Into Siberia...

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So got the bus from Suzdal back to Vladmir to wait for our train that we had booked to Novosibirsk. It was a bit confusing because you have a train number on your tickets and a departure board except the departure board had a different time to our tickets...we waited around till that time and it suddenly changed to the right time we had, so all was good. We headed to our platform to find there was ni access! There were people waiting on all different platforms as this one was closed off having some work done and there were all these makeshift platforms made out of wood in the middle of the tracks and we had no idea where we were supposed to wait, we tried to ask a few people but no one understood us. Eventually this one guy showed us his ticket and he was getting the same train as us so we just tagged along with him and luckily we were at the right location and the train arrived fine.

We were in Plaskart again but this time we were on the side bunks on top of each other which was a lot easier as we had our own little table and storage areas. Basically the next 2 nights and 2 days were spent reading our books we had bought in Moscow, eating instant noodles and instant mash, playing cards, although we could only think of a couple of games for 2 players - rummy and 21 so any suggestions are welcome 😊 More reading, sleeping eating ... It surprisingly went quite quickly, the trains stops for around 10-20 minutes at different stations where you can get off and on the platforms there are loads of women selling food, pastries, crisps, beer and towards the end of our journey some smoked fish which some crazy people bought and stunk out our carriage on the train. Although to be fair the carriage already stank of b.o. and some cheesey feet... The toilets aren't the best as there are 54 people in 1 carriage with 2 toilets, so they can get a bit smelley and wet on the floor, flip flops are a must!! Tryin to have a wash with a wobbly train is also a bit of challenge!

When we arrived in Novosibirsk the time difference were +3 hours from Moscow, so we lost a lot of day. We had arrange to couchsurfing with a girl named Eva. Her profile said she was 30 had a young son and lived in a 1 bedroom flat where we would all sleep in the same room (we didn't really realise this till after we confirmed her)..turned out though that since we were only staying 1 night she though her apartment was too far out of the city for us so we would stay in stepmothers apartment that she doesn't use and Eva has the keys too, great we thought...no no no...ahhh it was a nightmare. I cannot believe someone would actually live there. She was meeting another guest at the train station so she said we could stay in the flat and have a shower and she would come back for us. The bathroom was appaling, I honestly though I would get dirtier by stepping into the bath and the hot water was barely running. The toilet didn't flush again so it bucket of water style again. We managed to have a little wash and wash our hair. The rest of the flat was in complete ruins with dirty walls, floor coming up and ... ah I can't really describe it but we were beginning to wish we were staying in her little 1 bedroomed apartment with her son. When her other guest arrived she said she would take us on a night tour of the city so we all got the bus back to the centre, walked for about 10minutes then she left us to go back to her flat with the other guest and to get the bus back on our own!!! Luckily, we kind of knew which stop it was but we carried on walking around for a bit grabbed some food (Russia's version of KFC - nowhere near as good!) and managed to find our way back to little palace (!). We sat up for a bit watched another film dubbed in Russian before getting some sleep...tonight was the first night we used our sleep sheets as we weren't sure how clean the beds were.

Thursday morning we got up and out as quickly as possible with an attempted wash (no shower for about 4 days now after our train journey). To cut a really long story short, Eva had given us keys to this flat and has asked to get a bus from the apartment to a stop near her work where she would meet us before we left. We checked the directions with her and she said leave from the bus stop on the side of the road where the flat is...we did this, got off at the 4th stop like she said but could not find here. After a few texts between us and Eva we established we had gone in the wrong direction and was supposed to get the bus from the opposite side of the road, she could not have any more time out of work and gave us all these extra directions which we couldn't understand so we ended up meeting her other guest in the centre and exchanging the keys with him which was quite lucky as I didn't really want to see Eva as she didn't seem to please with us even though she gave us the wrong directions! lol. This other guest was a Swiss guy called Samuel, really nice guy, gave us his details for his place in Zurich! He had stayed at Eva's other flat and said it was exactly the same as ours, with shared bathrooms! He was moving to stay in a hotel that night!

So after all this messing around this morning, we left Novosibirsk quite late in the afternoon to catch our 5 hour bus to Tomsk which was a bit annoying as this meant we would arrive in Tomsk later in the dark and we hadn't booked anywhere to stay here yet because of lack of internet. After some difficulty we managed to buy our tickets and boarded our bus. The bus journey was nightmare as the roads were awful, loads of holes and the journey was so bumpy and the driver kept swirving all over the road trying to avoid these holes, but we made it there in one peace. The scenery along the journey was amazing though. Just hours and hours of the exact same tree for miles and miles. Every now and then a little patch of houses would appear with the most amazing view over a lake or something, but the houses were like little wooden shacks, can't believe people live in them.

Over the road from the station was a hotel that had decent internet access, so we went straight there to try and figure our some places to stay. The guide book said there were no hostels in Tomsk, only hotels which seemed a bit pricey. They had resting rooms at the train station which I think are like dorms for hostel prices, we tried these but ended getting almost shouted at in Russian by some woman and we had no idea what she was on about so left. There was another place called TGU Hotel, which was basically university dorms, but the book said during term time you don't have much luck, but we thought we would try it and so glad we did!! We got a twin room for 13 pound each! Our own room and our own bathroom! 😊 More washing! lol. When we were checking in there was a Russian guy there who spoke a little English who helped us and invited us in his room for a beer. Ste and I sorted ourselves out a bit, nipped out to the shop with the guy named Slava and then went back to the hotel and had a few drinks. Was a really nice evening. Even though we could hardly communication we managed to find out a lot of information about each other and he was showing us loads of pictures on his phone of his 3 month old daughter and his wife (he was working in Tomsk for the week). He was a really decent bloke, he told me he loves tea and asked if when I get home I can post him some English Tea 😊

Friday we spent the day round Tomsk, found a pretty decent internet cafe where we sorted out part of next journey and checked out some hostels and information. Tomsk is a really nice small town, we pretty much walked around all of it in a couple of hours. Had some really nice walks down by the river with really nice views. All it misses though is some cafes, or nice outdoors bars. Nothing is outside, restaurants are all tucked away under huge concrete buildings, there so much nice scenery, but it seems the locals just buy beer from the shops and drink on the streets seen as they are allowed to. We were looking for somewhere to sit down and maybe eat as we had eaten pretty crappy food for a few days. There was a place in the guide book called jazz cafe, so we headed there and so glad we did. Got a glass of wine, pepsi, chicken pasta, ceasar salad for 7 pounds which is quite reasonable for a nice restaurant. It was lovely inside and had a projector showing an old charlie chaplin silent movie and had jazz music playing in the background. Lovely way to end our time in Tomsk.

Luckily the hotel had let us leave our bags there, so we collected them, trekked for ages to the train station (don't know why we don't use public transport more??!) and stocked up again as we had another 2 night train to Irkutsk.

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Photos

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Thats the guy in the background who helped us find our platform even though he does look like a bit of psycho!

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Wakey wakey!! This was our plaskart carriage!

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This was the flat from our couchsurfer :(

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One of the old houses we saw on our bus from Novosibirsk to Tomsk

Comments

[cheryl]

think it time for a shave ste layla will get spots lol. glad its all going well.

[anonymous]

Sounds like another good trip! as for the cards do you remember shed! thats always a good game to play and can last a little bit longer than the others. xxx