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Irina, Ksenya and meKazan to Yekaterinburg – my first train ride during the day! I wanted to cross the Urals by daylight – well, turns the highest “mountain’’ in the Urals is about 1’800m above sea level 😊 Nevertheless the ride was beautiful! I was in a platskartny wagon as usual – this means a wagon with many open compartments, in each of them there are six sleeping spaces. So those 5 other people are usually your travel buddies. The atmosphere in the whole wagon is pretty chilled – some people sleep, some people eat, some people talk, some people read, some people stare out of the window and one person writes blog entries 😊
My five travel buddies: two ‘elderly’ babushkas, Darja & Nadezhda, travelling from Moscow to Petropavlovsk-Kazakhstan , one young babushka with her grandson travelling from some place after Kazan to Almaty and one lady who was just sleeping the whole day, so no info on her 😊 I was equipped with food, drinks and a cup . Once
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Shashlik the two babushkas realized that I’m not from Russia, eating my own food was pretty much impossible! They only thing they would try was the Camembert I bought in Kazan – their comment ‘interesting’ and ‘unusual’ – I didn’t really expect any other reaction, babushkas often like things the way they always were, so I’m surprised that they actually did try 😊 They told me that they used to travel in kupeyny wagon about 5 years ago . The prices however have risen, so they cannot afford them anymore – platskart are usually half the price of a kupe. We talked throughout most of the ride about god and the world – the only conversation which got slightly emotional was about rich Russians making their money in Russia and then living somewhere abroad . Darja seems to have a lot of anger towards them – I couldn’t quite get to the root of it, she got very emotional so I didn’t want to ask further. She was the first one to react like this, so
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Ganina Yama far everyone else seems to have kinda accepted their existence and the fact that most of them just go abroad to spend their fortunes .
At 23.30, 15 hours and two time zones later I arrived in Yekaterinburg. Irina and her brother picked me up from the train station – Irina suggested buying an onward ticket straight away as usually the queues are shorter at night then during the day. Getting a Russian train ticket can be very time consuming and the system has to be understood first 😊 you have a number of open desks – on each of them there’s a sign stating the open hours, lunch breaks and ‘technological breaks’ . So first thing, you check out the sign – you’re trying to find a desk which either has a short queue because it is currently on a technological break and opens again in like 10-15mins or you try to find a desk which doesn’t go on break for another 1h or preferably even longer [after a couple of cities you acquire the skill of estimating the waiting
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Touristic border time based on the length of the queue]. Right – so we got the strategy set – guess what, we still ended up in front of two closed desks after having waited for like 45 – 60 min in front of each… well, there is an unknown variable: the number of people having ‘temporarily’ left the queue or standing in a different queue 😊 Firstly, as you usually wait like 45min to 1h in the queue, people tend to leave the queue to smoke, go to the toilet or for whatever other reason. Secondly, some people stand in a queue in front of a desk that closes soon, so they tell one person in another queue to ‘’reserve a space’’ for them – so when one desk closes usually like 4 or 5 people just enter your queue in front of you! Anyway – I think you got the point 😊 While waiting in the queue Irina and I discussed the fact that in Russia people are just not yet used to using internet so much. [The site of the Russian railway company isn’t really user friendly, I’ve tried to create a profile and order online, in vain – and
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Yekaterinburg city pond even if you manage, you still gotta go and pick up your ticket at the railway station!] So I usually look up which train I would like to take, check the rates and availabilities and then go to the train station – a Russian often goes to the train station, reaches the desk and asks the lady for example ‘can you tell me the cheapest fare going to Kazan and back for 3 people in August’ usually having the other 2 people on the phone and consult them for every option given by the lady behind the desk 😊 Irina said that it also took a while for people to get used to cash machines. Sometimes between 5 and 10 years ago all salaries were still paid out in cash – so the transition to bank accounts and taking out money from a machine wasn’t so easy for everyone. Apparently one of Irina’s work colleagues still goes to the bank every month to take out her full salary in cash to take it home.
The next day Irina, her friend Ksenya, Irina’s mom and I went to their Datcha – I’d say the first real Russian Datcha for me
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just for the reflection :) – one-storey house, the sink only works if you pour water inside from the top, the stove works with fire, black Banja and obviously a garden full of berries and vegetables! We helped in the garden before hitting the close by forest to collect mushrooms. In the beginning all we found was mosquitoes – loads of them! Irina’s mom then found a couple of mushrooms and we decided that we would slowly make our way back to the Datcha. Suddenly mushrooms appeared all over the place – our bucket turned out to be too small 😊 mmmmm tasty lunch… potatoes and fresh mushrooms fried on the fire stove 😊 Afterwards we went for the Banja – Ksenya and I enjoyed some beer with that – what else could one wish for? 😊 Getting out of the Banja, Dima – Irina’s brother – was already preparing Shashlik… mmmm! In the evening we went back to Irina’s place – great day 😊
The next morning I visited Ganina Yama – a monastery built in
honor of the Romanov family whose bodies were discarded in the forest surrounding it – very pretty, but you’ve seen it quite quickly 😊 In the afternoon Irina and Ksenya took me to the old and the new border between Europe and Asia. The old border is the official geographic border which was confirmed by scientists. The new border could be entitled as touristic border – it’s located on the main highway into Yekaterinburg closer to the actual city in order to be more accessible for travellers 😊 In the evening Irina was sewing a dress – that’s when I got to know that she figure skates – she showed me pictures and videos, but I knew I had to see that in live 😊
The next day was dedicated to exploring the city – I left home with Irina, who had to go to work. I wandered around the city center, finally I bought a DVD of Cheburashka and after an hour or two met up with Ksenya to explore
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Real Ice queen further parts of the city. Yekaterinburg a city changing its face – older houses in the city center are often burned down in order to make space for newer bigger buildings , more and more people use the bike instead of the car , the city’s full of creative spots and is getting more and more accessible for tourists . I can understand that Ksenya and Irina like their city 😊
In the evening, or better at night, Irina and I went to the ice rink . Irina was trying to show me some skating tricks – it is really much harder than it looks like. So I was just simply skating around the rink and making videos of her, while she was practicing pirouettes, airplanes and jumps. After roughly
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Datcha style cooking - on fire two hours at like 1.15am we paid 150 roubles – roughly 5 CHF!! I was surprised, almost shocked – Irina told me that the entrance for the pool is even higher. Swiss prices! So practicing sports, keeping yourself healthy, having a hobby next to work almost seems to be like a luxury good in Russia…
I guess, this blog entry is long enough – I’ll try to accommodate all the other interesting things that Irina told me somewhere later on 😊 Time to move on to the province – next stop Tobolsk!
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