was visiting the less accessible parts of the lake in a hovercraft that really made it fun - looking through a couple of old tunnels with train tracks didn't really add that much to the experience.

Once again in the evening Nana Listvyanka prepared the banya for us followed by a fine dinner and then it was time to hit the pub again with the Eoins. This time we walked towards the northern end of town as we had seen a couple of other bars on our morning walk to the hovercraft and we hoped they might be a little friendlier than the previous night's venue. After spotting a couple of places that we weren't too sure about we heard some music coming from up ahead and thought we should check that out. We found a tall wall built out of large blocks of ice surrounding an area on the surface of the lake that was illuminated with disco lighting from the roof of a tall hotel building on the other side of the road. From one corner we could just see inside and it appeared to be an ice skating rink with absolutely nobody in it. How very strange! The places we had seen a little earlier looked a bit more normal in comparison to this so we went into the first one. The Eoins ordered different beers, one of which turned out to be warm and undrinkable. We ordered cranberry vodka which turned out to be pretty similar to turpentine but fortunately at this bar we were able to get actual tonic water which made the stuff drinkable. No such luck for Eoin's beer! We had gotten out of the house kind of late so before long it was closing time at this bar so Lee took the label from the tonic water bottle for future usage and we headed of to see if another bar was still open. We were in luck - not only was the bar open but we even had a busty young English speaking waitress, so all the boys were particularly happy. Beer for Eoin #1, Vodka for Kerry & Eoin #2 and - with the aid of the label from the last pub - gin & tonic for Lee! There were a few young locals in this place drinking themselves stupid and crashing out in the booths and a big screen video juke box pumping out a bizzare selection of old and new pop songs. To our delight we were able to order a second round here which was a bonus but caused a bit of trouble with the locals who were now being refused any more alcohol. As we all started feeling merry from the potent drinks and the juke box started playing a techno version of the Benny Hill theme song over the row at the bar it started to all feel quite surreal! Once again it was almost closing time so the attempt at getting a third round failed and we decided to walk back on the frozen lake which was a fun way to end the evening.

Breakfast the next morning was a fairly quiet affair, none of us firing on all cylinders after the night before. But our time at Lake Baikal had run out and before long our driver arrived to take us all - including Nana Listvyanka - back to Irkutsk. We were all dropped off at the hotel where the Eoins were staying and we were able to leave our bags there while we went off to get provisions for our next train trip later that afternoon. Later in the day we headed for an internet cafe and by chance we found the Eoins there also which was great as we were able to exchange proper good byes and wish each other well for the remainder of our journeys. We hope they had a great time on the rest of their trip through Russia and into China and we thank them for helping to make this side trip much more enjoyable.

Note to our loyal readers:
Hello all! We would like to apologise for the delays in getting new posts up. No excuses though - it's tough to do your chores when you're having fun 😉
We are going to try to be more diligent from here on. At this moment we are in Copenhagen - flying to Iceland tomorrow... but you will have to wait a while to read about these places 😊
We also wanted to thank you all for your messages and comments coming through the blog site. We love receiving them and we do read all of them so don't be shy!

Love to all! Until next time...

Kerry & Lee

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Photos

Lake Baikal
No, it's not a frozen ocean!

Circum Baikal Railway line
One of the Galleries we were able to visit

Circum Baikal Railway line
From inside a tunnel

Ice formation
On the structure of one of the bridges

Bloody hell there's a lot of ice!
This chunk was as clear as glass!

Ice water
Where the ice gives way to flow of the river Angara.

Comments

[Quyen]

Siberia
Hi Lee and Kerry, Wow !!! - that's the first time I've seen pictures of that place that's actually taken by a traveller... It looks cold. But very beautiful - I can image some sun-rise/sun-set pictures would look fantastic there. I can only image the night skyies - it's a pitty you don't have a tripod with you. It looks like the trip is going really well, and certainly your stories and photos show a great experience. As usual, can't wait for next installment - it means that you are still safe and well and having a great time - as it should be. All the best. Quyen.

[Shon]

Seals and banyas and Eoins oh my!! I don't think you're in Kansas anymore Hobbittses! But any place playing techno Benny Hill has to be worth a look. We love reading your blog. It is a very exotic diversion from blowing raspberries and changing nappies. Stay safe. Love, Shon xxxx

[Aunty Julie]

Your Girls
Hi Travellers - love getting the blogs - you are having a great time. Just returned from Sydney and Adelaide - Rachael's wedding. All went really well. Spent 4 days with your baby girls - you need to get home before they starve to death. They are not fed properly and not patted and cuddled and loved!!!! No really, they are beautiful - so happy and contented - I think you will have problems getting them to go home with you - where ever that might be???? Must be nearly time to head to England - Pat and John will be so glad to see you both. I will send you a photo or two of the wedding - only a couple so it doesn't clog your traffic!! Stay safe and happy. Love from your Aunty Julie XXXXXX

[Brenna]

Keeping up with your blogg is making me cold - Im off to Bali
Hi guys That's it I think I am sufferring frost bite just by reading your blog. Im off to Bali, I shall fill you in on my return. cheers Brenna PS I will be getting massages and body wraps, while you are wearing thermies and walking your a%$#^ off.