Advertisement
Published: September 1st 2008
Moscow - Red Square
St/ Basil's cathedral is in the background. To the right is Lenin's tomb (he's not looking too well!) and beside that is the Kremlin.
There is an old building directly opposite Lenins tomb containing all the best capitalism has to offer... Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Aramani etc. Priceless.Sweden - Stockholm
In Stockholm I stayed in a school that was converted into a youth hostel during the summer. Didn't do too much to be honest as I think my gallivanting of the previous month had well and truly caught up with me so I spent a few days there mainly walking around Gama Stam, the old area of Stockholm. I also went to see the Vasa. an 18th century warship that capsized 30 minutes after being launched.
Finland- Helsinki
From Stockholm, I caught a 16 hour ferry to Helsinki and found myself in the all you can eat buffet once again except that this time the booze was free also. Ended up sitting besde a Finish family who taught me more about Finland in an hour than I could have hoped to have learned from any number of books. Ended up becoming firm friends with an Aussie guy after we were thrown out of the free bar....... . By the time we got to Helsinki the weather had turned for the worst and as I had to plan my Russia trip I didn't see much there. I did however manage to squeeze in a by now
compulsry trip to a Finish Karaoke bar with yet another Aussie and a Canadian.
Russia - St. Petersburg
On the 4th August I arrived in St. Petrsburg. As usual the first thing on my agenda when I arrived was to book my way out so I had a bit of a chore writing down my destination(s) in Cyrillc (the Rusian alphabet) for presentation to the (as always seemed to be the case) stroppy cashier at the train station. I was well chuffed with the result as I managed to get every leg of my journey booked and the whole Trans-Siberian trip ended up costing approximately 500 Euro (In Edinburgh I had been quoted over 1,000GBP on the web but I had guessed correctly that it wouldn't be that much if I could book it within Russia itself). My fellow travellers were also slightly different ie older from those that I had met while inter-railing (though as it turned out not neccessarily maturer!) and as practically all of us were travelling alone we ended up hanging around together in the evenings.
Russia - Moscow
I was still feeling pretty pleased with myself for not only getting the
train ticket on the cheap but for also getting all of my accomodation booked for my month in Russia when I boarded the train for Moscow on the 8th August. Everything was working out so well that I could feel it in my bones that something had to go wrong and it well and truly did.......
I was due to arive in Moscow at 11pm that night so being in a strange city and not used to the metro etc I had decided to book a taxi to the hostel. The price I had been quoted on-line was 590 Roubles (20 euro) which seemed a pretty good price at the time and the taxi driver spoke English which was a bonus. When we arrived at the hostel he turned to me and said that will be 1200 Roubles (40 euro). I had a fit of course and so there were frantic phonecalls made to the taxi company etc. The person at the other end was telling me that a confirmation had been sent to my e-mail address with the price of 1200R quoted but as I had been on my way to the train station I had never received
it and as I "politely" told her I would never have booked a taxi for 1200R. Her response in no particular order was "we'll keep your luggage. call the police and/or drop you back to the train station".To all of which my stubborn response was "fine"! The poor old taxi driver meanwhile was caught in the middle and I was his last pick-up before he went on holiday a few hours later and after a 20 minute stand-off I finally relented and paid up. (I know it wasn't a huge amount of money in the grand scheme of things and was still cheaper than a similiar taxi trip in Dublin. it was just the principle of initially being quoted for half the amount actualy charged that bugged me. The fact that my accomodation for 3 nights in Moscow was costing slightly more only made me feel worse).
Still fuming when I got to the hostel I decided that the best thing I could do was have a nice warm shower and than hit the hay but than I was told that there was no hot water as the boiler had broken down that day. Trying to calm myself down
Stocholm
Vasa warship I decided to have a cup of tea but instead of putting in 2 spoons of sugar I put in 2 spoons of salt ............ nearly feckin choked. At that point the Gods decided that the best thing to do was to go straght to bed before anything else went wrong!
My first full day in Moscow started of much better (how couldn't it). One of the girls whom I'd met in St. Petersburg arrived in the morning at the same hostel I was staying in and so we both went to Red Square together. I must admit I couldn't get enough of the place, whether it was the sense of history or the setting I'm not sure but I must have visited the square at least twice a day for the 3 days I was there. Of course a lot of Moscow's main attractions such as the Kremlin and Lenin's tomb were there also so I was always going to spend a lot of time there anyway.
