Novgorod the White

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Today we had a group breakfast at 9am. Some of our tour were not up, still feeling the worse for wear after last night. Some of our tour were up (more or less), however would soon be retiring again. The three of us though were fine (good vodka), rearing to go and happy for breakfast. Breakfast was a couple of pikelet sized thingies served with sour cream. yum?

Our tour of Novgorod started with a Monastry, moved on to a wooden architecture park full of traditional houses and finished with the Novgorod Kremlin. More importantly though, it snowed again. Then it snowed more. Then it snowed harder. This time, the snow decided to stay, rather than melt into slush like it did in St Petersburg. So while we're on our tour, and later around Novgorod, there is snow everywhere, compacting into ice, and we're all slipping and sliding and having a bit of an unbalanced hoot. Meanwhile, the Russian woman are power walking by us wearing 4 inch stiletto heeled, knee high boots. Close inspection of their boots at a later date reveals that they have so much tread on them, I wouldn't be surprised if the women here could walk up walls.

We had a train to catch tonight, the lobby bar wasn't being helpful and the restaurant we used last night was far too far away, so for dinner we headed to the "supermarket" where we bought bread from one counter, cheese from another and salami from the same one. We had to buy the cheese and salami separately though because we got on the wrong end of an anti tourist Russian.

As a general rule Russians don't seem to like tourists. If they see you coming in the market they mentally add an extra zero to the price of anything they offer (no price tags, you always have to ask for the price). Tourist attractions have one price for Russians and another (much higher) price for tourists. If they see you in the shop, they tend to serve every Russian first, before you. Sometimes, they will even take a break before serving you. In this incident, I bought the cheese, however before Amber could buy the salami the Russian lady decided she had had her fill of tourism for the day and went and sat down. She looked Amber in the eye and then picked up her crossword. Not perturbed Amber went and stood in front of her and glared. Then she said "excuse me", which made the lady start swearing. So she said it again (good ol Amber, when she sees the button to push, she pushes). Eventually the lady got it through her think skull that Amber having 5 brothers was very good at being annoying and persistent and that her life was only going to be easier if she served her and let her go.

Our train was a grand old thing straight out of a book such as "murder on the orient express". Yes, it was old. Our cabin was tiny and slept four people. The idea is that we hop on here in Novgorod and arrive in Moscow tomorrow at 5am. Hopefully our hotel rooms are vacant and we can check in. Taking the overnight train was indeed an experience. An experience which was hot and stuffy, had people laughing up and down the hallway and drunkenly opening our door asking if this was where they were sleeping tonight. Once our fourth member actually joined us, we locked the door and went to sleep. Secure in the knowledge that if the urban legend of people gassing you and nicking your stuff was true, we didn't have anything to nick. Some people on the tour did have their bags and were inordinately careful, one guy nearly K'Od his cabin mate coming back from the loo on suspicion of being a Russian thief.

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