Russia in Retro, by Graham

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June 27th 2009

Published: June 27th 2009

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KerryAndGraham

train view

(no photo-shopping involved)

Ok ok ok, so it's taken me 3.5 weeks to write an entry, but I've been busy - honest!

We got into Beijing yesterday afternoon and, being the urbanites that we are, immediately fell in love with the city's vibe. But enough about China, that can wait for another blog. I guess I'd better fill you in on the rest of Russia.

Where were we? Ah yes, we'd just left Yekaterinburg in Kerry's last post. There's a lot to cover then, but stream of conciousness writing was good enough for Kerouac so it should be good enough for me. Here we go then, forgive me if I keep it brief......

Yekaterinburg to Irkutsk/Lake Baikal
Train, 3 days, shared a berth with Andrei (head of logistics for the Irkutsk police force (we think)) and his daughter Dascha, great travel companions, we spoke little Russian, they spoke marginally better English, much drinking of vodka and eating of salted gherkin, communication via writing on notepads and learning of new card games, drinking of Baltika from litre sized cans. All in all, a fun 3 days. See entry on ¨"Zakuski - how to make friends (under the influence) with people" for more

Graham with Andrei & Dascha

at one of the stations - ice cream stop

but many thanks to Andrei and Dascha for their generosity with foodstuffs during this trip!

Listvyanka, Lake Baikal
Lake Baikal, huge freshwater lake. If the world were to run out of all other drinking water tomorrow then Lake Baikal could provide enough to serve the entire world for the next 40 years. In short, it´s big. Scenery beautiful, Listvyanka less so, Russian tourist trap if truth be told, hostel had good view but ¨difficult¨owner (see entry on ¨Speaking Russian to Russians....¨), ate a lot of smoked fish.

Baltika Index (BI, see impending entry on ¨The Baltika Index¨) of 0.76.

Irkutsk
Only spent one night, seemed like a fun city though, hostel had a guitar which was cool, got horribly drunk with a couple of Germans (one of whom was a recently qualified ¨doctor of man genitals¨apparantly) in the hostel which made the treck to the railway station the next morning pretty painful. Also went to a Bavarian themed bar and witnessed "The British Club" - agreed not to drink in any more theme bars for the next 12 months.

BI at a ridiculously low 0.5.

Ulan Ude
Capital of the Buryat Republic in the the

Cards on the train

middle of Siberia, giant Lenin head in middle of the town square, stayed in really nice, cosy hostel in north of the city, trecked out of town to see Buddhist monastry (centre of Russia Buddhism) and visited and excellent museum tracing the history of Russian Buddhism and the Buryat people of Russia, very interesting.

BI not recorded.

Ulan Ude to Ulan Bator, crossing Russia-Mongolia border
24 hours on the train. 14 hours actually moving, 10 hours spent with Russian and Mongolian border officials in a stationary carriage with limited toilet facilities. Fun, fun, fun. Went to sleep for a couple of hours at the Russian border and awoke to find that THE ENTIRE TRAIN HAD DISAPPEARED!!!! Our carriage was full of tourists - the first time we´d met non Russians on the train - so plenty of other Brits to share a good whinge with.

Phew, that´s Russia done. Not as detailed as Kerry I know (I´m sure she´ll make some edits to this post once she drags her lazy ass out of bed this morning) but I´d rather give you a rough outline and then fill in the interesting details as stories..........

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