Blogs from Centre, Russia, Europe - page 7

In Moscow YH, I met a Dutch couple, Wouter and Chloe, who had the same destination as mine. We were going to Almaty-Kazakhstan by train. It’s a long way. We would spend 3 full days in the train. The train would depart at night. I had my last day in Moscow relaxing, after an emergency that I found I bought the wrong date ticket and rushed to station for changing. I was very nervous because my Russian visa would expire if I couldn’t catch my train. We left YH at evening and took subway to the station with our packs which made us very conspicuous. We waited our train with beer. Since arriving Russia, I had drunk a lot of alcohol, especially the strong Vodka. The time was up. We separated, got in our cars. The ... read more

There is another short story about another short trip of mine, to a town called Sergiev Posad located in the vicinity of Moscow. The town is part of the famous Russian Gold Ring route and, due to its closeness to Moscow, I decided that I should visit it on November 10 to fill the time slot between my arrival from my hometown and the departure of my flight to a remote country. The idea was to leave the luggage in the luggage room, take the commuter train to Sergiev Posad, visit the Laura of the Holy Trinity and St. Sergius, and there would still remain much time to spend at the airport. In October, I looked through an encyclopedia entitled Russian Cities, and made a mental note of Sergiev Posad among the preferable towns to visit ... read more

Today's afternoon is the town of Yaroslavl, one of the oldest towns in Russia, founded in 1010 (yep, just missed the millennium celebration). Today the city has a population of 650,000 working mostly with oil refining and rubber tire manufacturing. The most amazing sight, in my opinion, was the Church of Elijah the Prophet. Built in 1650, this church has amazing frescoes, as Ernest's pictures capture I think. We listened to a male quartet sing in a small chapel that was really amazing. In addition, we were here on Friday, and as we had learned previously in our Russian tradition discussion, most weddings occur on Friday so they have the whole weekend to celebrate. As such, we saw several bridal couples and Ernest had to photograph them. Also, as a tradition, if the crowd yells "gorda" ... read more

Somtimes Trans-Siberian train journeys can be lots of fun .. this wasn't one of those times. When boarding the train my spirits rose a little when I noticed it was a good quality train, but they were dashed oncer I discovered my bunk buddy. A quick survey of the carriage occupants revealed that I was paired up with the most repulsive charactere of the lot. Plascartny '3rd class' standard means that there are no closed compartments in the carriage, but the bunks are arranged in groups of four, with additional sets of two, one upper and one lower, on the side passage. Mine was the upper side passage and my neighbour, 'Mr Stinky' was the lower. Mr S wore silky tracksuit with the top permanently unzipped to reveal his flabby verandah. He reaked of probably both ... read more

Et nous voila donc a Cheboksary (Чебоксары), capitale de la Tchouvachie, l'une des 21 republiques de Russie. A la gare nous sommes cueillis par Olga et son copain Alex (surnom Locha ; les Russes ne s'appellent quasiment jamais par leur vrai prenom mais par une serie de diminutifs dont je ne suis toujours pas arrive a comprendre la logique). On file de suite chez eux (a Novocheboksarsk, 30 minutes en bus) lance une machine et zoooo direction la ville, qui etant de facture fort moderne (construite en bonne partie du fait d'une immense usine implantee tout pres) ne reserve absolument aucun batiment ancien, ce qui apres Nizhny met une bonne claque. Des universites, des monuments en nombre impressionnant (Tchernobyl et la deuxieme guerre mondiale principalement), des installations sportives et des immeubles ; une petite eglise quand ... read more