Yekaterinburg hotels 1 Backpackers 0

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The next leg of my journey contained plenty of progress indicators - about 160km west of Krasnoyarsk the train passed the halfway point of the Trans-Mongolia route, another 100km beyond that we crossed from eastern to western Siberia, and about 1700km beyond that we left Siberia entirely. This last point had in times gone by been the Jiayuguan of Russia, where exiles said their goodbyes before heading into their banishment.

My cabin-mates were a young couple from Irkutsk who were on their way to Azerbaijan. They spoke little English, though the husband was able to sing along to "Happy Birthday" when it came on over the carriage radio. We were also treated to what I'm guessing was the musical "Mamma Mia" in Russian. I doubt I created a good impression by dozing off and dribbling on the seat but they kept offering me tea so clearly that wasn't held against me.

I could only have an enormous amount of respect for the provodnitsa when I saw her emerging from the bathroom in a robe, having apparently just washed her (long) hair. As anyone who's been on one of these trains will know, the cramped conditions, continual swaying, and fiddly tap that would need to be dealt with for such a procedure are an effective deterrent even for crew-cuts, let alone shoulder-length styles.

There was not as much snow in evidence as we headed west, though it was still cold enough that the river at Omsk was frozen. In between gazing out of the window at what was still a magical landscape, and occasional spurts of sign language/gesture conversation with my cabin-mates, I found that "Crime and Punishment" slotted neatly into the 37.5 hours on the train.

I would not normally choose to arrive anywhere just before midnight on a Friday, but train availability had forced this on me, and the streets of Yekaterinburg were pretty much devoid of life as I trudged along them. Still, I was within 2,000km, 2 time zones, and just over 1 day's travel of Moscow, which seemed like progress, so my spirits were high as I neared the area of town where my guidebook had indicated I'd find 3 budget hotels.

R3,200, R3,300, and R3,000 were the three quotes I received for a single room. R3,000 equates to slightly over $120. Requests for something cheaper or a discount were denied. Much swearing ensued. With the temperature at -7C (there's always at least one tall building in town showing the time, temperature, and pressure in mmHg), a park bench was not an option so I took the cheapest room with much reluctance, thinking the outlay was the equivalent of over a week in Ubud. The room I had would have cost less in London. With accommodation at such a premium, the city would have to be "done" in a day.

Yekaterinburg has been involved in four events of national if not global significance over the last century. The first of these, an ongoing saga, concerned the fate of the Russian imperial line. After the revolution, the Tsar and his family were moved to Yekaterinburg and imprisoned. There were several attempts to restore the monarchy and the Bolsheviks realised these attempts would continue so long as the royal family was alive. Under orders from a lcoal Communist official (in whose memory the town was renamed to Sverdlovsk during the Soviet era, a name it still retains on train timetables), they were murdered and the bodies destroyed. 70 years later, the remains were found (for the second time - Google it to get the whole story) and positively identified as those of the royal family via a DNA match with Prince Philip (a relative), however there are still irregularities yet to be explained. A small plaque and a church mark this event, though the remains are now interred in St Petersburg.

Yekaterinburg's second appearance on the pages of history was as the location of the shooting down of Gary Powers in his U2 spyplane in 1960, a highly embarrassing episode for the US that preceded one of the chillier periods of the Cold War. The Military Museum in Yekaterinburg supposedly has an exhibit on this incident but unfortunately the whole building was closed for renovation when I visited.

Thirdly, the city was the birthplace of the late Boris Yeltsin, who in his time as Russian President presided over the transition from a corrupt communist system to a corrupt capitalist one, doling out the country's vast natural resources to a select group of businessmen (the so-called oligarchs) in return for their political and financial support.

And finally, an anthrax leak from a nearby bioweapons facility killed at least 60 and possibly over 100 people at the end of the 1970s. The KGB covered up the incident and destroyed all documentation relating to it, as development of bioweapons was in breach of a treaty from earlier in the decade. With the anthrax bacterium infamous for the longevity of its spores, in some ways I'm glad I didn't read about this until after I'd left the city, otherwise I might have been inclined to take precautionary measures - such as not breathing for 2 days.

Apart from my hotel bill, I think the most affecting thing I saw in Yekaterinburg was the Afghanistan War Memorial, a sculpture showing a downward-looking soldier with a weary posture. The effect was one of resignation rather than pride.

Russian friends in New York had told me that Italo Disco had been highly popular in Russia in its heyday in the 1980s/1990s and I've been astounded to find that pretty much all my other musical tastes are catered for here too. Whether it be Eiffel 65 in the supermarket, Johnny Hates Jazz being covered on a dismal TV show that I'll bet 100 roubles had a name that translated as "Russian Idol", Max Him and Savage in an Italian restaurant, a Boney M concert featuring only one of the original line-up and a hall full of Russian fans who stayed glued stolidly to their seats, or even Sabrina's "Boys Boys Boys (Summertime Love)" blasting out of a car stereo on a -12C night in Krasnoyarsk, I've had no cause for complaint. Plus after hearing tiresome home-grown rap in umpteen countries this year, where the only connection with the genuine product was the rapper wearing a baseball cap, a few gold(-plated) chains, and a scowl, a blast of MC Miker G and DJ Sven was a reminder of what can be done when you don't take a musical genre too seriously. And if it was as good as this out in the sticks, what would Moscow and St Petersburg be like?

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Photos

Detail
Afghanistan War Memorial

Detail
Church of the Blood

Coal-fired batchok
Amazingly complex for a glorified kettle

Church of the Blood
Dedicated to the Romanovs

Detail
Church of the Blood

Sculpture detail
Church of the Blood

Detail
Church of the Blood

Detail
Afghanistan War Memorial