Blogs from Volga, Russia, Europe

Planning this trip I briefly looked at the option of staying on the train all the way from Moscow to Mongolia, until I saw that was like 5 or so solid days on a train! So a combination of reading and time tables led me first to Kazan, a relatively short hop @ 12 hrs east of Moscow, where I arrived to 27 degrees and sunshine, a nice change from the cloud and rain of St Petersberg and Moscow. Another day, another Kremlin Siting on the Volga, Kazan is where Europe and Asia begin to merge in Russia. Historically the area of a Turkic tribe it was incorporated into the Golden Horde (decedents of Genghis Khan) in the 13th century, became an independent Khanate when their power fragmented and was finally conquered by Ivan the Terrible ... read more

Day 13 - Samara to Ufa Samara was a detour from the most direct route; it would have saved a day and 250 miles if we had gone straight from Kazan to Ufa. We had read however that Joseph Stalin's bunker had been found in Samara and turned into a museum. It is 37 metres deep, making it more protected than any other similar instalation of its time. Never used by Stalin, it remained hidden under a public building, unknown to locals, until its rediscovery in 1990. A mystery surrounds how such a project, clearly requiring hundreds of workers to construct, remained a secret to Samarans. One theory is that prisoners were used as slave labour then later executed. Unfortunately our (well, ok, my) planning had let us down. It turned out that the bunker and ... read more

Day 11 - Nizhiny Novgorod to Kazan... So good was the food in "Bez xob" restaurant the night before, we had breakfast there. John had fried quails eggs, which came on a small frying pan with an actual nest containing the broken shells as decoration on the side. Nizhiny is a pretty city, but didn't hold any particularly unusual attractions to tempt us, so we pushed on out of there. The weather was sunny, it was a 7 hour drive to our next stop in Kazan, and we wanted to make it before nightfall. I've attached a few uninspiring photos taken out of the window along the way. The roads were getting bumpier, and it was a regular thing to see shredded remains of truck tyres by the side of the road next to skid marks. ... read more

I finally finished all work in Moscow and returned to St. Petersburg. In a short while, I went to my home town, Birsk, where I stayed for eight days. I published my collection of folk tales on Amazon in electronic format and hope to become richer by that, and also by publishing an electronic book about travelling in Russia. I think Russia as a travel destination is hugely underestimated and needs reconsideration and reassessment in all aspects. I do not know what comes out of my efforts, but I will try and present this travel book in half a year, perhaps (I want to visit many more interesting places). I wanted to go to an interesting city on my return journey to St. Petersburg. I had initially planned three small trips, one to Cologne, also to ... read more

So, my old Budapest flatmate drove all the way to Kazan to pick me up because she is the sweetest person ever. Not even her car breaking down stopped her. About 100km from Ulyanovsk one of her tyres blew out. She called a friend who got a taxi to meet her and he patched up the car so they could get back to Ulyanovsk to the garage. it took three hours to repair the wheel, and she was back on the road straight away with her saviour to come and get me. She wouldn't let me get the bus (neither of us knew where to get it from anyway), and she arrived shortly after 6pm. Big hugs ensued and she told me how her mother was worried about leaving me in the city alone for so ... read more