YEKATERINENBURG

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15.10.08

Today is time to see what Yekaterinenburg has to show, and we have plenty of time. The start of the day is amazing. When Anatolij knocks on the door saying “breakfast is ready” we can hardly believe it! You would never expect it in a hostel, imagine there! Wonderful. Coffee, juice and plate with omelette, cheese and toast are waiting for us on the table. He sits with us an is a good opportunity to have a chat. He's learning English so we can communicate and we find out he's been running the hostel only for a few months and despite the fact we're currently the only guests, it seems like is going pretty well.
With big bellies and big satisfaction we set ourselves ready to go. The weather is not too bad and just a bit chilly so we walk towards town heading first to the Romanov's death site. Apart from Boris Yeltsin being born here, the murder of the Tsar Nicholas II and his family is probably the only thing that makes Yekaterinenburg famous. On the murder site now are a cross marking the death site, a timber chapel, and the grand Church of the Blood, dedicated to the Romanov. For the first time in my life (I'm sure is Michael's first time as well) I entered an orthodox church. Ladies have to cover their hair and, if not wearing a skirt, have to wear a smock on top of the trousers, men can't wear hats inside. We walked in silently, a dozen of people were inside. I dress myself up and we're free to walk around. The church is in Byzantine style, with central plan and an incredibly big face of Jesus painted inside the highest dome. On the other side of the street we walk around the Ascension Church, a blue quite dilapidated building, and we stop to see the Afghanistan War Monument, that someone calls Black Tulip, and Lonely Planet calls Black Rose. Still a flower thou! And I guess the name could come from the actual shape of the monument itself. As we're there we decide to pay a visit to the Military History Museum. For some reason unknown to me, men have always an interest in this kind of things, as for me the only attractive objects I've seen inside were the maps showing tactics and movements of the troops. Outside the museum and in the yard, a number of tanks and similar are probably the main attraction. For another few hours we walk around the old part of town (as old as it could be for a city founded in the 18th century!). Yekaterinenburg looks today like an incredibly vast construction site. Road works are everywhere and half of city area is occupied by building sites. In 15 years is probably going to be a modern buzzing city.
Tomorrow we will go for the 50 hours trip on the train that will take us to Irkutsk, so on the way back we stop at the supermarket to organize a surviving kit. We walk along the river Itser to get back to the hostel and at the end the rain catch us. Not too bad. We're very excited for what is waiting for us and everything is fine. When we arrive to the flat our host is having dinner with a friend so we take our time to hang the washing and get things ready. When the only 2 square meters of the kitchen are free, Mike microwaves our dinner while I make some sandwiches for tomorrow. As the night before I fall dead asleep after reading few pages of my book while Mike is seeing small hours since he got into this car game on the computer! Boring.

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