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Hello Again! This time from Tomsk,
"Siberia's most likeable city". Since our last blog we have travelled 3,644 kilometres on three different trains - stopping off at several places en route.
The first stop was Suzdal, a three hour train journey and one hour bus ride east from Moscow.
"The gently winding waterways, flower drenched meadows and dome-spotted skyline make this medieval capital a fairytale setting". So says the Lonely Planet, Trans-Siberian Railway book. Gently winding waterways, tick! Flower drenched meadows, cross! Dome-spotted skyline, tick! Fairytale setting.... hmm!?! Suzdal in itself was a nice place to relax after 8 days in two of Europe's largest cities, but unfortunately it couldn't live up to the mental picture the Lonely Planet guide had painted in our heads. Wondering around and just relaxing, the highlight had to be the Saviour Monastery of St. Euthymius. Suzdal was historically a monastic centre, with over large 40 churches and monasteries (hence the dome-spotted skyline) in a town with a population of only 12,000. St Euthymius was the pick of the bunch and lovely and peaceful to wonder around. We popped in one of the churches on the grounds of the monastary and were treated to a
vocal show from a barbershop quartet of priests. Having the rule of the roost and having plenty of time to practice they had obviously located the best spot to stand on to achieve the best acoustics out of the space. In itself one of the highlights of the trip to date...
Two other points of note coming out of Suzdal. Firstly, Rich managed to buy two tickets for the bus to Suzdal from the ticket office in perfect Russian. Or so he thinks, but the point is that we are slowly starting to pick up a small amount of Russian and are able to read the cyrllic alphabet, which is the largest hurdle to understanding a lot of things. A whole different alphabet is quite intimidating, but getting over that once you are able to translate a number of words are spelt the same or similarly. One of our favourites has got to be PECTOPAH. No idea what it is until you realise that P = R, C = S and H = N. Answers on the back of a postcard...
The other point in Suzdal was that we met the first people that we would later end
up sharing a train journey with - a French couple called Stephanie and Gregg. If we thought our trip was adventourous it pales into comparison with their trip. Having just given up their jobs in Spain they are travelling cross country to Mongolia, where Gregg (a doctor) is going to try and convince the local health minister in Ulan-Bator to fund a treatment and prevention programme against Hepatitis - which is apparently a significant problem in Mongolia with something like 30%!o(MISSING)f the population infected. Stephanie is also trying to find a job in her field (rural development) with a French NGO.
Moving on from Suzdal, we took another three hour train to Nizhny Novgorod, which
"had something prevented Russia from becoming the world's largest land empire, Nizhny would have been the start of the Russian rail adventure. As it is here that Rus ends and Russia begins (if heading east)". This was another example of a Russian city with its own kremlin (a major fortified central complex found in historic Russian cities) and impressive cathedrals. Nothing of particular note in Nizhny, except for some nice views and probably the best meals that we have had to date in
Moscow. Biblioteca, on top of a bookshop in the town centre, does a wicked bolognese pizza and smoked chicken pasta if you're ever in the area.
The challenge was then to be up in time to catch a 5:25 train from Nizhny to Tomsk. Bags packed full of rations (noodles, sandwiches, crackers, fruit and yoghurt etc etc) for the 49 hour train journey that lay ahead (our longest train journey of the trip), we went to bed but not before catching Blue's Eurovision entry (by chance, not design). Clambering onto the train we bedded down straight away and awoke a few hours later hurtling at 60kph through the Russian countryside. Looking out the window the main sites were pine trees and silver birch trees and pine trees and silver birch trees and pine trees and silver birch trees. Lots of trees!! Unfortunately for most of the trip you are in amongst the trees so can't enjoy any sweeping panoramics. Those will come later, when we hit Mongolia and have the Steppes and Gobi Desert unfolding in front of us. For now, there are pine trees and silver birch trees and pine trees and silver birch trees.
But the
journey is more than just about what you see out of the window. It's also about the people you share a cabin with. Our first convesation was with a Russian man who could speak very good spanish (no real help) and a little bit of english. He was just returning from Spain having purchased 20,000 litres of extra virgin olive oil. We also sat and enjoyed a couple of hours chatting with Stephanie and Gregg and two spaniards and knocking back a few beers. Introduce to this a Russian man who brought a selection of mind games, slights of hand and match stick tricks to the table and it turned out to be a very entertaining evening. Sadly the one slight of trick that Rich knew the man had already mastered...
The last man to mention also shared our cabin and spoke only broken english. However, we did manage a few conversations and in the true Lonely Planet fashion of embellishing the facts that are available to you we have spruced up our final encounter. Throughout the train journey this man had been very friendly and had been trying to help organise taxis in each of the cities that
we would be visiting before we leave Russia. An hour before disembarking the train he offered the nugget of information that he was a police officer (and something else about not leaving our passports unattended - but lets focus on the main story here). Just before arrival he changed into a smart suit and when we got off the train there was another man waiting to carry the bags of our second cabin mate (a mature student arriving at Tomsk for the first time to study at its university). This man showed a lot of respect to our man, therefore our man must be the police chief. We hopped in the back of their car, their patrol car and he gave us a tour of the city before dropping us off outside our hostel. But not before doing a stakeout outside the halls of residence of this lady - just to check it was safe. He was either the police chief, or they were Starsky and Hutch... one or the other!
During the first night on the Nizhny - Tomsk train we passed from Europe into Asia and are now coming up fast on the half way point to Beijing. Tomorrow, we're onto our next train to Krasnoyarsk and then onto Irkutsk and Lake Baikal!
Hope everybody is well back home...
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Dmitry Zembatov
Hi!
Many thanks for an interesting story.