Blogs from Far East, Russia, Europe - page 9

The train number on the train didn't match the one on my ticket, and who knows what platform it was on, but it seemed to be going to Khabarovsk (my cyrillic is coming in handy), so I took my chances. The provodinitsa (carriage attendant) didn't kick me off so I took that as a good sign. I was very lucky because the carriage was nearly empty, so I ended up getting the whole compartment to myself instead of having to share with 3 others. And I was really looking forward to those all-night vodka parties I had heard of - not! And because Vladivostok is the start of the line, the toilet was respectable and stayed that way. It is so cramped in there though that you had hardly fit your head above the basin to ... read more

Komsomolsk, a Russian city of 250,000 on the same longitude as Japan but much further North, so unknown I had to put in a special request to TravelBlog to get it added to its list of locations. "Look at it - God forgot this place," Misha told me as we trudged shivering through the gentle mid-May snow towards the bus station, me in a pair of yellow plastic sandals: my boots were still wet from falling into a patch of semi-melted ice on Lake Baikal, three days and half the world away. "What do you mean?" I asked, falsely. "You know what I mean," he replied. Of course I knew. No one was meant to live here other than the indigenous nomads who had adapted to the extreme climate over milenia and who had been consumed ... read more

The last couple of days have been quite chilled out. There seems to be a little bit of sickness going round, but I managed to get by relatively unscathed. I only had a sore throat for a day and a bit of a sniffly nose. I am currently sitting on my bed with Jake and Grim. Jake is actually cuddling Grim telling him how much he loves him, Grim is our dog here, who is actually a pretty cool dog despite regular dog annoyances like loudly licking himself, whilst we're trying to sleep. Today we went to the spring to get some water, 170L of water in fact, which should last about 2 weeks. The spring is nothing glamorous, just a couple of pipes near the bottom of a snow covered hill that trickle out water. ... read more

2010 sera l'année de la Russie en France et de la France en Russie. beaucoup de manifestations se dérouleront dans les deux pays. Cet événement a comme objectif : -Favoriser et enrichir la connaissance des deux pays -Encourager dans tous les domaines d'intérêt commun les échanges tels que les échanges scolaires par le biais de notre projet "fresque sur le thème du réchauffement climatique" Cette fresque est déjà commencée en Yakoutie par les élèves de l'école Sakha Française de Khamagatta et de l'école Canadienne de Yakoutsk. Les premiers dessins ont été exposés en avril dernier à yakoutsk. Depuis la rentrée scolaire de septembre 2009, les élèves du collège Gabriel Goussault de Vibraye (72) et de l'ile de la Réunion ont commencé à réfléchir sur ce thème, des écoles des villes de Chinon, de Blois,(pays de la ... read more

Por fin llegamos a Irkutsk, tras pasar una noche horrible rodeados de un grupo de borrachos que no paran de beber y charlar en toda la noche. Con los ojos aun legañosos, salimos de la estacion y a los 5 minutos aparece Luiza, nuestra anfitriona en la ciudad. Los padres de Luiza son uzbekos que emigraron a Rusia antes de la desintegración de la Unión soviética, y tanto ella como su hermano Timur, nacieron en Rusia. Llegamos al bloque de apartamentos donde viven, nos sorprende lo nuevos e inmaculados que son, acostumbrados al tipico bloque sovietico. La escalera esta repleta de plantas, Luiza nos explica que su madre junto a una vecina son las encargadas de convertir la escalera en este simil de jardin botanico :)) y mas tarde su madre me asegura orgullosa que su ... read more