The one thing I did notice about Moscow (and to a lesser extent St. Petersburg) was that nobody drank in bars. Instead they would buy their (cheap) beer from one
St. Petersburg
Church of our Saviour of Spilled Blood.
The church (a smaller version of St.Basils in Moscow) was built in memory of Alexander II wo was assasinated on this spot in 1881. of the many kiosks dotted around the city and drink at street corners etc. At the odd place a band would set up and play a few tunes (Russian rock being a much better alternative to Karaoke) making their money by asking people for a contribution. All the empties would than be collected by the homeless as they would receive a small commission on cans and bottles returned etc so there wouldn't be any litter left behind.
Russia - The Trans-Siberian
Finally on the 11th August I left Moscow for the 9,289km trip to Vladivostok on the Trans-Siberian Express. The first leg of the journey was going to be for 3 days on the train to Irkutsk near Lake Baikal. I was very much looking forward to spending some time with some Russians (and sharing their vodka!) when I boarded the train so you can imagine my initial reaction when I met the people I was sharing my cabin with - A German guy and his Swiss girlfiend and an Italian businessman. We had a great night! Frederika and Benjamin were travelling on the Trans-Mongolian and like me were going to stay near lake baikal for a while
St.Petersburg
One of the rooms in the Hermitage\Winter Palace but it was the Italian who stole the show. He was staying in Russia for a month and as he didn't like Russian food, had a suitcase bursting at the seams with the finest Italian wine, cheese etc. that you can possibly imagine so my first night on the Trans-Siberian turned into an Italian night with Benjamin translating Italian into German for Frederika to in turn translate into English for me.
The 72 hours spent on the train weren't as boring as it might sound provided you had something to read/do. The dining car was very popular for some of us (the deck of cards that I'd brought with me finally got an airing) and as well as that you were alowed to get off the train every few hours at various stops along the route to stock upon grub etc. from the multitude of kiosks at every station.
I stayed in Irkutsk for a couple of days before travelling to a village called Listyvanka which borders lake Baikal. The lake itself is massive and is the largest freshwater lake in the world containing Nerpa seals as well as Omul - a type of fish (tastes a bit
St. Petersburg
Alexander I victory column - built to commemorate the victory over Napoleon in 1812 like trout) that is part of the staple diet of the local population. From Listvyanka I did a short day-trip to Bolshie Koty and on returning to Irkutsk I travelled 7 hours by bus to Olkhon island on the lake.
Olkhon island was a mad place altogether but was very popular with with both Russians and backpackers alike. There were no roads - only dirt tracks, electricity had only been installed in 2005 and I'm still trying to forget about the toilet facilities....... .The other great thing about Olkhon was that everybody was staying in the one place that accomodates backpackers so I ended up meeting people I had already befriended in Moscow. St. Petersburg, on the train etc. I stayed there for 4 days in total before heading back to Irkutsk and catching the train to Ulan-Ude.
As I wasn't going to Mongolia, Ulan Ude was the next best thing as it is predominantly made up of Russians of Mongolian origin (Buryats). I had a ball there. There were only 3 of us (myself and 2 Swedes) staying at the hostel and we had 3 hosts who looked after us really well. On my last day there
Moscow
Sculpture Park we were all taken to one of their houses for lunch which was great (all the grub was home grown except for the fish which I wasn't too keen on as it was served raw). Afterwards we went berry and mushroom picking (don't ask) but I was relieved all the same when we finally started to leave as my train to Vladivostok was leaving a couple of hours later. My heart nearly stopped however when we got to the road and my host shouted out something to his wife that the Swedish guy translated as "where's the car!"I got to the train station less than 5 minutes before departure.
I was now on the final 3 day leg of the Trans-Siberian which saw me actually leave Siberia and enter the Far East after the first day. My travelling companion this time was a young Russian on his way back to College and his 3 days travelling there will make me never complain about my 5 hours travelling home from Dublin again. Despite limited English (his was no better) we got along fine although he did seem a little overly concerned whenever the train stopped and I went out to
get some food etc. as he would suddenly appear from nowhere saying "Dan, we go now" at least 10 minutes before the train was due to depart again - the stops on average being 15 to 20 minutes long. I finally made it to Vladivostok (famous for being the location of the Russian Pacific Fleet and the birthplace of Yul Brynner) early in the morning and once settled took my first look out over the Pacific Ocean at the beach nearby. It was a great feeling remembering where I had already been whilst looking out over the Ocean and looking forward to the next stage.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.079s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 8; qc: 24; dbt: 0.052s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
